Genitive case ("nie ma nic" vs "nie ma niczego")

Okay why is it possible to say 'nie ma nic' instead of 'nie ma niczego'? How will I know which to use???
Thanks

I think this 'niczego' has to qualify a noun, but I am a donkey / beginner.

haha I absoloutely despise the genitive case, it's really the only one which has given me problems

I've been feeling a bit better about it since I've had a name to put to it.
I'm still not entirely sure what it is though. It seems to appear in all sorts of odd places.

I am strangely drawn to the -ego ending, and I don't know why.

Grammatically correct is nie ma niczego as niczego is the genitive case of nic. But nie ma nic is used more in everyday language

Upon further questioning, my 'teacher' (who I had distracted from his enjoying facebook dot com) made things even more confusing. Is what I said above okay, or should I edit it down to a humble sigh?

Okay that's a relief, I wanted to make sure I wasn't creating my own grammar rules=P i noticed 'nie ma nic' is used a lot more often though than 'niczego'

I had the same with nie ma nikt and nie ma nikogo. It's like od Sean and od Seana. Od Seana is grammatically correct but the former is also acceptable. Cases come through instinct quite often. I don't know them inside out, that's 4 sure. Mistakes galore.

yeah, i don't see how you guys do it. kudos for sure, for ever trying.

and i'd say about interchangable.. there may be a few cases where one just sounds "better" then the other though.

Niczego comes from the Russian word pronounced nichivo, it has a strong slavonic rout. There is a very useful expression in Polish 'nie mam nic przeciwko temu', I have nothing against it (or that), which is used quite a lot.

no, it doesn't. It is a case form of "nic".
Also, it is pronounced "nich'yevo"


it may, but the word has IE roots, not just Slavonic.
compare:

nothing
nichts
nada

No, it is pronounced nichivO with the stress falling on the big final O! It is not nich'yevo there is certainly no 'y' at all in the word. Stress and pronunciation of Russian is difficult, especially for the Poles who are used to the stress falling on the same spot in each word.

Sorry Michal, but you are wrong. Darius's pronunciation is correct.
Nichevo (not nichivo) or in Russian Ничево

It's not.
I can't see how you can transcribe ничево into nichivO

The apostrophy in my post meant the softening of the "ch", not a syllable stress.


That statement is not true.

Yes, this is right. I can not write in Russian. Well, I probably could if I knew how to change the fonts to Russian. The dictionary word is nichtO (the stress falls on the big final O) from which we derive the genitive nicheevO. There is no other possible variety of either spelling or pronunciation. As I say, Russian phonetics is very interesting and is much more complicated than Polish, which is much more uniform in this regard. There is no je sound in it at all. Sadly, you will simply have to accept my word for it.

Thank you for your offer, but I will pass.

That is your decision. I tried to help but some people simply can not be helped I suppose. I certainly will not lose any sleep over it. Anyway, is this not a polish forum?

You've got that right.

You were also wrong if I remember in writing do swidania as one word when it was two.

n-i-ch-e-v-o

Exactly, with the stress on the final 'o'. Why the big deal anyway?

no biggy. O it is. :)

Yes, that is what I said-with the stress on the final 'o'o. Another use of niczego in Polish is that it expresses something being useless. Coś albo ktoś jest do niczego.

But there is a sound "je" in Polish, it just isn't made into a separate sign. For example words like "jest" or "je" feature this sound, don't they? Pozdro.

Go on - someone tell me something interesting about the Polish genitive.

Yes, but some Poles on this Forum are trying to state that the Russian word 'nicheevo' is not 'niczeevo' but is niczjevo' and that is rubbish. Teraz koniec tego tematu. Wystarczy na dziś!

I'll take your word for it Michał. I'm not learning Russian quite yet.

back to the topic (the question has been already answered, but I'd like to add an explanation for those confused about the lack of the genitive case in the quoted expression). That's what I read a while ago, so I hope I still remember correctly.

the used form is "nie ma nic", because originally (in much older Polish) the word "nic" was a Genitive case of some other word (I forgot the archaic Nominative form), so naturally it was correct in this expression, over the centuries the Genitive form "nic" took over and became the Nominative, with the new Genitive ("niczego"), but the expression "nie ma nic" was enough common to remain unchanged despite the fact that it was no longer in Genetive case.

that's why we rather also say:
nic nie wiem
nic nie powiem
nic nie widziałem (or niczego nie widziałem)
etc.

Here's your daily piece of useless linguistic knowledge of Polish :)

Merged: storm80: Genitive

Hi,
I'm new to this forum, been reading it for a while, thought I'd join in!

I've been studying Polish at evening classes for a few months now and we have just started the genitive case. When talking about quantities the genitive is required. In the example: Proszę butelkę wina, wina takes the genitive but butelka still takes the accusative? why is this???