Breakdown of Bieganie jest tak samo męczące jak pływanie.
być
to be
męczący
tiring
tak samo jak
the same as (tak samo... jak...)
pływanie
swimming
Questions & Answers about Bieganie jest tak samo męczące jak pływanie.
How do we form the verbal nouns bieganie and pływanie used in this sentence?
Both come from imperfective verbs ending in -ać: biegać (to run) and pływać (to swim). For most verbs with this ending, you simply drop the final -ć and add the suffix -nie. This creates a noun that describes the activity itself, exactly like English gerunds ending in -ing (running, swimming).
What gender are verbal nouns like bieganie, and how does that affect the sentence?
All verbal nouns ending in -nie and -cie are neuter. Because bieganie is the subject of the sentence (in the nominative case), any adjective describing it must be in the neuter nominative form. That is why we use męczące instead of the masculine dictionary form męczący.
The word męczące translates to tiring. How is this word formed?
It is an active adjectival participle, which just means it is an adjective created from a verb. It comes from the verb męczyć (to tire or exhaust). By replacing the verb ending with -ący, -ąca, or -ące, you get a word describing what something is doing. Here it uses the neuter ending -ące to match bieganie.
How does the structure tak samo ... jak work for comparisons?