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  What it means

  “In Warsaw, in Kraków, and in Lwów, whoever has no penny will know hunger.” In the great cities, money is essential — without it you will go hungry. A warning that urban life is unforgiving to the penniless.

  Vocabulary

  • grosz — penny, small coin
  • głód — hunger
  • dowiedzieć się — to find out, to come to know
  • bez — without (+ genitive)

  Grammar note

  'Bez grosza' uses the genitive after 'bez'. 'Głodu się dowie' — 'głodu' is the genitive object of 'dowiedzieć się'.

  Cultural context

  Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) was one of the three great cities of historic Poland. The proverb reflects the economic realities of city life in pre-modern Poland.

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