Widzieliśmy jak wychodzą.

Sentence Discussions Polish
#1
English Translation

We saw them leave.

There is this thing with polish, that even though it’s such a logical language – and allows for such a creative yet easy to follow construction of sentences – it has such big ambiguities in specific instances compared to english, or in my native example, european portuguese.

This simple sentence is a perfect study case for this. Allow me to explain myself further:

We saw them leave = Widzieliśmy, jak wychodzą.

We saw how they leave = Widzieliśmy, jak wychodzą.

what is up with this? For such an expansive and minute language such as polish, this still baffles me a bit. Or is there any other way to better differentiate between these two sentences?

#2

Sadly, there isn’t really a way to differentiate between those two without any context.

In the majority of cases, this sentence would be interpreted as “We saw them leave”, but I guess technically you could also say that to mean “We saw how they leave” in some very specific contexts.

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