Breakdown of Pielęgniarka daje wodę słabemu mężczyźnie.
mężczyzna
man
woda
water
dawać
to give (imperfective)
pielęgniarka
the nurse
Questions & Answers about Pielęgniarka daje wodę słabemu mężczyźnie.
Why are the words for "weak man" in the Dative case here?
The verb dawać (to give) takes a direct object in the Accusative case for the thing being given (wodę) and an indirect object in the Dative case for the person receiving it (słabemu mężczyźnie).
How do we form the Dative adjective słabemu?
The dictionary form of "weak" is słaby. For masculine and neuter adjectives in the Dative case, we drop the -y or -i and add the ending -emu, giving us słabemu.
Why does mężczyźnie have a feminine-looking ending, and why doesn't it match the adjective?
Even though mężczyzna (man) is grammatically masculine, it ends in -a, so it takes noun endings like a feminine word. The Dative form becomes mężczyźnie (similar to how kobieta becomes kobiecie). However, adjectives always look at the true gender of the person, so the adjective takes the normal masculine Dative ending (-emu). That is why we get the seemingly mismatched słabemu mężczyźnie.
Just to review, why is water written as wodę instead of woda?
Woda is the direct object here because it is the thing being acted upon. Therefore, it takes the Accusative case. For feminine nouns ending in -a, the Accusative ending is -ę.