Uczę się polskiego od kilku lat...
Your achievements are outstanding as you've only made some minor mistakes in your text ...
Be warned, though. Headache and discouragement is guaranteed. ;)
As you may have noticed, I always try to put myself in the skin of a non-native speaker when I explain the pecularities of my native Polish language. I would strongly discourage the use of books such as Oscar E. Swan's "Polish Reference Grammar" for learning. They are good for reference, but it's useless to learn declinasions of whatever words from the grammatical tables of such books.
Refering to my post #8, there are at least three different grammatical concepts which are mixed up together in these four or, better say, five patterns illustrating the use of the numeral "two". These are: (a) human male vs. other-than-that gender in the plural, (b) the concept of the genetive in the role of a subject (c) the concept of collective numerals.
- Notice that concept (a) is applied to the verb in all patterns [I, IIa, IV] except the ones in which the subject is in genetive raher than in nominative [IIb, III].
- Concept (b) is applied for the two categories of groups: human male groups (as an alternative way of depicting this category), and groups of both sexes.
The "genetive-for-subject" enforces the verb to give up its expected plural form and take the form of the third person of the singular instead (dwóch mężczyzn idzie/szło, dwoje dzieci ma/miało).
- Concept (c) arises from the overall "philosophy" of the Polish language. Notice that the
language categorises objects in the plural on the basis of whether they are male humans or they are something else (all sorts of women included!). This undoubtedly sexist philosophy finds itself in trouble when it meets mixed groups where human males mix with human females. Will the
męskoosobowy gender suit? Of course, not. Women are not like us, men. Will the
niemęskoosobowy gender do? No, because we, men, are among them, we are not
niemęskoosobowi. Perhaps that's why collective numbers appeared to describe mixed groups. I say, if collective numbers had not been invented, they should have been invented (to the dismay of foreign learners of Polish!). And the verb, the verb too, has adapted itself to these sexist theories, so it behaves as if the group of persons of both sexes
were one neutral entity altogether (dwoje, troje, pięcioro studentów szło = ono szło = to "coś" szło / jakieś "dziwo" szło).
(I hope these explanations will help you better memorise certain principles of Polish thus leaving you with less headache and discouragemet for Christmas!)
