Yup, there's more coming up. I'm really glad someone has found this useful.
Sir, in your most interesting overview of the Polish grammar, you seem to "reduce" and thus to underestimate strongly the role of the genitive case in Polish in aspects other than rendering relations of possessiveness between objects.
That was just an introduction. I did in fact notice that I forgot to say that the direct object is put in the genitive case in negative sentences, but thanks for pointing that out. My point was that the use of cases is actually quite logical, and that people needn't be afraid of them. And you have a very good point - the genitive is by far the most important case. In fact, I wrote a bit more about verbs and intend to post about that soon, but I also intend on writing more about declension after I cover verbs.
And, before I start writing about declension again, I went through about a minute of a Polish pop song to get an idea of what cases are used most frequently in typical, casual language. Nominative, the dictionary form, was used 7 times. The accusative case was used 10 times and every time it was identical to the nominative, dictionary form. Genitive was also used 10 times, 4 times to signify the object in place of the accusative. All the other cases put together were used just 4 times. So out of 31 nouns and pronouns, 27 were either in the nominative or genitive forms.
Suffice to say, focusing your efforts on those two forms and just being aware of the others will go a very long way in Polish.
Anyway, I speak from the point of view of a non-native speaker who speaks Polish well enough to pass for a native speaker much of the time, though not always, and even then, my Polish is considered very good. I would like to help give other English speakers who may be struggling the foundations necessary to be able to understand the language and to be able to communicate in it comfortably and effectively, without overloading them with unnecessary complexity that would only stop them from getting off the ground. The highest levels of any language are not acquired by rule-learning, but by daily language use.
To be absolutely honest, I myself didn't actually know that the form was "ustąpić komuś czegoś" instead of "ustąpić komuś coś", so that would most likely belong in a thread called "Polish Language - Advanced concepts." This is most likely since the word isn't used that often, and when it is, it's usually used with "miejsca", and the phonetic difference between that and "miejsce" isn't that great. However, even if I used the grammatically incorrect accusative form in speech, I would still be understood just fine, and, chances are, nobody would notice.
All language learners are going to make mistakes. Not just non-native speakers, but children as well. That's what the whole learning process is about. I can't teach anyone university-level Polish, since I myself haven't reached such an advanced level of proficiency. But I have successfully managed to get a hang of the language, so I can hopefully give some useful insight from an English speaker's perspective.
Okay, so here's part two of my massively simplified, but still quite accurate description of how Polish works. In part three, I will try and deal with declension in more detail. And maybe there will be a part four on some strategies to put it all together and get it into your brain reasonably quick so that it becomes second nature, without getting too frustrated or bored to death.
VERBS IN MORE DETAIL - REDUCING MEMORY LOADOkay, now I'll be assuming you at least have a vague idea of what conjugation is and how it works, even if you can't conjugate a single Polish verb.
So, assuming you'd like to learn how to do this seemingly impossible feat, please don't waste your time staring at conjugation/declension tables. It's not going to help.
In fact, it's going to be counterproductive. Instead of learning lots of new words, you'll have wasted time learning 20 variations of the same word, many of which are hardly ever used, and when push comes to shove, you'll be none the wiser, because your head is filled with way too much unnecessary information.
Use what you already know instead of relearning the same thing over and over again. Don't try to learn everything at once. Just learn the most common and useful forms, and you can cross the bridge when you come to it as far as the less frequent forms are concerned. That said, there really aren't that many forms to learn, so if you're feeling really dedicated, you can try and learn it all in one go, but it's only through frequent use that they actually start to mean anything to you on a subconscious level, so my advice is to take it easy.
Now, let me introduce you to some secrets of this seemingly impossible irregular conjugation system. The problem is that grammarians want you to be able to work out all the possible forms from knowing just the infinitive. That might work in Italian, but it doesn't work in Polish. So by trying to fit the Polish language into an Italian-shaped hole, they end up introducing millions of incomprehensible rules to take into account historical sound changes from over a thousand years ago. And still fail and end up with a million exceptions.
Remembering irregular Polish verbs the easy wayI'm going to make a very bold proposition here:
There is an easy way. An
easier way, anyway. In fact, despite the irregularities, it's probably easier than Italian or Spanish, because you don't need to know half as many suffixes.
To know how to make all the tenses of "pisać", all you really need to know is:
pisać - to be writing
napisać - to write
on pisze - he is writing
If a verb is very irregular, such as "prać", all you need to know to be able to conjugate it perfectly is:
prać - to be washing clothes
wyprać - to wash clothes
on pierze - he is washing clothes
ja piorę - I am washing clothes
Another seemingly horrible verb is "jechać." But you can make all the possible tenses perfectly knowing just this:
jechać - to be going (in a vehicle), to ride, to drive
pojechać - to go (in a vehicle)
on jedzie - he is going (in a vehicle)
ja jadę - I am going (in a vehicle)
Apart from just a few exceptions, most notably with the word, "iść" and derivatives, the past and conditional tenses in Polish are very, very regular, so you can easily derive them from the infinitives. Where it is irregular, learning one or two extra words will help you derive the rest. But generally, the past tenses are quite nice and friendly and regular.
Yes. Regular. In Polish. I said it!This doesn't mean
easy, but it means easi
er. Learning a new language is always hard. As children, we take to it naturally and start using it without thinking why things are the way they are. But as adults, we find it difficult to accept new information uncritically, so seeing the logic in it helps a lot. I refer to the Romance languages a lot because I have in fact learnt Spanish. I could probably write a whole 'nother post about the easy way to remember Spanish verb endings, but that's not what this one is about. When it comes to verbs, though, I can honestly say that I believe that Polish is
less taxing in terms of how much you have to remember.
The nonpast conjugation can seem like a pain, but here's how it works:
Much of the time, you only need to know the "he/she/it" form to make all the other forms. They just take the suffix you would expect.
Now, a quick recap of what the suffixes are:
The suffix for "I" is
ę or
mThe suffix for "you" is
szThe suffix for "we" is
myThe suffix for "you (pl.) is
cieThe suffix for "they" is
ąHere's an example for pisać:
The "he/she/it" form is: pisze
so:
pisze = he/she/it is writing
+ę = piszę = I am writing
+sz = piszesz = you are writing
+my = piszemy = we are writing
+cie = piszecie = you (pl.) are writing
+ą = piszą = they are writing
And the past tense is very regular. Whereas the non-past is based on the "he/she/it" form, the past is based on the infinitive.
pisać = to be writing
From this, you can easily derive the "he", "she", "it" and "they" forms:
pisał = he was writing
pisała = she was writing
pisało = it was writing
pisali = they were writing
pisały = they (non-masculine) were writing
And for the rest just add the same endings as in "jestem, jesteś, etc."
+em = pisałem = I was writing
+eś = pisałeś = you were writing
+śmy = pisaliśmy = we were writing
+ście = pisaliście = you (pl.) were writing
That's all the hard work done. If you need a different tense, all you need is to add the prefix
na- or the word
będę to the past form.
You only need to bother learning the "I" form separately if it's different, in which case the "they" form will be different too. Even then, it's going to be similar, perhaps lacking palatisation in the form of the letter 'i' or something. And the difference between the "I" and "they" forms is almost always just swapping the "ę" for an "ą" or the "m" for a "ją".
Let's try the non-past of jechać knowing the "I" and "he/she/it" forms alone:
The "he/she/it" form is: jedzie
so:
jedzie = he/she/it is going
+sz = jedziesz = you are going
+my = jedziemy = we are going
+cie = jedziecie = you (pl.) are going
and the "I" form is: jadę
so:
jadę = I am going
+ą = jadą = they are going
In fact, I'm having a hard time trying to find exceptions to the above patterns. One I can think of is "ja dam" and "oni dadzą". But exceptions really aren't that common, and if they're there, they're very minor.
I know this might still seem complicated, but hopefully, knowing this will help you reduce your memory load by a factor of between 5 and 5 billion. And if you already know a few words, you'll notice that, for example, "prać" follows the exact same pattern as "brać," reducing your memory load still further. It really doesn't help knowing that it uses conjugation form 14d(iii) or whatever grammarians might have called it. If you already know "prać", you know "brać", and once you get the hang of the most common verbs, all the rest work pretty much by analogy.
Don't worry if you make a mistake and say "piszem" instead of "piszę". Chances are, nobody will even notice.
Feel free to use personal pronounsPolish is technically a pro-drop language, much like Spanish or Italian. That means that since the verb already says who's doing what, you don't have to repeat the fact with an additional pronoun that says "I" or "you" or whatever.
But Polish doesn't really care if you do repeat it or not. It can be used for emphasis, but it doesn't have to be. You'll often hear Poles saying "ja mam" instead of "mam" simply because it actually doesn't at all matter which form you use.
If it makes it easier for you, don't let anyone dissuade you from using personal pronouns just like you would in English. It sounds quite alright, especially in speech. Poles do it all the time, why shouldn't you? The importance of whether you say "ja muszę iść" or just "muszę iść" in terms of intelligibility is about on the same level as how you pronounce "neither" in English. I say "neether". Maybe you say "nyther". It doesn't matter. Either one is fine.
And if you make a mistake and say "ja bierzę" instead of "ja biorę", you will be understood just fine thanks to the pronoun. It might also help cement the patterns
ja goes with -ę/-m, ty goes with -sz, my goes with -my, wy goes with -cie and
oni goes with -ą in your mind. Once that happens, you'll probably find you drop the pronoun naturally in the same places that Poles do, to save a syllable out of pure laziness.
Long words aren't really long wordsThe conditional word, "wyobrazilibyśmy" (we would imagine) might look scary. But it can also be written "my byśmy wyobrazili," because "byśmy" is the part that actually means "we would", and joining it to the preceding verb is just a spelling convention. It's still pronounced as though "wyobrazili" were written separately, and in fact the stress falls on the penultimate syllable of "wyobra
zili" in "wyobra
zilibyśmy".
In fact, "wyobrazilibyśmy" is actually three words. "Wyobrazili" ("imagined"), "by" ("would") and "śmy" (the last part of "jesteśmy," "we are"). So it's like writing wewouldimagine in English. Yes, it's long. But the information it contains isn't overly complex.
If you also notice that "obraz" means "image" and "wyobrazić" means "to imagine", it might make even more sense.
NB: you say "wyobraziłbym
sobie" (because "I would imagine" works a bit like saying something like, "I would make a mental image
for myself")
Reflexive verbs are just the way you smile in PolishNow, if you know French, German, Spanish or Italian, reflexive verbs will make perfect sense to you. If you only know English, they might seem a bit odd, but the way they work is actually quite easy.
"się" means "oneself" or "one another". That's it. It's actually just the short form of the word "siebie," although the two are not interchangeable (though perhaps in the distant past they were).
Where in English you might say something like, "I am interested in something," Polish might say, "interesuję się czymś" (I interest myself with something). Americans say they "wait in line". Brits say they "queue up". It's the same thing.
Similarly, whereas in English you might say, "I'm having a bath," a Pole will say, "kąpię się" (I am bathing myself).
Sometimes, it's not so clear-cut. Poles say, "uśmiecham się". "I smile myself"? What? Well, if you like, you can think of it as "I make myself smile" or "I en-smile-en myself." Americans and Brits smile. Poles ensmilen themselves. Same thing.
Poles might also say, "czuję się źle" (I feel bad). In Spanish, you would also use a reflexive construction, "me siento mal." Translated literally into English, it means, "I feel myself bad." What can I say? That's just the way they say it.
That's itI think that's enough about verbs. If you can get your head around this much, you will be the king or queen of conjugation and you will be able to impress your friends with the seeming ease that you are able to master what they themselves consider to be the incomprehensible idiosyncracies of their own language. Hopefully, this has been helpful. Next time, I'll try and cover declension in a little bit more detail.
WARNING: ADVANCED INFORMATIONNow, I hesitate to include this, but for the sake of completeness, this might be useful if you're already on your way to becoming a conjugation master.
While 95% of the time, the Polish past tense is regular or almost regular and at most, you might have a slight change in vowel (widzieć - widział) which no beginner needs to worry about and is something that's best left to be picked up naturally, there is some method in the madness for the other 5%, so if you're tackling these more difficult ones, this might help:
-nąć often behaves just like a regular verb ending in -ć would: (zgadnąć - zgadł, zgadła, zgadło, zgadli, zgadły)
-ść behaves just like a regular verb ending in -dć or -tć would: (kraść - kradł, kradła, kradło, kradli, kradły)
-c behaves just like a regular verb ending in -gć or -kć would: (piec - piekł, piekła, piekło, piekli, piekły)