Word
Sympatyczni sportowcy chodzą na basen z przyjacielem.
Meaning
Nice athletes go to the swimming pool with a friend.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Sympatyczni sportowcy chodzą na basen z przyjacielem.
chodzić
to walk
na
on, at / to (motion toward) / for (a meal) / for (waiting for)
z
with
basen
swimming pool (m)
Questions & Answers about Sympatyczni sportowcy chodzą na basen z przyjacielem.
Why is the adjective sympatyczni instead of sympatyczne?
Because sportowcy (athletes) refers to a group of people that includes at least one male. This makes it a virile (masculine personal) plural noun. In the Nominative case, virile adjectives usually end in -i or -y. If the group was entirely female, you would use the non-virile form sympatyczne.
The singular for athlete is sportowiec. Why does it change so much in the plural sportowcy?
Two things happen here. First, the letter -e- disappears when an ending is added, which is a common pattern in Polish words ending in -ec. Second, because athletes are male people, the noun gets a special virile plural ending. For words ending in -owiec, the plural becomes -owcy.
Why do we use na here instead of do for going to the swimming pool?
Normally, going to a closed building uses do followed by the Genitive case. However, basen (swimming pool) is a common exception that uses na followed by the Accusative case. You just have to memorize it along with other destination exceptions like going to the post office (na pocztę).
Could I use idą instead of chodzą for the verb go?