Numbers in Polish - two different ways?

Im looking for some help. I come from a family of 4 kids, 3 girls and a boy. We want to get tattoos with Polish words to reflect our heritage. Could you please help me with some words? We always say we are one of four, two of four three of four and four of four. How would you say that or 1, 2, 3, 4 or 1st 2nd 3rd 4th?

Ive heard two ways to say 2, dwa and sekunda, which is right?

So each one will be identified by their number?

numeral

jeden - pierwszy, pierwsza, pierwsze
dwa - drugi, druga, drigie
trzy - trzeci, trzecia, trzecie
cztery - czwarty, czwarta, czwarte


dwa is correct

sekunda means "a second" as a unit of time

of course "drugie" correcting z_darius's typo.

the forms z_darius gave you (pierwszy, pierwsza, pierwsze for first, trzeci, trzecia, trzecie for third etc.) are male/female/neuter (in that order), so if you use them, don't mix up things.

But I still think the idea of a tattoo with a name (in a polonized version, if such exists) instead of the number would be better. Concentration camps victims had numbers tattooed by the nazis on their forearms, so bad associations.

5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th... 132nd, 133rd, 134th...

Merged: Help With numbers such as 2-ma & 7-em

OK. I'm translating a journal into English, and I'm running into a numbering system that I'm completely unaware of. Examples:
2-giej
2-ma
4-ch
7-em
12-tej
17-tym

Does anyone have any hints?

Thanks,
Rich

I don't get this one but the rest are either...


something like 2nd instead of second


or short versions, so 7-em instead of siedem (seven)

Thanks, Grzegorz, for your input. I kinda thought 2-giej meant 2nd. 7-em I should have guessed, but didn't have a clue. As for 2-ma, Googling it gives a whole bunch of sites where it appears, mostly for catalogs and apartment rentals (usually used when describing the number of rooms in a flat). An example of it appearing in a catalog is: "3 częściowy z 2-ma parami spodni". I also saw it in a schedule of tolls. The -ma extension was tacked onto the number (e.g., 2, 3, 4) for the number of axles for the vehicle.

Thanks again for your input, as I can get on a little further with my project.

Rich

drugiej - 2nd (feminine, singular, dative)


dwiema, dwoma - two (instrumental)


czterech - 4 (masculine, accusative)


no idea


dwunastej - 12th (feminine, singular, locative)


siedemnastym - 17th (masculine, instrumental)

These are simply numerals with grammatical suffixes. In fact they shouldn't be spelled tat way, the official version is that you should just write a number and a dot but sometimes people still spell it that way.

(Yeah, we inflect numerals by case, gender and, for ordinals, even number)

Switezianka, thank you very much. This was very helpful, and answered a lot of my questions about numbers used in this journal. This was written in 1934, and, as a guess, this manner of representing numbers may have been more common then. This now makes for a much more readable text.

Rich

Why have I only learnt to count in about one and a half grammatical cases?

połtora... why don't us English folk have a word for one and a half?

Maybe for the same reason as why we say "half a dozen" instead of six.
There may be more reasons.
Could be as many as three quarters of a dozen reasons.

Indeed, your avatar has changed. More minimalist now!

This was my 1st (1y / 1szy / 1wszy...) ever avatar, uploaded over a year ago. I like to change it round every so often. It's called "Osioł in Winter".

Yeah it's about time I changed mine. The current one doesn't fit with my hard-man image.

You're right. It's an old-fashioned way of representing inflected numerals. Nowadays it's considered a mistake.

If it's so old, 7-em might mean 'siódmem', which is an archaic form of 'siódmym' = 7th (masculine, singular, instrumental).

Switezianka, thanks for the additional clarification. So far, 7 is a better fit than 7th, but I may have to keep in mind the alternative possibility.

Rich

Or maybe it was "siedmiorgiem". I can't explain grammar in English so I give you an example:
Rodzice z siedmiorgiem dzieci.
Parents with 7 children.

Thanks for the input, Kioko. Your example illustrates exactly what you are saying. Remember, your English is far, far superior than my Polish :-)

Rich

Merged: DO POLISH NUMERALS DRIVE YOU CRAZY?

Numerals have got to be one of the most involved and complicated areas of Polish. Even educated native speakers are known to hesitate a bit when they come to numbers in oblique cases.

For instance: She want to town with 56 children.
Pojechała do miasta z 56.......
(is pięćdzisiąt sześciorgiem dzieci right?)
Imagine someone having to enumerate in short order 42 students, 22 girls, 81 pupils, five priests, 18 preschoolers, 23 married couples and 49 OAPS in the genetive, dative, instrumental or locative.....

I'll wager no native speaker of Polish can just rattle this off without some forethought and hesitation.

56 is a really hard one, even for me...
Due to this site: http : / / poradnia.pwn.pl/lista.php?id=8719
"pięćdziesiąt sześciorgiem" is not correct , you can say "pięćdziesięcioma sześciorgiem" or even "pięćdziesięciu sześciorgiem" but "pięćdziesięciorgiem sześciorgiem dzieci" is the best one. Although those forms sounds strange because they are hard to spell so rarely used in Poland. I rather would say "Pojechała do miasta, zabrała ze sobą pięćdziesiąt sześć dzieci" or "Pojechała do miasta wraz z pięćdziesięcioma sześcioma dziećmi". Usually people use "sześciorgiem" only when they want to say 6.

sorry for my bad English :)

that's also not correct.


that is correct however.

I totally agree.
Why?

Because nowhere does anywhere seem to have the slightest niclination to teach anyone anything about counting in any way other than:
jeden, dwa, trzy...


Why do people fear just putting a simple link to a webpage? Surely it doesn't break any laws!

I never thought of it but yeah, guess Polish people just like making things complicated.

I inherited a Welsh-English dictionary from my grandfather. One of its appendices consists of a list of numbers in both masculine and feminine. How useful is that? I have a Polish-English dictionary that doesn't have anything about numbers, and gives no indication of the grammatical gender of nouns or anything about how verbs are declined.


That is the way it seems sometimes.

You suggest there is no such word ? ;]


In fact it is (since I'm not registered user) ;p

I've been here 2 long (4 crying out loud)!

I fought the law and the law 1.

btw, there was a thread about it, a few months ago, I think we had some problems with establishing how to write (in letters) or say "with 1256 [etc.] people" (and similar).

I would say "z tysiącem dwieście pięćdziesięcioma sześcioma ludźmi", the same phrase with "dwustoma" is not correct, "dwustoma" is not used in many-worded numerals. The next form that may be heard is "z tysiącem dwustu pięćdziesięcioma sześcioma ludźmi" it is the most popular one I think, however I'm not sure if this is fully correct :]

Polish people have a huge problem with saying actual year:
we say "mamy dwutysięczny ósmy rok" or "rok dwa tysiące osiem przyniósł straty" while correct form is only "dwa tysiące ósmy", "rok dwutysięczny" = "year 2000".