Polish Language - Basic concepts

It's incredible how my English improved after 2 years of using these forums. Maybe lexically I still use very basic words in my writings but I can understand much wider range of words and idioms, all thanks to this forum. It also gave me some grasp which words are commonly used in everyday speech,which is hard to estimate when you read press articles only. I started to form sentences intuitively, and even though I still struggles with some ideas that I try to convey, most I can make without any hassle. At the beginning I had to use dictionary all the time. Now, despite I have it opened on the other fold of my browser, I usually use it to check the spelling; I look for words less often.

That's why I think, pam, you should surmount your fear of the mistakes and try to use your Polish actively on these forums.


How about youtube?

Great :) Where do you live? You could write about your country, what's going on there, about what you're interested in, about films you've watched, your take on world events or whatever.

The problem usually is with finding readers and getting the discussions going. The discussions on those Polish-Russian blogs I've mentioned earlier were usually fuelled by controversy, but maybe there's another way too ;)


Indeed. I have one Russian channel. Not particularly fascinating one ;P but sometimes I'll watch a film or some TV series because the language is usually fairly simple there and I can understand something. Sometimes I even watch the news or some talk-shows O_O xD


Exactly!

Polish words are interdependent

Just as it's a good idea to learn Polish verbs in perfective+imperfective+"he/she/it" triplets, Polish nouns in demonstrative+noun pairs, it's also a good idea to learn Polish prepositions as parts of a prepositional pattern.

Learning "z" means "with" and "na" means "on" complicates things in the long run, because in Polish, words rarely occur in isolation, and must occur as part of a consistent pattern.

1)
"nad tym różowym kapeluszem"
"nad tą czerwoną kurtką"

2)
"od tego żółtego krawatu"
"od tej brązowej trawy"
"od tego niebieskiegoauta"

Learning five template phrases like this might seem like a lot of work, but you can then plug in all the instrumental prepositions into the first pattern and all the genitive ones in the second, and modify, add or delete the nouns and adjectives as you see fit, and most of the time, you'll end up with perfectly formed, grammatically-correct Polish, or very close to it.

Plus, you can make your sentences as rude or weird as you like, since that will make them more memorable. You'll only be using them as templates until they become second nature.

In my opinion, the initial investment of learning a few patterns pays off massively and saves a lot of energy in the long run. It's certainly been indispensible for me.

In my opinion, the initial investment of learning a few patterns pays off massively and saves a lot of energy in the long run. It relieved me of the strain of having to remember to make every single adjective/demonstrative etc. agree with the noun. Instead, I would just plug words in and go, and hey presto, "Wow! Your Polish has really improved recently."

Anyway, I'll try and think of a better way of describing the "Plug & Play" method, but it will probably take me a while.

Hmm, what am I writing... lol Actually, it depends... On one of the blogs I've mentioned at some point the discussions usually had nothing to do with author's original post ;) It was like a stream of consciousness ending with 500 posts or more under one note lol

So it depends what you'd prefer.


That's true. But one has to remember to practice and have some contact with everyday language because studying grammar all the time, especially Polish grammar, can make some people go crazy ;D (at least that's the case with me ;))

But back to topic, cause it looks like I'm hijacking the thread:


You can kill me, but I don't know what "case" is ;O I'm a grammatical heathen ;D

But "zrobiony" is:
zrobiony 'done, made'. past perfective participle of zrobić 'do', 'make'.

From: polish.slavic.pitt.edu/firstyear/lessons/lesson9.pdf

I'm glad to get input and feedback because it helps me find ways of presenting the language in a more understandable manner and also to see what parts others might find confusing in my descriptions.


Exactly. Knowing about cases is technically quite unnecessary, and although I did start off learning Polish grammar the traditional way, I've found it quite unhelpful.

While learning about cases didn't really make me better at Polish, it did make me really good at writing lists of words in different cases:

"Zrobiony" is in the nominative/vocative and possibly accusative case
"Zrobionego" would be genitive and possibly accusative
"Zrobionemu" would be dative
"Zrobionym" would be locative/instrumental

Rapidly losing will to live!


I live in the UK, but i'm sure my Polish wouldn't be good enough to comment on much at all. Believe me when i say my Polish is poor!

I probably know a fair bit of the language, but most of it is a mish mash in my head! No-one has a problem understanding me,but that doesn't mean my Polish is correct

.



Ok, here is a taste of my Polish language skills haha!
I'm sure it's not right, but i'm hoping the negative sentence ' I don't like cold weather ' will be correct because i re-read kcharlies new kiddie rules on Genitive case and applied them.

What i am trying to say is this:
Next month i will be going to Poland, and i hope it won't be too cold.
I don't like cold weather, and i would prefer to go somewhere hot.
I really like Poland, and this will be the fifth time i've been there.

W następny miesiącu, będę jechała do Polski, a mam nadzieję, że to nie będzie za zimno.
Nie lubię zimnej pogody, i wolałabym pójść gdzieś gorąco.
Bardzo lubię Polskę i to będzie piąty raz byłam tam.

pam, you must be perfectionist if you think those sentence are bad. It's better than my English :)


...i mam nadzieję, że nie będzie za zimno.

"a" is used to link contradicting bits, for example: w następnym miesiącu będę jechała do Polski, a jeszcze nie mam biletu.


pojechać not pójść... you don't go to Poland on foot :)


...gdy tam jadę, ...gdy odwiedzam Polskę.

For my ear and taste "...gdy tam jestem" just sounds strange in connection with visiting a country, however I can't tell you way.


We don't really need that. It's all intelligible. Just a few minor mistakes.

*(-) this sign means lack of word

Yes i am, and your English is way better than my Polish.
What you have to remember is that i only wrote a few SIMPLE sentences. Give me something complex and i would struggle.
I might have made minor mistakes, but there were a lot of them!
Ok, taking kcharlies rules into account again, are these sentences correct?

Lubię tą czerwoną torebkę, I like this red bag
Nie lubię tej czerwonej torebkej, I don't like this red bag.

Widziałam wczoraj ten nowy samochód, yesterday i saw this green car
nie widziałam wczoraj tego zielonego samochoda, I didn't see that green car yesterday

Lubię moje nowe biuro, I like my new office
Nie lubię mojej nowego biura, I don't like my new office

Chcę tamte duże banany, I want these big bananas
Nie chcę tych dużych banany, I don't want these big bananas

Pretty sure last example is wrong, but if the others are right, i will be happy!
Thanks

bananów


correct


samochodu.
but note that: nie widziałam wczoraj Marka is correct


correct


torebki


correct

First set of examples. I don't understand what case they're in. Kapeluszem is Instrumental? Czerwoną kurtką to me would be the direct object in the sentence, so why is it not czerwoną kurtkę? ( red coat ).

If i follow these examples, would ' obok tym brązowym słonem, and obok tą nową kurtką' be correct? ( next to this brown elephant, next to this new coat )

Second set of examples. By analogy, are these examples correct?
Bez tego czarnego telewisoru ( without that black television )
Bez tej fioletowej truskawky ( without that purple strawberry)
Bez tego nowego piwa ( without this new beer )

I'm not very hopeful that my examples are correct.

Amazing!

Pam, you are a genius!

Your Polish is already at a very good level. Find some Polish songs you like and translate the lyrics back into English. Polish songs typically use good colloquial language interspersed with nice poetic phrases, and that way, you'll learn Polish patterns of speech, and you'll pick up the correct use of case endings naturally. You'll pick up strategies on how to make sense of Polish, and where the word order is not what you expect, you'll find yourself relying on figuring out the case endings to do it. Plus, there's nothing better than remembering how to use a particular word by humming a tune you like in your head.

Music is a great way to learn a language because you can learn and remember new words relatively painlessly, and it's been massively helpful for me in both Polish and Spanish. It was an excellent way for me to learn Spanish tense suffixes and helped me master the subjunctive tenses, which don't really exist in English, without ever reading a single grammatical explanation of what they are. And it's very satisfying when you come across a song on the radio in a foreign language and can understand every word. After you do this for a good few songs, you'll naturally understand others, and your skills will transfer to spoken and written language too.


czerwoną kurtkę is the direct object
czerwoną kurtką would be the instrumental

Tiny difference.


Excellent. Very close. Using analogy will get you the correct form or close to it, and once you're comfortable with the basic rules, you can try going from very good to perfect. The adjectives are quite regular in Polish. It's just the damn nouns.

For example, Polish has no words with "ky" in it, so Polish people aren't used to pronouncing this syllable, so they use the next best thing. "ki". That's why Polish smooths out "truskawky" to "truskawki" to bring it in line with the Polish accent. But if you forget the slight sound change, you will be understood perfectly.

As for "bez telewizoru," you will in fact have a minority of Polish people say that, because it makes sense and is consistent, but the officially correct form is "telewizora" for no reason other than the fact that it's used much more frequently. In fact, Polish is in a process of change and no consistent ending has yet been settled on for the inanimate masculine form, so the correct form is decided on by majority vote. Until Polish settles on one ending, they will continue sometimes to take 'a' (ser -> sera), sometimes 'u' (długopis -> długopisu), or sometimes, both forms will be considered correct (krawat -> krawatu/krawata).

Because the use is inconsistent, don't worry too much about it, because both are perfectly well understood. While the "majority vote" form is "bez długopisu" (Google lists 50,000 occurrences of the phrase), lots of Polish people will say "bez długopisa" (Google throws up 4000 occurrences of the phrase). Once you get used to hearing and speaking the language, you will naturally use the "majority vote" version.

The forms are fairly well settled for the other cases. The Dative has a few frequently used masculine animate nouns that take -u instead of -owi (Panu, kotu, psu, Bogu, bratu), but in general, it's all fairly consistent.

I guess my point above is that where there is a departure from a consistent rule, native speakers will themselves be prone to using the consistent although technically incorrect version. In fact, Googling "bratowi" throws up results about native speakers being confused about which form is considered correct.

This is not something that a beginner needs to worry too much about to be understood. It's just something that gets ironed out with increasing familiarity and using the language you hear.

A recent mistake I have made is that I said "od wtorka" instead of "od wtorku". I was perfectly well understood, but it was a tell-tale sign that I'm not a native speaker. Googling "od wtorka," though, clearly shows that native speakers slip up too.

BACK TO DECLENSION

Let's get a little perspective of how this works again.

If we count cases, then comparing the various languages, we see that Finnish has 14 grammatical cases and Hungarian has about 22, Polish has 6 plus the vocative, and German has 4.

If we look carefully at English, we can identify 3, although for most words, the nominative and accusative are the same.

The genitive (possessive): dog -> dog's, dogs -> dogs'
The nominative: I, he, she, they
The accusative: me, him, her, them

The way Hungarian and Finnish cases work, however, is not that difficult. They have quite regular suffixes and correspond closely to English prepositions. Polish and German have fewer cases, but whereas, say, in Finnish, the case endings change only slightly to be harmonious with the preceding vowels, Polish and German use different endings depending on the grammatical category of the word, which in Polish is mostly determined by the vowel or consonant the word ends in. In addition, instead of stacking two suffixes, one denoting a plural and the other a case, the distinguishing feature of Polish and German is that they are fusional languages and use a separate suffix to indicate both at the same time.

Finnish:
"this small mug" -> "tämä pieni muki"
"into this small mug" -> "tähän pieneen mukiin"
"in this small mug" -> "tässä pienessä mukissa"
"on this small mug" -> "tällä pienellä mukilla"
"to this small mug" -> "tälle pienelle mukille"
"out of this small mug" -> "tästä pienestä mukista"
"from this small mug" -> "tältä pieneltä mukilta"

Polish has too few cases to do away with prepositions all together, so it uses prepositions and reuses the same case endings. Whereas English can be thought of as a prepositional language and Finnish can be thought of as a postpositional language, Polish is more of a circumpositional language, where a word needs to be both prefixed with a preposition and suffixed with a case ending. The whole prefix-suffix unit carries the meaning of the preposition across, and that's why "na" with the locative suffix means "on" and with the accusative suffix means "onto".

Polish:
"this small mug" -> "ten mały kubek"
"into this small mug" -> "w ten mały kubek"
"in this small mug" -> "w tym małym kubku"
"on this small mug" -> "na tym małym kubku"
"to this small mug" -> "temu małemu kubkowi"
"out of this small mug" -> "z tego małego kubka"
"from this small mug" -> "od tego małego kubka"

Instead of trying to learn this directly and going mad, try translating some Polish back into English. You'll become frustrated with trying to look up the most common patterns over and over again, and you will get a feel for it and make mental shortcuts that will help you identify the patterns and remember them.

Don't try and learn it all at once. That's not the easy way to learn tense suffixes or case endings in any language. Translate Polish text, especially songs, and you will get a hang of the patterns naturally.

Here's a quick reference.

Genitive


Dative


Accusative


Instrumental


Locative


Vocative


As a quick note, English also uses prepositions with the Accusative case, where that is differs from the Nominative.

For example, you say "with me", "with him", "with her" and not "with I", "with he" or "with she".

A common grammatical mistake English speakers make is say "between you and I". In fact, the correct form is "between you and me" because the word "between" takes the English Accusative case.

So all this case madness still exists in English, albeit in a vastly reduced form when compared to German or Polish.

@kcharlie:

One small problem. Post #52. You have given examples of the cases and their usage. It is very useful to know the how the endings of both prepositions and words work, and your examples simplify things greatly.

This is my problem.
Genitive: dla tego małego policjanta
Accusative:na tego małego policjanta
I can't differentiate between the two.
I understand that Genitive indicates possession, no problem understanding ' To papierosy Pawła' and in the negative form ' nie lubię zimnej pogody', but the other 2 examples, i would have put both in the accusative ( direct object )

It's all good learning the patterns, which saves a hell of a lot of time wading through Grammar books, but not if i don't know which case to put a sentence in.

Help!.

'


I agree, but that all depends on what/how fast they are singing!
Sometimes i can't distiguish letters. I spent ages trying to find the Polish word ' gretka', only to find out that it was 'kretka' in the song i'd been listening to. Had to get a Polish friend to listen to it to find out what it was!

For example, Feel's song ' Pokaż na co ci stać' is easy to listen to and understand. Other songs i have are harder.

There is no difference. The Accusative is an odd case in Polish. It only really exists for nouns ending in 'a'. In a way, Polish can be said to have five and a half grammatical cases instead of six.

The only ending you really need to know for the Accusative is 'a' -> 'ą' for adjectives : 'ę' for nouns. If you want to form the affirmative direct object for other words, you put words ending in a consonant that refer to people or animals in the the Genitive case, and leave all other words are unchanged and just use the Nominative. Grammarians will still say that those animals and things are in the Accusative and that it's just its form that is identical to the Gen/Nom, but you and I know better.

Perhaps one happy day, the Accusative will be lost entirely and will be replaced by the Genitive or Nominative. And that will be a happy day indeed for Polish language learners indeed because things will be a lot more consistent. Until that day comes, perhaps in hundreds of years, the rules for how to mark the affirmative direct object will seem very convoluted.

But what you have to do is use the Genitive for the affirmative direct object of masculine people/singular animals, change 'a' to 'ę' for all words ending in 'a', regardless of grammatical gender, and use the Nominative in all other cases. This sounds complicated, but really, instead of trying to work all this out on the fly, it's simpler to remember that for kot, you say, "widzę tego kota" and for długopis, you say, "widzę ten długopis", and leave it at that. That's how Polish people get it right. They don't go through a set of complicated rules to pick the right form. They subconsciously just remember what the word is like in a sentence like "widzę xxxx," and just change the verb. The rules will help you derive the right form for words you haven't come across before, which is great, but once you work it out, just think, "Oh, okay, it's 'widzę ten dźwig'", try to remember it, and you're good to go.


Look at the lyrics. It's so much easier! If you know with 100% accuracy what they are singing, then, you will get used to how those things sound, and in time, you will be able to understand most things fine without the lyrics. Trust me, this is awesome. Even if you still have trouble understanding conversation, it's absolutely amazing to hear a foreign song you've never heard before come on the radio and to be able to work out most of the lyrics. And this doesn't mean you will understand everything all of the time, because even native speakers sometimes can't make things out, and that's why lyrics sites are so popular on the internet.


Now, that's a silly example, but "na tego małego policjanta" is literally "onto that little policeman". The na + accusative form, where "na" means "onto" instead of "on", is actually quite simple. "na" works just like an affirmative verb.

So:

"onto that little policeman" ---------- "I see that little policeman"
"na tego małego policjanta" - "widzę tego małego policjanta"

"onto that little orange" ------------ "I see that little orange"
"na tę małą pomarańczę" - "widzę tę małą pomarańczę"

"onto that little tree" ------ "I see that little tree"
"na to małe drzewo"------ "widzę to małe drzewo"


Okay, re-reading my explanation, I still think I've made it seem more complex than it is.

To simplify it a bit, you are absolutely correct that you should put affirmative sentences in the accusative.

"lubię zimną pogodę" = "I like cold weather"
"nie lubię zimnej pogody" = "I don't like cold weather"

However, for masculine words that refer to people or singular animals, it's actually easier.

The negative and affirmative sentences use the same form. Always. And everywhere. Technically, one is in the genitive and the other is in the accusative, but that's just what grammarians have decided to call it. You could just as easily say that for these situations, you always use the genitive, and it could have conceivably been described that way by grammarians too.

To sum up:

"lubię tego faceta" = "I like this guy"
"nie lubię tego faceta" = "I don't like this guy".
"lubię tego psa"
"nie lubię tego psa"
"lubię tego kota"
"nie lubię tego kota"
"lubię tego nauczyciela"
"nie lubię tego nauczyciela"
"lubię tego policjanta"
"nie lubię tego policjanta"

So it's actually easier for these words, since the form is identical.

Oh good, because i don't usually have a problem with Accusative. I did wonder if i was going nuts, because i really couldn't see too much difference in the sentences

.



The above example of the Genetive is what i need to remember, but this clashes with what you've said above. Here i wouldn't change 'a' to 'ę', as in Accusative, rather use 'y' or 'ej' instead.

There's another slight problem also. In one of my earlier examples, i put purple strawberry into genitive ( fioletowej truskawky ). It should be ' truskawki', which i already knew, but because 'y/ej is specified as female ending changes, this is what i did, despite thinking it just didn't look right.

Yes, because "dla" takes the Genitive and "na" takes the Accusative or Locative. The confusing thing is that the Accusative looks the same as the Genitive/Nominative for all words that don't end with 'a'. But since "dziewczyna" does end in 'a', it changes to 'ę'.


You'll notice that sometimes the basic rule just doesn't look/sound right, and your gut instinct is usually correct. That's often because some combination of consonant+vowel or vowel+vowel is illegal in Polish, so it'll be changed a little bit to fit in with normal pronunciation. But for all intents and purposes, the basic rule gets you very close to the intended form. Since you're already familiar with "truskawki" instead of "truskawky", you'll notice that the same thing happens to all other words ending in -ka. It could just as easily be "wygodnej ławki", "warszawskiej syrenki" and so on. The general rule will make everything you pronounce understandable and even if it doesn't match exactly what the correct form is, it should be very close, so you can then just let nature take its course, and allow increasing familiarity with the language to fill in the gaps for you without much effort.

If you are really not a native speaker and you have learned all these declensions which you present, chapeau bas devant vous! But maybe, after all, you're a "half-native" speaker of Polish?

The reason for the occurrence of two different endings in the dative of masculine gender nouns is that the -u ending was the ancient ending of approximately half of the Polish masculine nouns (those with the old stem in -o) which ending had been replaced by the ending -owi present in the other half of them (those with the old stem in -u) in all except the most frequently used nouns in which the old ending has remained. Although the process had already been accomplished by the Middle Polish period (from 15th/16th to half of 18th century), several nouns such as those you indicate above (also: diabłu, ojcu, księdzu, księciu) have resisted this change until today. Just look at this Polish proverb which has as many as three masculine nouns with this ancient, now irregular, dative ending: Panu Bogu świeczkę a diabłu ogarek.

vs.


Woman, I'm gonna kick you in the butt, seriously! :D

Have you not read what I wrote about my Russian friend who has learned Polish by discussing with Poles on internet blogs? ;)
And you already have some knowledge about the language! You wrote "no-one has a problem understanding me", so what's the problem? By writing notes, comments and reading comments written by Poles you'll imrove your Polish. That's the point :)


At the beginning you probably won't understand a lot, but you can always use a Polish-English translator. At first I was using Polish-Russian translator all the time (I had to learn to "decode" those translations, though lol).

The problem with the "Rozmowy po polsku" section is that it's on an English speaking forum. You're not forced to discuss in Polish, because you'll be always tempted to discuss in English, as it's easier. One of the blogs where my Russian friend is writing is on Polish server and the Cyrillic script doesn't work there. So she had to use Polish, she had no other way :)


It's not, like, perfectly correct, but it's understandable even without your translation in English! :)

I presume you mean something like Google translate Paulina? If so, yeah, I'd definitely have to do some serious decoding! I vary rarely use it, because it's wrong more often than it's right!

Will have a look at rozmowy po polsku tonight. Hope i can understand the thread titles lol

I guess, although I don't use Google translate to be honest :P Someone sent me a Polish-Russian translator (once it was added as a bonus to a Polish newspaper) and I think it's better than any on-line ones I found so far.


Oh... Well, that's not good ;P The really good thing about that Pol-Russ translator is that it shows at the same time different meanings of the same word (in the window on the right). It's really useful:

i668.***************/albums/vv42/owlet215/Pol-Russtranslator_zp s44f97cc2.jpg

It translates "считаю" as "liczę" instead of "uważam" because it's first on the list ;)
After a while I simply remembered that it translates "uważam" as "liczę" and then I... remembered that "считаю" means "uważam" :)

Maybe try to find a translator like this one?


Good luck! :) You can always pm me if you have problems.

I may very well do that Paulina:)


Google translate is sort of similar, it does give you different options for words, but sentences are a bit hit and miss tbh.
It's biggest failing is that it doesn't always take into account the differences between the 2 languages. A sentence in English might make no sense at all in Polish,but Google translate doesn't take this into account.

By gosh, Kcharlie, your "overviews" are about as thorough as Pani Profesor Sadowska's entire first two chapters on Verbs and Verbal Aspects in her Polish Reference Grammar (2012)!!!!

You also seem to have basic grasp of Finnish (though I can't really judge as I'm only an amateur in the Uralic languagesLOL) Impressive, ol' fellow:-)

Even German and the sadistic chaos of Modern Icelandic seem now to pale in comparison before the vaguaries of Polish inflection. Though, aside from few pittling translation typos, you DO indeed seem to demystify much of the alleged mystery surrounding Polish!

Hut ab! Alle Achtung, der Herr!

I know of only one text, written and successfully published, by at least two "half-native" English speakers only, and that is "A Comprehensive Grammar of the the English Language". This hardcover monster of ferciously correct detail is indeed a monument!!

As a native speaker myself, teacher and grammarian of many years, I can only say that Jan Svartvik and his other Swedish-native speaking colleagues put most of the rest of us "linguistic lazybones" to bloody shame:-)