Breakdown of Nasza rodzina ma trochę szczęścia.
mieć
to have
rodzina
the family
nasz
our
trochę
a little / some
szczęście
luck / happiness
Questions & Answers about Nasza rodzina ma trochę szczęścia.
Why does the word for luck change to szczęścia here?
This is because of the word trochę (a little). In Polish, basic quantifiers like dużo (a lot), mało (few/little), and trochę force the noun that follows them into the Genitive case. The dictionary form is szczęście (a neuter noun), and to make it Genitive, we change the final -e to an -a.
Could trochę also translate to "some"?
Yes! The word trochę is very flexible and can mean "a little", "a bit of", or "some". Translating this sentence as "Our family has some luck" is also completely correct.
Why do we use nasza instead of nasz for "our"?
Possessive words like "our" have to match the gender of the noun they describe. Because rodzina (family) ends in -a, it is a feminine noun. Therefore, we must use the feminine form nasza rather than the masculine nasz.
Since a family is made up of multiple people, could we use the plural verb mają (they have)?
No, in Polish you must use the singular verb ma (has). Even though a family contains many people, the word rodzina is grammatically just one single thing (a singular feminine noun). Polish doesn't treat group words as plural the way English sometimes does.
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