Grammar Cases - would "revisiting" english grammar help with learning?

This may seem like a daft question, but is a thought that I have just had.

Would brushing up on English grammar rules help at all with learning Polish grammar rules?

I refer mostly to noun cases as that is something that I am really struggling to get my head around. Obviously, I know that it can't teach me the actual Polish to use, but was wondering could it help me with working out whether something should be genitive or accusative etc?

I remember learning all about grammar at school (English, not Polish!), but that was a long time ago and is something that I hadn't thought about since, until I started to learn Polish.

Dziękuję za pomoc!

Emma

Yes. It's almost necessary to know basic linguistic definitions. Maybe you remember it from school.
Basic linguistic knowledge is almost the same in all languages (eg. difference between adverb and adjective).


Not very much. But in a few ways it can help you. For example the accusative case (without preposition) is usually used when you would have a direct object in English. The dative case (without preposition) is usually used when you would have an indirect object in English.

Genitive case (without prep.) is often used in the same situations as in English:
- Magda's cat = Kot Magdy
- My brother's car = Samochód mojego brata

But apart from this it will not help you very much with the cases. But with other things.

I was having a moment earlier when I asked the question, and have realised the answer since. If I had learnt about cases at school, I'm sure that I wouldn't be having so much trouble with learning Polish cases now.

I think that I just have lots of practise ahead of me! :D

Find a good Polish book. It's not so difficult as it looks if you learn it in a structural way.
Somethings like this, but check it, there might be an error or two. Note that certain prepositions can take different cases depending on the situation, but you will learn this later.

Prepositions

The object associated with the prep. will take the following case.

genitive
od
do
z
bez
dla
koło
obok

dative
dzięki
ku

instrumental
z
między
nad
przed
pod
za

locative
na
o
w
po
przy

accusative
przez
na
o
w
po

Thanks SzwedwPolsce I do have a couple of books, one of them is Oscar Swans "Verbs and Essentials of Grammar" and it does have some good examples.

I think it's probably because I'm learning by myself, so I'm not going about it in a very structured way...and I'm trying to run before I can walk ;) ;) ;)

IMO absolutely... Articles, pronouns, prepositions, case: the whole bit.

I often say that I didn't realize how little I knew about my native tongue until I started to learn another language.

My thoughts exactly, which is why I asked the question in the first place! Although I don't think there are any "magic" English rules that will help me to make sense of noun cases in Polish. Just when I think I know which case a sentence belongs to, I find that I'm wrong because of another rule. I guess it's just a lot of practice, and I always knew that it wouldn't be easy.