Word
Nie spieszmy się. Odpocznijmy tutaj.
Meaning
Let's not hurry. Let's rest here.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Nie spieszmy się. Odpocznijmy tutaj.
nie
no / not
tutaj
here
spieszyć się
to hurry
odpocząć
to rest (perfective)
Questions & Answers about Nie spieszmy się. Odpocznijmy tutaj.
How do you form the "let's" commands spieszmy and odpocznijmy?
In Polish, "let's do something" is built using the regular command form (the imperative) for a single person, plus the ending -my. For example, the command "hurry up!" to one person is spiesz się. To say "let's hurry", you just add -my to get spieszmy się. Similarly, "rest!" is odpocznij, so "let's rest" is odpocznijmy.
Why is there an -ij- in the middle of odpocznijmy?
The base verb is odpocząć (to rest), and its stem is odpoczn-. If we just added the ending directly to the stem, we would get "odpocznmy", which is a very heavy cluster of consonants and hard to say! Whenever a verb stem ends in a tricky consonant cluster, Polish inserts -ij- or -y- to make it pronounceable. This gives us the base command odpocznij, to which we add -my for "let's".
Why does the first command use an imperfective verb (spieszyć się) but the second uses a perfective verb (odpocząć)?
This is a very common rule for commands in Polish! When telling someone NOT to do something, you almost always use the imperfective verb, because you want them to stop an ongoing action or not do it at all (so we use nie spieszmy się). But when telling someone TO do a single, completed action, you use the perfective verb (like odpocznijmy).
Could the word go somewhere else, like ?