Breakdown of Student miał nadzieję, a my nie mieliśmy czasu.
mieć
to have
nie
no / not
my
we
a
and / whereas (contrast)
student
student (m)
czas
time
nadzieja
hope
Questions & Answers about Student miał nadzieję, a my nie mieliśmy czasu.
Both miał and mieliśmy come from the verb mieć (to have). Why does the vowel change from a to e?
This is exactly what the e/a alternation is about! For verbs like mieć, the stem uses an a for singular forms (like miał, he had) and non-masculine plural forms. But for the masculine personal plural forms (when a group of 'we', 'you', or 'they' includes at least one man), the vowel changes to an e. That gives us mieliśmy (we had).
What if the 'we' in the sentence refers to a group of women? Would it still be mieliśmy?
No, it would change to miałyśmy. The e vowel in the past tense of mieć only appears in the masculine personal plural forms. If the group is entirely female, you use the non-masculine personal form, which keeps the a from the stem: my nie miałyśmy czasu.
Why does the sentence use nadzieję in the first half, but czasu in the second half?
This highlights an important Polish rule: the Genitive of negation. In the first half, the verb is affirmative (miał), so its direct object takes the normal Accusative case (nadzieja becomes nadzieję). In the second half, the verb is negated (nie mieliśmy). Whenever a direct object is negated, it must change to the Genitive case, which is why czas becomes czasu.
The English translation says 'and', but the sentence uses a. Why not use i?
While both i and a can translate to 'and', a is used to show a contrast between two subjects or situations. Here, it highlights the difference between what the student had (hope) and what the other group didn't have (time). It works a bit like 'whereas' or 'while' in English.
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