Word
Dziecko ma gorączkę od wczoraj.
Meaning
The child has had a fever since yesterday.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Dziecko ma gorączkę od wczoraj.
dziecko
child
wczoraj
yesterday
od
from
mieć gorączkę
to have a fever
Questions & Answers about Dziecko ma gorączkę od wczoraj.
The English translation says 'has had', so why does the Polish sentence use the present tense verb ma (has)?
In Polish, if a situation started in the past and is still happening right now, you use the present tense along with a word like od (since). English uses the present perfect ('has had') for this, which makes it a very common trap for English speakers!
Why is the word for fever spelled gorączkę here instead of its dictionary form gorączka?
The verb mieć (to have) takes a direct object, which means the noun must be in the accusative case. For feminine nouns that end in -a like gorączka, the ending changes to -ę in the accusative case.
Does the preposition od always mean 'since'?
Od basically means 'from'. However, when you use it with a point in time to show when an ongoing action started, it translates to 'since' in English. So od wczoraj literally means 'from yesterday', but we say 'since yesterday'.
Prepositions like od usually make the next word change its ending. Why didn't wczoraj change?
Wczoraj is an adverb, meaning it is a fixed word that never changes its shape. Even though od normally forces the following noun into the genitive case, adverbs like wczoraj do not decline and are immune to case changes.