Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]

My favorite Polish textbook is the grammar heavy Teach Yourself Polish by M. Corbridge-Patkaniowska.

This is the original book and not the audio-lingual mish mash which is not related at all.

będąc = being, as in

Being tired, I decided to go to bed.

Będąc zmęczony, postanowiłem pójść spać.

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]


An active verb in which the subject does something (as opposed to experiences something or is in a state). Now that I look it at a second time I realize I made a stupid, stupid mistake. That should be 'all imperfective verbs'.


A verb which can have an object. The difference between transitive and intransitive verbs in English has largely disappeared but it's important in Polish.

In English the verb 'to exist' is intransitive because it has a subject but no object.
The verb 'to create' however is transitive becuase it has a subject and an object
Tom (subject) created (verb) a new kind of bagel (object).


My point was that the criteria for verbs having active or passive participles is different

imperfective verbs have active pariciples (perfective verbs don't)

transitive verbs have passive participles (intransitive verbs don't)


The woman standing on the street corner is my aunt.

here 'standing' would be translated as stojąca, it's an adjective that modifies a noun (woman).


Seeing my aunt sell herself on the street, I almost had a heart attack.

here 'seeing' is an adverbial participle, it doesn't modify a noun but it's part of subordinate clause.


My aunt was arrested for selling herself on the street.

here 'arrested' is a passive participle desribing the subject of a passive sentence.

In Polish this is more widely used as a normal adjective than it is in English. Often passive participles that act as adjectives are placed after the noun in English.

The book written by Edgar Allan Poe. (written here is a passive participle).

Does that help any?

Language / I need advice - how long does it take to learn Polish? [70]

I knew one woman who arrived in Poland after a (not very good) one semester course and after six months was taking (informal) medical advice over the phone. Her grammar hurt the ears but she got by.

Also remember that learning a language is a process, not an event. Just keep plugging away (feel free to take breaks to let it sink in too).

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]

Though etymologically powinien is a plain vanilla adjective....

On the other hand, synchronically, it's probably the only real modal verb in modern Polish. The verbs that correspond semantically with modals in English móc, musieć are just plain verbs in Polish (i'm from the school that says you can't establish categories by semantics alone you need a structural reason too). The impersonal modal particles (trzeba, wolno, można) aren't really verbs.

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]

The past perfect, (pluperfect, plusquamperfect it's all the same thing) is so rarely used that it can be safely ignored.
I'm not even sure if it was ever a real part of the language or created to facilitate literal translation from French and/or as a useless complication to make sentences and ideas seem more complex than they really are.

I've only heard it a time or two (once on TV by an old author who hadn't lived in Poland for decades).

Basically it's just like the regular past tense you just add an extra by-ł/ła/ło/-li/-ły (which agrees with the subject in number and gender.

making up some (not very good) examples:

Kupił był bilet do Argentyny dom zanim zniknął. He had bought the ticket to Argentina before he disappeared.

Essentially since Poland doesn't have sequence of tenses it's useless and redundant.

"Powinieneś był to zrobić"

Is not pluperfect.

Basically powinien is a weird construction, unlike anything else in Polish.

Basically it's the adjective powinien (roughly, something like 'obliged') plus the verb 'to be'. But in the present tense in the first and second person the 'jest' part of the verb is omitted and the endings are added to the adjective.

Technically from a historical point of view, the present tense of the verb być in the first and second person was two words fused into one (or more accurately the first and second person forms were reduced to almost nothing and attached to whatever was convenient. Then people got the bright idea of attaching them to third person singular jest.

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]

Polish works completely differently than English.

First, each and every verb is marked as belonging to one of two aspect classes (it's slightly more complicated but let's stick to basics).

Imperfective - indicate states and ongoing actions

Perfective - indicate finished (in the past or future) actions or changes of states

Imperfective verbs have

a past tense (the past marker is - ł, to which gender, number and person markers can be added

a present tense - simple form of the verb with person/number endings

future tense - formed with an auxiliary (which has person/number endings) and either the infinite or the third person forms of the past tense.

Perfective verbs have

a past tense (like that of imperfective verbs)

a future tense (which looks just like the present tense of imperfective verbs)

There are two participles:

All active verbs have an adjective present participle (ending in -ący) and ad adverbial one (ending in -ąc)

Transitive verbs have a passive participle (ending in -any, -(i)ony))

Technically there is no 'past particple' as such as intransitive verbs don't have one.

And there are no perfect tenses (like 'have gone', 'had done') in Polish.

News / "Poles want cut on foreign workers" - (in Poland obviously) [47]


In a way, not always a very nice way.

It also lessens the credibility of Brits complaining about an influx of foreigners. If you stick your nose into other countries' business for hundreds of years don't whine if the rest of the world returns the favor.

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]

Fortunately ... unlike English past participles are among the most regular parts of Polish, so making a big effort to learn them (as opposed to the pretty simple rules for forming them) is digging a hole in the wrong area.

Language / Present tense, past tense, past participle in polish [34]


Why 'unfortunately'???? English doesn't represent any ideal state for languages.

It is true that past tense/past participle is a useless heuristic for learning Polish verbs.

Love / Different Attitudes of women born in Poland towards relationships? [20]


I wouldn't be so sure about that. It's not only the reasonably well-adjusted and functioning people that are influenced by culture. Damaged goods get damaged in ways that are influenced by culture (and react to their damage in culturally influenced ways).

From what you've written I have a vague idea about what might be at the root of this (a very tenative guess but it fits with what you've described). You can send a personal message if you're interested (and want a less public airing).

Love / Different Attitudes of women born in Poland towards relationships? [20]

In sum total the kinds of attitudes people have in any culture are the same.

What's different is the percentages. Majority opinions in Poland about lots of aspects of relationships is different from those of most English speaking countries.

One thing to understand. Polish people are hardly the most romantically inclined in the world. There are hardly any examples of love stories in Polish literature and the courtship phase is often glossed over even in movies and soap operas and the mass importation of Harlequin-style romance novels is hardly 20 years old. Also, until comparitively recently divorce was generally avoided.

One result of all this is a set of attitudes that are more common in Poland than in the UK. And a lot of this good. Overall Polish women have more realistic attitudes towards marriage than anglophone women who get caught up in Cinderella or Sex in the City fantasies. And despite the importance of weddings I've never heard of a Polish bridezilla yay! horray!).

At other times the different attitudes cause people to butt heads like mountain goats.

Often Anglophones enter into relationships without much thought given to the future. The idea is to see how the relationship evolves and/or leads. Generally a woman will get definite ideas about where it's going before the man but often enough neither is thinking of the long term at the beginning.

A larger percentage of Polish women want to know where the relationship is headed more quickly (relax, they're not into talking about the relationship and micro-analysing your behavior but they want to know where they stand very early on). Basically out the outset a relationship is categorized as probably leading to marriage and kids or a fling.

If it's a well-probably-get-married relationship you don't have to start planning the wedding today or tomorrow but the idea is there and she'll expect you to start acting like a husband before you actually get hitched (like letting her in on your financial planning, women control household budgets in Poland). This isn't much of a problem as she'll probably do a better job than you would. On the other hand, regularly scheduled (or frequent) nights-out-with-the-boys (or girls) are not the norm in Poland and drunk-boyfriend behavior is not seen as funny, cute or endearing.

If it's a fling, she'll drop you in a heartbeat (no matter what she's said) at the prospect of a better relationship (or another more interesting fling). A psycho-drama involving reported hospital stays or disapproving parents may be created for your benefit to avoid a confrontation (and or keep the road back to you clear if she has second thoughts).

Language / When to use: Znać/Wiedzieć & lub/albo [23]

Basically the difference is less semantic and more grammatical than similar pairs in other languages.

znać takes a nominal object (noun or pronoun)

znam to miasto (I know that city)
znam odpowiedzieć (I know the answer)
Znam go (I know him)

wiedzieć takes a sentential object (introduced by że)

wiem, że nie masz czasu (I know you don't have time)
wiem, że mieli przyjść (I know they were supposed to come)

or no object but a prepositional phrase

wiem o tym (I know (about it))

also wiedzieć can be followed by an infinitive clause with an embedded question marker (kto, co, jak, gdzie etc)

wiem co robić (I know what to do)
wiem jak to robić (I know how to do that)

but it can't be followed by a bare infinitive or infinitive clause, then it's replaced by umieć

*wiem robić (*used by linguists to mark incorrect usage)

umiem to robić (I know (how) to do that)
umiem pływać (I know how to swim)

compare:

nie znam odpowiedzi (I don't know the answer)

nie wiem co odpowiedzieć (I don't know what/how to answer)

nie umiem odpowiedzieć (I don't know how to answer)

UK, Ireland / Immigration and Identity: how to keep Polish identity when living in UK. [30]


I am not understanding this. How are Brits and Poles one ethnic group?

Language / Word order and swearing in Polish [44]


SeanBM FTW! That's pretty much the way 12 year olds talk now most of the time in Poland.
I'm old enough that kids talking that way is just .... sad.

The tragedy is that Poland used to have a complex and powerful system of swearing and it was possible to actually shock people with original and creative combinations.

But unimaginative overuse of a few words (kurwa, jebany, pierdolic, chuj etc) have degraded the process and robbed the words of any real power. Now they just sound cheap and ugly, rather like Soviet made shoes.

Love / Should a marriage proposal to a partner from Poland be done in private or public? [27]

Doubtfullove,

Some background you may or may not know.

1. Poland is not a romance novel culture, it's hard for me to imagine many Polish men coming up with romantic proposal scenarios on their own. Unless your guy is really far from the mean, he may be coming up with all of this because he thinks it's something western women want. You might try to let him down gently and be glad he's willing to go so far out of his cultural background to try to make you happy.

2. Polish people believe in marriage as the natural result of certain kinds of relationships. Have you discussed children? Chances are he wants them and sees marriage as a step toward that. If you don't want kids (or are unsure) don't marry him, most Polish men want kids inside a marriage and not in an experimental kind of relationship.

One option: You'll say yes and be officially engaged, but you'll both agree to not set a date for at least a year (or you'll both agree that he won't bring up that topic, it's up to you to decide when to get around to it).

Love / Should a marriage proposal to a partner from Poland be done in private or public? [27]

I perceive two probabilities:

1. You're angry that the proposal scenario isn't matching your teenage proposal fantasies. If that's your biggest gripe then grow up. Being married is _all_ about letting go of youthful fantasies.

My suggestion: Say 'yes' and make the best of it or say 'no' and wait for some guy who _can_ read your mind and create wish-fulfillment scenarios for you (good luck on that one, let us know how it works out).

2. You don't want to marry him but don't know why.

My suggestion: Say 'no' (it is an option, you realize). Your intuition/subconscious may be working ahead of your conscious mind and decided you won't work as a married couple. If that's the case, then go with your gut feelings and spare the both of you a lot of misery.

Life / WHY ARE POLISH CALENDARS SKEWED? [42]

Saturday and Sunday are the week _end_.
If Sunday's supposed to be the first day, then why isn't Saturday/Sunday called the weekend/beginning?

I've always thought of Monday as the first day of the week and Sunday as the last.

Life / Bollywood in Poland [32]

I'm not Polish and Bollywood is hardly my favorite.

If we're talking about Indian movies, I'm much more interested in movies from the South; movies in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam (not as many in Kannada AFAICT though one of my favorite art movies form India was in Kannada).

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]

IIRC the was some general reformation of standard written Polish in the interwar period.

One change was to replace the old instrumental plural in -y with -ami which is what everbody said (-y hangs on in a couple of set expressions like innymi słowy, or przed laty) I'm not sure what other changes were (except that the most contentious issue were spellings like Maryja vs Maria). IINM the church usage lost, but was probably more linguistically accurate.

Language / Use of A/An/The ...... Articles [186]

"He is not 'a' man but 'the' man"

maybe

"To nie jakiś tam gość, tylko (prawdziwy) gość!" ???

To be fair that's not an example of real article usage in English, but an idiom facilitated by articles.

The short answer is that definiteness is just not an important category in Polish (like countability) any more than animacy or aspect are categories in English.

Love / Foreign Men and Polish Girls for Citizenship [59]

move to a country that wants you?

Language / DOES POLISH LACK A WORD FOR STEPSISTER & STEPBROTHER? [15]


I'm sure that the people in the families in question appreciate your kind remarks.

It might not be the same traditionally but przybrany/a seems to be the expression used in translating from English so the semantics behind the word are probably changing in light of that.

Polonia / Poles in Norway? Polish community in Oslo. [43]

I can read a little Norwegian (Bokmål) and actually find written Swedish easier than Danish overall.
I think it's because I classify Danish like Nynorsk - (they both make me wish they were Bokmål instead) while Swedish is different enough that it doesn't push those buttons.

Language / Free and accurate Online Polish-English / English-Polish translator? [49]


Would you like a pony too?

Language / The Plural of Zloty? [46]


I'm not Polish, but I've lived here a long time, speak Polish pretty well and I've always said and written zloties and have every intention of not changing.

Informally (from other English speakers living in Poland over the years) I've also heard zlots, zees and .... zits.

Love / Different relationship... can it work with Pakistani girl and Polish guy? [129]


In 'your' culture your sexuality and your life are the property of your male relatives who can trade it or sell it (or dispose of it) as they see fit. "Honour" is a mighty fancy word used to cover a very ugly reality. Don't kid yourself.

You might want to dump Pakistani culture and embrace British/Western culture where you have to make your own important life decisions instead of being used as a commodity for the prestige of male relatives. If they won't accept your Polish boyfriend it's because they've never accepted you. Again, face the facts. I might sound harsh but sometimes that's what's called for.

If this Polish man means something to you, you need to be able disappear and say goodbye to your culture forever. You might think your family isn't capable of violence against you but there are lots of dead Asian girls in the UK that thought the same thing.

USA, Canada / Polish Citizen, US legal resident, but no Polish Passport... [67]


Are you sure you're using the right addresses? These are liable to change with no notification. Call/write other consulates in the US and they might light a fire under the Chicago office or give you up to date info.

UK, Ireland / Britain... What the Poles did for us. [444]


Poor little noimmigration (who thinks the mass murder of Polish people is _funny_!!!!!) doesn't have anyone safe to look down on. Poor wittoo him. What is him gonna doo now?

Language / Poland in different languages? [74]

As a native speaker of English, I'd say Hungarian word order is harder than Polish.

Polish word order follows two basic ideas (it's more complicated than that but I'm simplifying on purpose to make a point)

1. Subject Verb Object (if all are present and the whole sentence is new information)
2. Older information - Newer information (you start with older information and end with newer information.

And crucially departures from idiomatic word order are no big deal.

Hungarian is just more complicated in terms of word order.

1. Hungarian is mixed in terms of basic word order, sometimes it's Subject Object Verb and other times Subject Verb Object.
2. Hungarian also uses the older information followed by new information pattern but this is less important than
3. focus (non-existant in Polish) the element just before the personal verb has a special importance and receives the main stress and depending on what's focused this can cause ripples throughout the rest of the sentence.

Departures from idiomatic word order are a bigger deal than in Polish IME.

On the other hand case suffixes are a major pain in Polish (gender, number, kind of stem blah, blah blah) while they're super easy in Hungarian.

Language / Poland in different languages? [74]


Thanks, I couldn't remember for sure and just wanted some form olvas with a prefix (technically called a co-verb in English) and assumed meg was always safe to use.


Well the t is a past tense marker in some sense, but ... if you pull if off as a separate morpheme then you have to account for different allomorphs (basically t or-ta and ott with elolvas) and the past tense verb endings are different from the present tense endings. The first person singular endings in the present are -ok and -om while in the past they're -am. A more purely agglutinative structure would have the past tense marker and then the person markers (which wouldn't have different forms in different tenses so the forms would be elolvastok, elolvastom). That's why I said that past tense in Hungarian isn't so agglutinative.

Also I found it _much_ easier to think of separate endings rather than separate conjugations. That is (for my own learning purposes) I found a conjugation chart like the following to be much easier to remember and use.

olvasok
olvasom
olvaslak

olvasol
olvasod

olvas
olvassa

etc etc (my hungarian is very rusty and I did that from memory so there might be a mistake or several)

Then I remember that the first ending for each person is used when there's no object or an indefinite object, the second is used for a definite object (as defined in Hungarian) and the third for a second person object.

That was 10 times easier to use (for me) than 'two conjugations' that don't even include all the endings (-lak/-lek isn't included in either).