Profesor nie powiedział mi, czy mam stypendium.
The professor didn't tell me if I have a scholarship.
Breakdown of Profesor nie powiedział mi, czy mam stypendium.
czy
[question particle]
mieć
to have
nie
no / not
mi
to me
powiedzieć
to say (perfective)
profesor
professor
stypendium
scholarship
Questions & Answers about Profesor nie powiedział mi, czy mam stypendium.
Why do we use czy here instead of jeśli for the word 'if'?
In English, we use 'if' for both conditions ('If it rains...') and indirect questions ('He didn't tell me if...'). In Polish, you must use czy (which means 'whether') for indirect yes/no questions like this one. Jeśli is only used for conditional statements.
The first part of the sentence is in the past tense (nie powiedział). Why is mam in the present tense?
Polish keeps the exact same tense that would be used if the person was asking the question directly. The direct question here is in the present tense: Czy mam stypendium? (Do I have a scholarship?). Therefore, the indirect question stays in the present tense: czy mam stypendium. English sometimes shifts this to the past tense ('if I had a scholarship'), but Polish does not.
Why is it mi instead of mnie?
mi is the short form of the pronoun 'me' in the dative case, used here because it is the indirect object of powiedział (told to me). We use the short form mi because it does not carry special emphasis and is not at the very beginning of the sentence.
stypendium is the direct object of the verb mam. Why doesn't its ending change?
stypendium is a neuter noun borrowed from Latin, which you can spot by the -um ending. A special rule for these -um nouns is that they never change their endings anywhere in the singular! So its accusative form (used here as the direct object) is exactly the same as its dictionary form.
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