Cases: What is Nominative or Accusative and when do I use those?

let me start off by saying this is truly the first language I am trying to learn (for real) besides already knowing English. One thing I don't understand is all the cases in Polish. What is Nominative or Accusative and when do I use those declinations over something else?

In general...

Nominative - Subject
Accusative - Direct Object (whom or what)

Cases are a very difficult matter for native English speakers to grasp(Sometimes even native Polish speakers). Basically adjectives, pronouns, nouns etc inflect(meaning the endings of words change) based on the context they are in inside of a sentence.

There are 7 cases in Polish: Nominative = Subject of sentence(To jest mój dom = This is my house), Accusative = Direct object of a sentence(Widzę dziewczynę = I see a girl), Genitive = Case of posession(To jest matka jego przyjaciela = This is his friend's mother) , Locative = Case of location(Byłem w domu = I was in the house/at home), Instrumental = The tool with which an action is done(Jem widelcem = I'm eating with a fork), Dative = Indirect object of a sentence/Recipient(Dam Ci pieniądze jutro = I will give you money tomorrow), and Vocative = Case of calling out a name or addressing somebody/something.(Hej Dziewczyno! = Hey girl!)

Would you recommend trying to learn the grammar aspect of all the cases or just learn as I go when I am there? I am terrible at grammar and have not studied English grammar in like 15 years, I just know English really well.

On a side note I am doing all the Rosetta Stone stuff so that is helping on vocabulary and listening.

Hi,
Davey, thanks for the explanation! It's starting to make sense.

Squirrel, I had this argument with a polish teacher on a course last year. I wanted to be 'made aware' of these cases so that I would be able to reverse engineer the words to find them in a dictionary. She simply refused to explain.

So... roll in the replacement teacher... and she agreed that being able to recognise the most common noun endings was useful so I would be able to work out the most probably nominative (basic noun) to find it in a dictionary. Low and behold, I was suddenly able to locate more words.

My suggestion, be aware of the cases and most common endings but if you're still a basic level in Polish, then learning more words is high priority. Afterall, if you say 'pod stoł' instead of 'pod stołem', people will still understand you. If you say 'pod errrrr' then that's hard to understand.

Hope this helps,

Tony

This seems to be a common way for Polish people to describe cases. I'm not convinced it's a useful method for English speakers.

If you want to make basic communication - don't bother. If you want to write letters and translate things, get studying.

This is how we are taught at school... each case is a response to a specific set of questions...
It was almost like the multiplication table:

Mianownik: Kto? Co?
Dopełniacz: Kogo? Czego?
Celownik: Komu? Czemu?.... (i tak dalej)

However this is for Polish speaker learning Polish grammar...

The word "what" can crop up again and again just with different prepositions, so when it appears on its own, it is ambiguous. I'm fairly used to seeing it put this way, so I am getting used to it, although I learn the cases by knowing ways of actually using them. I hope I'm not just babbling away pointlessly (although I do this a lot).

An example of how to use these cases, that doesn't fit in with this scheme:

Czego szukasz? - "What are you looking for?" rather than "Of what are you looking for?"

However, help is always appreciated.

Technically it does fit with the scheme because certain verbs can govern certain cases and szukać always uses genitive

I decided to go with this plan of action because as it stands now I am still trying to learn vocabulary of nouns and verbs. Hopefully people will understand me even though I use the wrong case sometimes.

Good man. You won't be sorry. I read that most languages in the world do tend to favour using sentences with a subject-verb-object order so in a lot of ways the inflections are a little redundant anyway. As an experiment, try only using the nominative for everything in your sentences and see if your interlocutor gets the drift.

Remember also that in most face to face conversation, the context is very obvious and this will help you a lot.

hello everyone!

im studying polish language also this time. im from Philippines. and wow! cases topic is really confusing. im always confufe to identify the sentence if it's a accusative,etc. im really focusing bout this now...

Polish language is really difficult... should i say "trudne or trudna"?

I thought it was trudny ...

Hello there in the Philippines... welcome to the forum :)