Breakdown of On miał rację, ale oni nie mieli racji.
on
he / it (m)
mieć
to have
nie
no / not
ale
but
oni
they (masculine personal)
racja
rightness
Questions & Answers about On miał rację, ale oni nie mieli racji.
Why is it miał for 'he' but mieli for 'they'? Doesn't the verb mieć have an 'e' in the stem?
Yes, the dictionary form is mieć (to have). In the past tense, the 'e' in the stem changes to an 'a' for almost all forms, like miał (he had) or miała (she had). However, for the masculine personal 'they' (oni), the 'e' stays, making it mieli. This e/a swap is a common pattern in irregular Polish verbs!
Why does the sentence use forms of mieć (to have) instead of być (to be) to say 'was right'?
In Polish, you don't say that you are right. Instead, you say that you have rightness. The phrase is mieć rację (to have right/reason). So 'he was right' literally translates to 'he had reason' (on miał rację).
Why is the word for 'right' spelled rację in the first half, but racji in the second half?
This is because of the word nie. In the first half, rację is the direct object of miał, so it takes the Accusative case. In the second half, the verb is negated (nie mieli). In Polish, whenever you negate a verb, its direct object must switch from the Accusative case to the Genitive case. The Genitive form of racja is racji.
Do I need to include the pronouns on and oni here?
You can actually drop them! Because the verb forms miał and mieli already tell us who is doing the action, Miał rację, ale nie mieli racji is perfectly correct. The pronouns on and oni are just used here to strongly emphasize the contrast between 'he' and 'they'.
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