Word order in the Polish language?

Hi! I'm really interested in learning Polish, but I have no idea where to start. Does the language use any kind of word order rules? Like in German it goes Time - Manner - Place. Any good books or websites anyone can recommend would be much appreciated. x

Try: Colloquial Polish The Complete Course for Beginners by Boleslaw W Mazur, published by Routledge.

Thanks very much Sion. x

There’s some excellent reference material at polish-translators.com/grammar. The tables of noun- and adjective-declensions will be useful in due course but they will be very daunting at first sight.

I would suggest that you start by concentrating on the difference in pronunciation between the Polish consonants ś ć ź dź and sz cz ż dż. When you first hear them, the first four will probably sound like the second four, but to Polish speakers they are entirely different! What you should avoid is pronouncing either set like the English sh ch zh (as in pleasure) and j as in jam. Get this right at the beginning and you will save yourself trouble later.

I attach a diagram of the tongue position for ś ć ź dź.

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The very best book for learning Polish and I think that it is still in print though you may have to order it is called Beginning Polish Volume One by Alexander M. Schenker. You may be able to get one on e-bay or Amazon. com. Watch out for the Colloquial Polish Book as it has been reprinted in a different format and I always find the old ones better. If you want to learn vocabulary, then get hold of the Berlitz travel guides-the vocabulary is very fine all divided up into various sections. I used this little book and got an A grade in G.C.S.E. Polish.

I've noticed a few things about word order in Polish.

Dative case:

I am allowing you to smoke.
Pozwalam Ci palić.
Ja Ci pozwala palić.

He gave me cigarettes.
Dał mi papierosy.
On mi dał papierosy.

Accusitive case:

Kocham cie.
Bardzo cie kocham. (I'm sure we all like to hear that).

That's just one that I spotted. I assume that the same change in word order is fairly typical when adding extra words. If cie were to be the first word, should it be ciebie instead? Would that mean something more like "It is you I love" rather than someone else?

I also noticed that in asking questions, if using polite address (pan/pani), if the word czy is dropped, then the title (pan/pani) swaps places with the verb or something like that.

Czy pani lubi osły?
Lubi pani osły?

I'm not so sure about that last example because with all the Poles I speak to, I use informal address (as it seems standard amongst work colleagues, friends and lovers!)

The last example is correct.

Word order in Polish is not fixed like in English but changes in world order often have impact on the meaning (most often it is a matter of nuance but sometimes the meaning would be completely different - good example are some adjectives in front of or behind a noun.

Czy pani lubi osły? means completely the same as Czy lubi pani osły? (intonation often plays role though, putting emphasis there or somewhere else)

But there are ways of saying things that are more correct than others.

For one summer barbeque at work, we had a big green flowerpot (about 1500 litres) filled with cold water to keep the bottles of beer cool in the tropical English sunshine. A Polish workmate insisted that it was a "green big pot". I can see the logic of putting the adjectives in such an order, but for a language with supposedly free(ish) word order, things do seem to be a little more set than descriptions of the Polish language would suggest.

English word order is "fixed" in that the order of words has a grammatical function. That doesn't mean there aren't different ways of ordering words in a sentence without changing the meaning even slightly. (Admittedly, certain words have to be added or dropped to make a change in word order work - the English equivalent to the Polish dative case being an example. "I give the donkey some grass" / "I give some grass to the donkey.")

"Ona mi pozwala" versus "Pozwala mi" or "Ona pozwala" vary in that of whom is being spoken may or may not need to be mentioned, but if one were to say "Ona pozwala mi" rather than "Ona mi pozwala", would it sound slightly awkward or less correct, or would it just be a change in nuance?

it depends on intonation - if there is no accentual emphasis on 'mi' in 'Ona pozwala mi' then there is no difference in meaning (but most Poles would say 'Ona mi pozwala' because of the rythm and melody of the language - the sentence is more fluent in this case)

- if there is considerable stress on the mi then the nuance is - She allows me/lets me (not you). The word order in this case also allows the emphasis to be better pronounced.

PS. I don't think this is in any way unique to Polish, intonation and emphasis/stress have impact on the meaning in many languages (including English I think)

Sorry to but in but i would like to know what this means, i tryed translate it but i think the last word is spelt in correctly

jak to się mówi-nieszczęścia chodzą parami, czasem i czwórkami

Thanks

It’s spelt correctly, nothing wrong with this.


As they say, misfortunes come in pairs, sometimes quadrupled. (like in Latin quadrigae - team of four).