Learn how to ask "When?"
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| Cześć! Jestem Joanna. Hi! I’m Joanna. |
| Welcome to PolishPod101.com’s “Polski w 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Polish. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "Where" questions in Polish. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions with the word "When?" Let’s start! |
| Imagine your roommate is going on vacation and you want to know when he’s coming back. You will ask him: |
| Kiedy wracasz? |
| [slowly] Kiedy wracasz? |
| So let’s break down this question: |
| First we had: |
| kiedy, which is the basic translation of "When" in Polish. And then wracasz,which is the verb "to come back", “to go back”wracać. Of course you remember that in Polish we usually skip the pronoun,so the verb wracać is conjugated here for the 2nd person. |
| So, all together it’s Kiedy wracasz? |
| "When are you coming back?" |
| So in Polish, "When" is generally translated as the word Kiedy. For example, if you want to ask "When is your birthday?" Kiedy masz urodziny? Please note that we used here the verb mieć instead of być, like in English. So in Polish we say “When do you have birthday?” |
| Let’s have a look at another example: |
| How can you say "When did you arrive?" |
| It is really simple since it is exactly the same pattern: Kiedy przyjechałeś? |
| First we have Kiedy, which is "When" |
| The second word is przyjechałeś which is the past participle of the verb przyjechać, “to arrive” |
| If you want to ask a question about duration as in "Since when have you been a teacher?" Then you will have to say Od kiedy jesteś nauczycielem? |
| Here too, it’s exactly the same as in English, because "since" is od. So od kiedy means "Since when?" |
| Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Polish. It is very easy as you can translate it directly. It becomes: Do kiedy? |
| So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay here?" It will be Do kiedy tu zostajesz? |
| But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can even be more specific by asking about the year, the date or the hour. |
| For example, you can ask: |
| "Which day is better for you?" will be Który dzień ci bardziej pasuje? |
| "What time can we meet?" O której godzinie możemy się spotkać? |
| Now it’s time for Joanna’s Insights. |
| To ask how long an action has been taking place in Polish, we *could* say od kiedy -- "from when", but there is another very simple way to do it -- the phrase "How long" in Polish. |
| First, say the question word "jak", then długo, and then the verb. Jak długo czekasz? “How long have you been waiting?” It’s very easy, isn’t it? |
| Today we asked “when” questions but in next lesson we’ll learn how to ask questions with “who”. Don’t miss it! |
| See you in the next Polski w 3 minuty! |
| Do zobaczyska! |
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