Optimal word order in: Czy dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?

Czy dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?

Is this the optimal word order? Or at least a good word order?

Yes and Yes.

Do you do this just to make the rest of us non-nationals living in Poland look bad? :)

because your level of Polish is making me look bad ;p

And then you even have the cheek to do it all in English, not your native tongue!

You're a good guy SzwedwPolsce, I hope I get to buy you a beer one day, if you ever come o Krakow or Zakopane, let me know.

Even native speakers look bad compared to him :D I also would like to buy him a beer :D Not only because of his linguistic skills but because I agree with almost everything he says :D

He could do a free, drunken "Tour de Pologne" :D

It is nice to have him on PF, it makes a nice change from the load mouths like me :)

I think it could be free,drunken "Round the World" tour :D Remember that Polish ppl are everywhere :D
It's really nice to have him on PF.Every time I think I won't be able to learn Russian I'm looking at something he wrote in Polish and my mood is better :D

Yeah both correct. It sounds like something the mother could ask her daughter. In casual conversation with friends you would probably say something more like "jak było wczoraj?" "jak się wczoraj bawiłaś?" than asking "Czy dobrze.." And I have to say I heard "dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?" more often than the version with "czy" :)

Thanks everyone!

And it's difficult to say no to a beer. ;)


Sooner or later I will most likely be there. I will tell you. :)

In everyday spoken Polish, like when you are talking to your friend face to face, we used to drop "Czy" and we say "Dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?" adding "Czy" at the beginning of the sentence is more like a formal language, when you are talking to your boss/employee/teacher/older person etc.

Let me tell you something general about order in the Polish sentence in general. We have a few rules which are strict but the most important is to remember that the position a word in the Polish sentence is much more free than in English one. In English the position defines a function of the word in the sentence. We have endings in Polish which set words free. Never mind where you put the word in the sentence. Nominative is a subject other cases express object.

In English:
Cesar killed Brutus. and Brutus killed Cesar are not the same.

In Polish
Brutus zabił Cezara. and Cezara zabił Brutus mean the same.

That is why we can use position in the sentence to express something more. And we do it. We put more important in the particular context pieces of information earlier and less important later.

That is why all combinations are correct.

Czy dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?
Czy wczoraj się dobrze bawiłaś?
Czy bawiłaś się dobrze wczoraj?

Choose what fits to your context depending on what you really mean.

I can confirm what MarcinPL said about “czy”.

Do you think this option sounds as natural as the other ones?

The first option is the one you're most likely to stumble upon but I can imagine situations where you can hear one of the latter or slight variations like:

Hej, a wczoraj się dobrze bawiłaś?


It sounds kind of strange... but not thaaat strange.. it could be used by some people on rare occasions... but you're safe with the first one..

Thanks again.

Det var inget fel på ordföljden i sig, men om meningen inte placeras i ett sammanhang har den en lite FÖR interrogativ ton.

av ditt användarnamn att döma gissar jag på att du talar svenska ;)

Only English is allowed on the forum, Lidl, unless the thread concerns translation.

I'd say 'bawiłaś się dobrze wczoraj?'

I'll see what I can do for you on the other threads.

Sorry, Just thought that the author of the thread probably knew swedish :)

It don't sound natural, just stay with "dobrze się wczoraj bawiłaś?"

Lidtjugend,

Could you honestly guess from his post that he's a Swedish native speaker?
I presume you learned Polish for both professional as well as personal reasons and am only inquiring since I too learned Polish in adulthood, am also fluent in Swedish, German along with a few other languages:-)

Iovrigt onskar jag en Glad Paask och hoppas att du hor av dig snart igen!!

His forum-nick tipped me off - "SzwedwPolsce" = Swede in Poland ;)
Polish is actually my first language since both my parents are poles and I grew up speaking it. But I've been living in Sweden since birth and nowadays I concider Swedish to be my native language. Learned english and german in school.

Tack detsamma!

Boy oh boy!!! You're a soulmate after my own heart. I grew up here in New York with both German and English at home, learned Swedish, Danish and Dutch later on during college, went on to study Polish and consider myself still one of those lifelong learners!!

MORE POWER TO US, EH??

Tack for svaret!

:-)))

Word order sometimes drives me nuts at the moment!

When I write letters/essays etc, I try to ensure I use the right grammar and vocab, but when it comes to word order, I sometimes feel helpless...

I know everyone says "it doesn't matter", because grammatically speaking it doesn't, but if you wanna proceed past intermediate stage, that's not good enough! It gets me by - and I'm happy for that - but if I ever want to sound like a Polish person, this needs to improve.

I try to read lots of Polish to develop this 'feel' for the language, and therefore just naturally produce sentences in a typically 'Polish' structure, and it works but only to a certain level. I still hear people saying to my sentences "It's right, but it sounds weird."

So it's either: 1) Just practice, practice, practice and rely on future experience to make you 'feel' the right structure (which I have been doing for some time now)

...or 2) See if there are ANY tips/suggestions at all that help me out!

I might return with an example later, when it pops up!

Yeah, you can't learn word order from a book. Except from the most basic things. Like, never place się in the end of a sentence with more than 2 words.

Word order competence requires experience. I feel I get it more and more. But you need to be observant when you read or listen to native speakers.


Nice with bilingual persons. :)

Yeah I guess so, rather like the use of articles in English - a lot relies on feeling derived from experience. I also, like you, feel like I'm feeling it more, so at least that's something!