The distinction between “this” and “that” is more or less clear in English. Or at least I’ve always thought so. But as one of our readers has pointed out, while “this” is easier to grasp when translated into a foreign language, things can get really goofy with “that”.
Fortunately, I can assure you that people who learn English have exactly the same problem, but in the opposite direction. And just look at “that” in the previous sentence. It’s a different “that” from when talking about “that house is nice”.
See? In English “that” is used just about everywhere and for just about everything.
Translating all those “thats” into Polish can be a real pain. In fact, I’ve been scratching my head and debating how to do it in the least painful way for the past couple of days.
