Common errors in Polish grammar or spelling

If you have any examples of common errors in grammar or spelling that you have come across please let me know and give the correct spellings or grammar also.

Thanks.

This is something that I have come across but I am not sure if it is an error or not, I don't recognise nie like i would niego, niej, nią etc.

odpowiem na nie

Incorrect: Zaczołem

Correct: Zacząłem

it's correct. It's either Acc. of Sing. neuter (ono) or Acc. plural for feminine and neuter (one).
odpowiem na to pytanie - odpowiem na nie
odpowiem na te pytania = odpowiem na nie (same as Sing.)
patrzę na te dziewczyny = patrzę na nie
An alternative form is je: widzę je, zjem je (e.g. to jabłko).

For masculine and mixed gender it's nich or ich: patrzę na nich, widzę ich

Whether you use nie/je, nich/ich depends on the previous sound - it's nie and nich after a consonant and je/ich after a vowel.


Of course. Don't even get me started on this.

Another irritating one is replacing the ending om with ą, as in: Powiedziałam trzem koleżanką.

Thanks Strzyga.

self-correction again, ugh... first, it should be the other way around, and second, nasal vowels seem to be treated like consonants, therefore it's widzę je, not widzę nie.

Sorry Catsoldier.

Thanks Strzyga

oups!

This has nothing to do with consonants/vowels. The actual rule is:

nie/nich (and all n- versions) after prepositions and je/ich otherwise. eg:

widzę ich, widzę je, uszukał go

but

idę do nich, wjechał w nich, zrobił to bez niego

The n- versions can often be chortened to just '-ń'

e.g.:

doń = do niego, do nich ...
weń = w nie, w niego, w nich ...
podeń = pod nie (but nie pod nimi !!!)
etc.

Cinek

The above examples should be adjusted for the case (they way they are, they confound biernik with dopełniacz).
Widzę (kogo? co? - biernik) ich.
Idę do (kogo? czego? - dopełniacz) nich.
---------------------------------------------------
Nie widzę (kogo? czego? - dopełniacz) ich.
Idę do (kogo? czego? - dopełniacz) nich.

Widział (kogo? co? - biernik) je .
Wjechał w (kogo? co? - biernik) nie (not: nich!).

Nie oszukał (kogo? czego? - dopełniacz) go.
Zrobił to bez (kogo? czego? - dopełniacz) niego.

poszłem, weszłem, przyszłem -I can't stand when people speak like that and just heard it on TV.
Very common error among native speakers.

correct of course: poszedłem, wszedłem, przyszedłem

[moved from]

Reka is feminine. But palec is masculine. Obronczka on palec is feminine. But pierscionek is masculine. What a language.
Never again.

It is "obrączka" and not "obronczka", you Kremlin troll.

Too complicated for a lot of people, Polish. English speakers are some of the worse bi- lingual students on earth though.

They are too lazy to learn languages because so many people speak English.

The Dutch are a good example of great language learners.They have no choice as Dutch is spoken by so few people.

Because English is the king of all languages. The rest is garbage. England had probably as many people as any other country in Europe in the year 1000, Poland included. Yet, it is English that became a truly world-wide language, not Polish.

It was interesting that zhole caught my bad spelling of obraczka but didn't bother to explain under what rule from hell that object is feminine but the finger it goes on - palec - is masculine. On a woman! Or pierscionek. The word crazy doesn't describe it.

Of course someone who isn't Polish at all (comme vous) will find Polish to be odd. In reality it's no odder than most European languages and less odd than some.


Peasants dream of glory....

That is funny coming from someone with no sense of humor.
It's double funny since the Polish Consulate in Chicago didn't mind taking a lot of wampum from me to get me a passport. Once I get it in a couple of weeks and post it, are you going to f*** off with that "isn't Polish" or are you going to claim it's a fake?

This is because no genuine Polish person who left Poland in their twenty and something years of age would have ever spelled it like that. But a Russian person and - most likely - a Kremlin troll would do that without slightest hesitation.


This is because Polish got it from its mother language - the Proto-Slavic. And that in turn got from its mother language and so on. But since you did not have a mother, such a concept would be totally strange and incomprehensible to you, so I'd better stop here, mhole.

No s***. No Polish person living in Poland ever made a spelling error. Is that right? Such person always speaks perfect Warsaw-Radio-grade Polish. Is that right? And you never, ever made a spelling error in your native language, either. Is that right? And you would never make an error if you were away for 50+ years and used another language during that period. Is that right?

Not a highly educated engineer as you claimed to be. Already forgotten. To lie, you need a good memory.

Indeed, Ironside is right. Not a highly educated engineer as you claim you are makes this type of mistake, това́рищ Obronczka.

A literary genius wrote: Get rid of this soviet types from politicks, institutions and from any position of authority or power.
Now, who would that be? Hmm...Oh, yeah, the author and the inventor of that new English word is Ironside himself. And it took me only 3 minutes to locate this gem.

Keep going.

Milo, the Dutch certainly learn English with a vengeance, having unfortunately all but turned their backs on German over the last several decades(:-
Whether they necessarily sound wonderful speaking or communicating in English is, well, another story:-)

Back to the thread, as a foreigner, the most common (spelling) error which I tend to make, is often not listening intently enough when a Polish native

pronounces "sc" vs."szcz", e.g. "chrzasc" vs. "chrzaszcz". I realize that the former is correct, however until the last several years or so, I occasionally will

confuse sounds, unless of course the word being spoken is already familiar to me. If the word in question is unknown to me, then I'll probably misspell it, unless

I hear it pronounced distinctly several times!

When I watch Polish DVDs, I will typically take furious notes, if I can, so as I can catch the words in the dialogue, rather like a mini-dictation exercise.

Drives the missus nutsLOL

I'm not sure what you wanted to say, but in my view the latter is correct [chrząszcz] and not the former [chrząść].

To be sure, there exists the verb "chrzęścić" of which the imperative form would be "chrzęść!' as in the following: "Nie chrzęść tak, proszę! Uszy mnie od tego bolą."

to be honest, no other language has ever came close in its domination in scientific field (as English did). misspoken English is a true lingua franca

...and commerce, aviation, music, international meetings and conferences, and everywhere else. Even the ambulances in sh**holes have "AMBULANCE" on them.
You can travel all over the world and communicate in English without ever asking the person in front of you: do you speak English? When I was in Poland last year, I gave up asking that question the day I arrived as long as the person was under thirty.

@Ziemowit,

Just sent you a private mail which I hope explains my confusion.
Apologies if there are any typos:-)