Breakdown of Nie rozumieliśmy, kiedy on mówił po polsku.
on
he / it (m)
nie
no / not
rozumieć
to understand
mówić
to speak
kiedy
when
po polsku
in Polish (of speaking, reading, understanding)
Questions & Answers about Nie rozumieliśmy, kiedy on mówił po polsku.
Why is there an 'e' in rozumieliśmy when the 'he' form is rozumiał?
The verb rozumieć (to understand) changes its vowel in the past tense. For most forms, the 'e' from the dictionary form changes to an 'a' (like on rozumiał, ona rozumiała). However, for the masculine personal plural (a group of 'we' or 'they' that includes at least one man), the original 'e' comes back. So, we use the stem rozumieli and add the 'we' ending -śmy.
Does the verb mówił also change its stem vowel in the plural like rozumieliśmy does?
No. The e/a vowel change only happens in verbs that end in -eć, like rozumieć, mieć, or wiedzieć. Because mówić (to speak) ends in -ić, its stem vowel stays exactly the same in all past tense forms: mówił, mówiła, mówili, and so on.
Both verbs are in the past tense. How do we know to translate mówił as 'was speaking' instead of 'spoke'?
The verb mówić is an imperfective verb, which means it describes an ongoing, continuous, or repeated action. Because the context here is an ongoing background action, the best English translation is 'was speaking.' If the sentence meant he spoke once and finished, Polish would use the perfective verb powiedział.
Why do we use po polsku here instead of just the normal word for Polish (polski)?
In Polish, when you describe speaking a language, you use the preposition po followed by a special adverb form ending in -ku. It literally translates to something like 'in the Polish way.' You will use this pattern for all languages, such as mówić po angielsku (to speak English) or mówić po hiszpańsku (to speak Spanish).
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