I understand it is for posseions ie; " bob's ball " and with use with the word " of " .
I nee to understand which letters are replaced with the new (genitive) letters and how many are there and which words in the majority or genitive sentences are effected .
does it work like .. male ( consonant ) nouns have a set of genitive replacing letters ? and female ( a ) and neut ( i , o , um ) or .
i do not understand all the fancy language lingo , so please keep answers super simple . I have looked on many site/youtube etc and i have ended up here hoping you can help me
I only want to know about genitive for now and how i can start to learn it . Thank you for any help
'Bob's ball' would be 'piłka Boba'. With male names you generally add 'a'. 'Anna's ball' would be 'piłka Anny' a > y (female names). That's only a rough guide, but I hope it helps.
with the neuter gender you replace -o ending with -a ending - to dziecko (this child) - piłka tego dziecka (this child's ball)
the neuter words ending in -um don't change the word form following cases (in singular) - it's always muzeum no matter the case (in singular - in plural they change word form following cases)
For me it's easier to know the endings by looking at the noun ending table. It'll give you the endings of all of the nouns in the different cases. You can just take a quick look whenever you need an ending. Hope this helps.
Not the Michael Swan of "Practical English Usage" fame - but Prof. Swan of Pittsburgh university has it nailed if you want to learn Polish for free from a grammar perspective............
I don't - I preferred the useful Hurra Po Polsku eclectic course and BW Mazur's excellent "Colloquial Polish. There must be lots of other threads on here.........
so male , female and neut nouns have set genitive replacing letters generally . thats good .
so are all male names male nouns is there any male names ending in A or I or O etc and if so do they get the male genitive replacement letter regardless or must they then have the female or neut replacement genitive ending ?
also do you have to use change or alter any other words /pronouns in the genitive or is it just nouns ? i noticed there were diferent versions of " who " and " what" depending on which case but i dont understand why .
and i also see you have put - piłka ( tego ) dziecka - i havnt seen this word yest is this a genitive version of a word ? if so how many others is there ?
1. (M.) mianownik (nominative case) - Kto? Co? chłopiec Kto to? To ten chłopiec 2. (D.) dopełniacz (genitive case) - Kogo? Czego? chłopca Kogo nie ma? Nie ma tego chłopca 3. (C.) celownik - (dative case)Komu? Czemu? chłopcu Komu damy piłkę? Piłkę damy temu chłopcu 4. (B.) biernik (accusative case)- Kogo? Co? chłopca Kogo widzę? Widzę tego chłopca 5. (N.) narzędnik (ablative case )- Kim? Czym? chłopcem Z kim się bawię? Bawię się z tym chłopcem 6. (Ms.) miejscownik (locative case)- O kim? O czym? o chłopcu O kim mówię? Mówię o tym chłopcu 7. (W) wołacz (vocative case) - (O!) chłopcze! O kim wołam? Wołam o Tobie chłopcze
Indy people make those lists because they believe it's easiest to learn. There are -y and -i for feminine words. -a and -u for masculine and -a or -ęcia for neutral words. Look at declension tables and see endings for yourself . There are many exceptions in Polish sometimes words are masculine but have feminine declension like mężczyzna or the endings are according to the rules but word changes like pies- psa.
Those different qestions that all mostly mean who and what - different cases have different questions. Polish people learn declensions with them.
Coming buck to names - nobody knows how to declense foreign names (Other than teachers , profession al proof-readers and University students).
Polish female names always end with "a" but Genitive can be either with -i or -y Kasia- Kasi, Maria-Marii, Maja-Mai Anka-Anki Agnieszka-Agnieszki Marta-Marty, Anna-Anny, Genowefa-Genowefy
male forms end with consonants and you add -a Paweł-Pawła Piotr-Piotra Michał-Michała Grześ-Grzesia
There are some male nicknames ending with o or -u , then you replace them with "A" Staś-Stasia Stasio-Stasia Jaś-Jasia Jasio-Jasia Miś-Misia Misiu-Misia
Also you asked what is affected
To jest książka tego nowego ucznia This is a book of this(the) new student to jest książka tej znanej pisarki Marii Konopnickiej This is a book of this (the) famous writer Maria Konopnicka all the bolded words are in genitive.
Also in Polish the Genitive question is kogo? czego? while direct translation for whose? is czyj? czyja? czyje? ( depending on the gender of the owned thing)
That is because genitive is not only for possessions. Common use is for negations , and the question polish kids learn for genitive is "who is not there" "kogo nie ma"
so are all male names male nouns is there any male names ending in A or I or O etc
kolega, mężczyzna, stażysta, masażysta, satanista - plenty of masculine nouns end with A; not so sure about O or I, can not recall any at the moment
so do they get the male genitive replacement letter
the ones that end with A get -i or -y endings: kolegi, mężczyzny, stażysty, masażysty
do you have to use change or alter any other words /pronouns in the genitive or is it just nouns
yes, you have to change other words in a sentence too
there were diferent versions of " who " and " what" depending on which case but i dont understand why
these are test questions for native speakers, so that we can determine which case was used in a phrase
piłka ( tego ) dziecka - i havnt seen this word yest is this a genitive version of a word
yes, it's genitive of 'this': ten kot - tego kota(G.); ta kotka - tej kotki(G.), to kocię - tego kocięcia(G.)
how many others is there
7 in singular form and 7 in plural (for each gender), for 'ten': it's 12 different forms for 42 possibilities (most forms are repetitive)
masculine nouns in genitive usually get -a and -u endings: słoń - słonia, pan - pana, chłopiec - chłopca; teatr - teatru, weekend - weekendu, ból - bólu, śmiech - śmiechu
ok thank you for taking the time to explain , you have helped.
i have looked on the slavic site many times and many others , but half of the words they are using i do not understand , so i certainly can not use it to understand another language , i am trying , i am not wasting your time . i am just not getting how these question/tables are surpose to help , ? i do not know how i am surpsoe to implement them into building a sentence in my head and choosing the right ending of a word by thinking through different versions of Who/what ? some one telling me here that male nouns get an (A) when in the genitive and female get an I or Y .. that helps , that sinks in , i can use that
,2. (D.) dopełniacz (genitive case) - Kogo? Czego? chłopca Kogo nie ma? Nie ma tego chłopca- this ... not so much
but not many of these tables , books , explain things in a way i can use , hell even rosetta doesnt actually explain anything you just guess to start with . at least that sinks in though , i think i will start level 2 , try that hurra po polsku thing and see where im at after that .
Do not give up, remember to take one step at the time, it will come with practise, you will see. One day you will just feel it, that is how I can explain it- you need to start feeling it. Good luck my friend :)
The trouble with rosetta from what I read at this site, is that it is not designed especially for Slavic languages, so it introduces difficult stuff in random moments, and it doesn't explain much.
Tables can help you look up words and find endings. I checked that polish.slavic.pitt.edu/polish/ has a dictionary with noun and verb forms shown.
Merged: Spelling changes in different cases - Is it possible to teach yourself and learn the correct changes?
I have read about the spelling changes of nouns in different cases and that there are some patterns you can follow. Such as taking the stem of a word, seeing if it ends in a hard or soft consonant and adding certain endings. But then reading there are irregular patterns to these changes poses a problem. Therefore my question is, how can you tell if the spelling changes you make in different cases are correct if in a dictionary it only displays the nominative form and also because of irregular changes too?
I presume the only way is to speak to fluent Polish speakers and hope that when I make mistakes I may be corrected or learn the correct spelling from listening. But if anyone knows of anything different please let me know.
I may be corrected or learn the correct spelling from listening
I speak several languages, and in all cases, reading newspapers and books gave the best results, at least in my case. If one have good photographic memory it works like a charm, Now all this must be mixed up with listening (any TV program will do) and force yourself to use new "variations of any given word in conversation(s)"
if you are corrected about pronunciation, so be it. The best way to learn, is the hard way.
At the moment I'm just learning the rules, don't care if there are exceptions and I get them wrong. I'm sure the more exposure to the language we get, the more likely we are to get the endings right.
Merged: Foreigners learning Polish and exceptions(noun endings)
Hi, I'm learning Polish and having difficulty learning all of the exceptions regarding noun endings. Just wondering how other people learning Polish feel about this? Do you just learn the standard 'u' is the ending for 'non-alive' nouns for dopełniacz or do you try to learn all the exceptions? The book I'm using only gives the standard 'u' ending and doesn't mention exceptions so I think I'll just learn those and guess the rest.
My guess is that you have bigger fish to fry than a relative subtlety like this at the moment, particularly in terms of vocabulary. When you've read your twentieth or thirtieth book in Polish, you will have a better feel for this. Until then, it's pretty much icing on the cake.
To be honest with you, I don't think I'll ever have read thirty books in Polish. I have to look up every second word in the book I'm reading at the moment so I get through between two to four pages a day so it'll probably take me my whole life to finish one book in Polish unfortunately.
Do you just learn the standard 'u' is the ending for 'non-alive' nouns for dopełniacz or do you try to learn all the exceptions?
The -u ending in the dopełniacz of a non-animate masculine noun is common, but the -a ending is quite frequent.
I) Nie słyszałem żadnego głos-u; Nie widziałem samochod-u.
II) Nie mam komputer-a; Nie używam flamastr-a; Nie używam ołówk-a. Nie kupiłem telewizor-a; Nie wyciągałem portfel-a z kieszeni; Nie mogłem otworzyć słoik-a.
I have to look up every second word in the book I'm reading at the moment so I get through between two to four pages a day so it'll probably take me my whole life to finish one book in Polish unfortunately.
Keep at it, look up every word, and the pace will eventually pick up. Learning vocabulary is 99% of the work of learning any language. Grammar is only 1% of the work, even with a language like Polish.
