Perfective vs Imperfective - grammar

Dude, people know what I'm taking about

Past tenses - Imperfective / Perfective

Hi all

I'm new to this forum. I am learning Polish, have a reasonable understanding of the language and its grammar, but the past tense (perfective tense) is causing a headache.

Is it vital to learn 2 form of verbs - the imperfective and perfective forms? For example

I ate my dinner (didn't finish it) - Jadłem moj obiad.
I ate my dinner (finished it all) - Zjadłem moj obiad.

I read the newspaper (first two pages) -Czyałem gazeta
I read the newspaper (all the paper) - Przeczytałem gazeta

It's hard learning verbs and vobacularly, but any advice would be welcome!

Dziękuje bardzo

Czytałem gazetę.
Przeczytałem gazetę.

Czytać should be with accusative of the noun. (But it has nothing to do with perf/imp.).

Remember another rule:

Repeated actions are always imperfect (doesnt matter if they are finished or not).

E.g.
Często czytałem tę gazetę.

The good news:
The future tense is built on the same principles of perf./imp. as the past tense. So it will be easy.

Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong here please? I have 2 perfectives and only one imperfective.

iść, perfective
chodzić, imperfective
pójść, perfective

Idę na zakupy.
Chodziłem po górach.

Pójdę ????????
What is the imperfective version?

będę szedł

and szedłem - past imperfective

is "iść" really perfective? I don't think so. At the moment, I'm really confused. Tricky business.

no iść is clearly imperfective - actually pójść is a perfective from iść (it's a intergrown form of po+iść) - dojść and zajść have been created in the same manner

The perfective/imperfective rules don't really fit verbs of motion - the grammar is different.

From what I can see iść is sometimes perfective wordreference.com/plen/chodzić and sometimes imperfective depending on what you are trying to say wordreference.com/plen/pójść

"Dokąd idziesz?" = Where are you going? [...at this very moment]

"Dokąd pójdziesz?" = Where are you going? [...in the future]

"Szliśmy na spacer." = We went for a walk/stroll. [in general, a normal routine]

"Poszliśmy na spacer. = We went for a walk/stroll. [once, at a specific time]

At least this is how I'VE heard them used by native Polish speakers:-)

I have a similiar problem now with:

jechać, pojechać and jeździć


This seems to be the case:

Can I be bold and ask how the grammar is different? :-)

jechać - be in the process of going (by vehicle) - so imperfective
pojechać - to get somewhere (by vehicle) - perfective (you see the po added to jechać so, any other preposition added would also yield a perfective (like zajechać, dojechać, najechać)

jeździć - this is the frequentative of jechać (meaning to go from time to time, to go regularly or repeatedly) - frequentatives of any verbs (be it perfective or imperfective) are imperfective (buuuuuuut a perfective form can be created of many frequentative forms by again simply adding a preposition (typically po- is a semantically neutrall preposition))

Jechał do Londynu. He was going to London. (was on his way)
Pojechał do Londynu. He went to London.

however when talking about future this is not so clearcut and you can say Jutro jadę do Dublina. I am going to Dublin tomorrow. Jutro pojadę do Dublina. is sort of over the top (although Jutro jadę is rather colloquial and Jutro pojadę is literary)

Thanks everyone, this is going to take some serious thinking :-)

The problem lies here in the adverbial ''codziennie". Some adverbials select for a certain aspect, and this one selects for the imperfective. So if you want to say: "I passed an exam every day", you should use a different adverbial. That said, the problem that you present does not lie in the rule repetitive-imperfective, but rather in the fact that there exist compatibility constraints on adverbial modifications. Quite complicated, and not satisfactorily investigated yet in Slavic linguistcs.

Następnego miesciąca JEŻD-Ę na podróże służbowej do Warszawy. vs. Codziennie JADĘ do Warszawy. / DOJADĘ pociągiem do uniwersytetu na zajęcia.

The first sentence is clearly PERFECTIVE [next month] compared with the second and third sentences IMPERFECTIVE [every day], [to class].

Wrong.
W przyszłym miesiącu jadę do Warszawy na delegację vs Codziennie jeżdŻę do Warszawy./ Dojeżdżam...

Thanks, Lenka! Unfortunately (as per usual), I recognized my typo only AFTER I'd sent itLOL

"Right church, wrong pew", we'd say about that:-)

Plus, I miswrote "....podróżY służbowej.."

^^

Well, the expression" na podróż" (no y here) is a bit akward and not entirely correct so I would rather use delegację. Other possibility is "w podróż służbową"

OR if it's an repetitive future event:
W przyszłym miesiącu będę jeźdźić na delegacje do Warszawy.
(several times in the next month)


It could be for example:
Od przyszłego miesiąca jeżdżę na podróże służbowe do Warszawy.
(I will be regularly going there, starting next month - we don't know for how long)

How do you say - I guess it presents the same problem -

'Every day, on his course he learnt 10 new words.'

Or another one that shows the tense limitations perhaps -

When Jan arrived home he felt someone had been in the house. He touched the TV it was hot so someone had been watching TV. He opened the bedroom door and to his surprise the dog was running on the running machine. He turned it off and sat down to think.

How does past perfect translate into Polish? If you use just a perfect verb in the past in Polish how do you know the action happened before the past event being described rather than after.

Codziennie w kursie on się uczy dziesięć nowych słów na pamięć.

???

@lunacy,
Thanks again! I always reverse "na" instead of (correct!) "w" podróży. Guess it's the German interference once again (AUF rather than IN Dienstreise)...

Codziennie na kursie BUT w podróż służbową.

Gdy Jan dotarł do domu poczuł, że ktoś w nim był.

yes, you can understand the sentence in two different ways - there is an ambiguity here - it can be however diminished by rephrasing the sentence

Będąc już w domu Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam był. Being back home Jan felt somebody had been there.

Polish used to formerly have the like of plusquamperfect (czas zaprzeszły) but it's obsolete now - and it still wouldn't apply to the sentence in question

Since it's in the past (learnt), the corrrect and more natural-sounding (at least to me) sentence would be:
Podczas kursu każdego dnia uczył się dziesięCIU nowych słów/słówek.


Exactly. But you always could add for example the word "wcześniej":)
Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam wcześniej był.

Thanks for this. People always say Polish has easy tenses and only a couple but this isn't true. They have to use complex participle phrases to describe past events occurring before another past event The 2nd example is an example of a perfect participle in English really.


Anyone want to have a go at the above?

Actually, Polish has fewer tenses than English! Its verbal aspects compensate for them, For instance, English has simple past, past progressive (continuous), present perfect and pluperfect. In Polish, it's either "pis(-yw)ać", "napisać" or "popisać", hence eliminating the need for "will have been writing" etc...

OK but Będac - is a imieslow / particple - which must be used in the sentence to make it clear that the 'someone had been there'


So is it clear that 'ktos tam byl' means 'had been'? It seems to me this translates as - 'Being back (sic) home Jan felt somebody was there.'

To be fair, this is pretty clear. But in Polish we use much more phrases determining the time, like "wcześniej", "przedtem", "w tamtym momencie"etc. to make things more obvious.

Few examples, all correct:

1. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam był.
2. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam wcześniej był.
3. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam musiał być.
4. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam jest.

How do you understand them?

[BTW don't forget about the comma after "Będąc już w domu", it's a dependent clause - and yeah, there are a lot of commas in Polish writing and a lot of people don't think about half of them]

Hope it's more clear now. Especially as it comes to feelings, we don't change the tense of the subortinate part of sentence. For example:

Jan poczuł, że jest głodny.
[Jan felt that he was hungry.]
Dopiero po zjedzeniu poczuł, jak bardzo był głodny.
[Only after eating he felt how much he had been hungry.]

OK my Polish grammar really isn't great however I feel there's a difference in meaning between the first 3 and number 4.

No. 4 for me is - Arriving home (closest translation) , Jan felt someone was there. i.e. someone was still in the house. Whereas the top 3 seem to be 'someone had been there.' So in Polish you can use the present tense 'jest' to mean the past in some when it's part of a clause.

Merged: perfective and imperfective

I am struggling to learn Polish and of course I am frequently confused about the verb tenses. I realise that there is clearly a significant difference between perfective and imperfective but as a beginner would it confuse a Polish native speaker if I used, for example, ja będę dawać or ja dam ? Would they make allowances for my ignorance?

Like all languages, you can make tons of mistakes and be understood if there's some goodwill on the other side.


In Poland, most people would. Outside of Poland, it's harder to tell.