Przypadki (Polish language cases)

The thing to do is to tell the learner that there are a lot of different cases, some of which share word endings in various places. But don't give them all of them at once. Start with an easy one like the instrumental, or perhaps the genitive plural for counting things.

This is a great practice thread. I still need to polish up on them. I'm more comfortable with them now but would appreciate the resident Poles giving tough tests :)

Merged: Need help understanding przypadki!!

I just started getting into przypadki and I would like some help in understanding why I need it.

Examples

Czy pamiętasz mój brat? Do you remember my brother?
Czy pamiętasz nasz brat? Do you remember our brother?
Czy pamiętasz twój brat? Do you remember your brother?

Can I say the following?

Czy pamiętasz mój brat?
Czy pamiętasz mojego brata?
Czy pamiętasz mojemu bratu?
Czy pamiętasz moim bratem?
Czy pamiętasz moim bracie?
Czy pamiętasz mój bracie?

Czy pamiętasz nasz brat?
Czy pamętasz naszemu bratu?
Czy pamiętasz naszego brata?
Czy pamiętasz naszym bratem?
Czy pamiętasz naszym bracie?
Czy pamiętasz nasz bracie?

Czy pamiętasz twój brother?
Czy pamiętasz twojemu bratu?
Czy pamiętasz twojego brata?
Czy pamiętasz twoim bratem?
Czy pamiętasz twoim bracie?
Czy pamiętasz twój bracie?

Czy pamiętasz moja siostra? Do you remember my sister?
Czy pamiętasz mojej siostry?
Czy pamiętasz moją siostrą?, etc

I would write more examples, lol I just don't understand the difference. Can anyone explain it in simple terms?

Only these are correct.

Additionally:
Czy pamiętasz o moim bracie?
Czy pamiętasz o naszym bracie?
Czy pamiętasz o twoim bracie?

Czy pamiętasz moją siostrę?
Czy pamiętasz o mojej siostrze?

Instead of twojego brata, o twoim bracie, I would use swojego brata, o swoim bracie, although both are correct

Merged: The impossibility of przypadki (cases) in Polish language

I'm English and have been learning basic level Polish for a while now, non-intensively. Is the Polish case system and its myriad difficulties a rational reason to give up learning this otherwise beautiful (and in the UK also quite useful!) language?

I know a bilingual English/Polish speaker (born in England to Polish parents) who doesn't make mistakes with cases, yet who doesn't know what cases even are! It massively impresses me how native Polish speakers can correctly apply - at speed - the often bizarre and illogical permutations of noun and adjective declinations.... like, for example, knowing what ending is needed depending on whether soft/hard consonants are involved, whether something is living or non-living, even whether it's a fruit or vegetable, or a car!

Much as I'd love to make progress with Polish, it's very frustrating and I do feel I'm getting close to giving up point, where I'm seriously wondering whether it's realistically possible for a native English speaker to master? I understand what the cases are, and their usage on a linguistic level, it's more the lack of logic and inconsistency of the declinations themselves (and committing it all to memory) which confuses me.

Any thoughts welcome. Dziękuję bardzo :)

The same is in most Slavic languages.

I think it's a matter of practice. If you often read often in a foreign language, then you "catch" the connections between words, you see that after A should go B and not anything else, because anything else would look very strange. This applies also to the grammar.

Polish can indeed be mastered by a native English speaker, only don't expect it to be easy. Also, as with many Europeans, the Poles can be arch contrarians, you know:-)

My heartfelt advice is merely to keep plugging away, and never to accept no as an answer from any Polish native speaker who maintains you won't be able to learn Polish as he/she has English. It's usually a big joke!

SLOG ON, FELLOW LEARNER!!!

but you do the same in English - there are some cases in our language too! Do you know what they are? probably not but for example you would not say 'that is him bag' would you?

That's an interesting point that shows that the human brain operates differently in childhood as opposed to adult life.

First thing is that you should give up on trying to learn it all at one time .
Second is that you should make your imagination act, not only your rational mind. Learning a language is not learning maths, though I think people who are successful in maths just use their imagination when thinking maths which is not what most people can do.

Remember that the proto-Indoeuropean language, the distant ancestor of English, had 9 cases and these were not for making things more complex. Their existence reflected the need of the human brain to mirror relations between object or ideas. Some languages of which English is the most notable example lost this imminent logic over time, but try for a while to think of cases in the language as a "normal" thing and of English without cases as some sort of abberation to which the speakers of English have just got used to.

When I write or speak in English, I formulate my phrases without reaching out to Polish for help which is my native tongue. But I'm sure that the mechanism of thinking in terms of cases does work all this time in me in the background, although it works silently. Your task should be to build such a mechanism from the ground. That's the logic of learning the language with cases, not learning the endings by heart. Learning of the endings of words is secondary.

Even NATIVE-born "bilingual" speakers invariably fall back on their "first" mother tongue, in your case Polish. At least you're honest about it! Far too many foreign-born native speakers deem themselves "fluent" in English, knowing often the words, but not always their meaning. I remarked in English to a Polish acquaintance of my wife and mine several days ago "My, your son's gotten much bigger since the last time we saw you guys!" Her response ( suddenly slighly miffed-looking),"Yeah, well he's not gotten any smaller, Marek!"

This individual had lived in the UK for a number of years prior to arriving in the States and has the cocky assurance of European youth. Nonetheless, her knowledge of English culure...severely lacking:-) And naturally, she won't admit such, claiming my wife and I didn't understand HER!!!

LOL

yes but Z, English DOES have the remnants of a case system in the personal pronouns and knowing this might help OP get his head round it.

OP instead of cases, English has a remarkable amount of prepositions. As a native speaker you have no problem with that, in the same way that a Polish native speaker will have no problem with the cases.

You have no problem with knowing the difference between in/by/to to the shop do you?
As Z said, stop thinking of it like a mathematical problem; just listen to what people say, like ....'ide do sklepu' for example - dnt worry about what CASE that is, just say it.

It does, luckily. The OP should sit down, relax, take a deep breath and contemplate 'us', 'them', 'me', 'her' and 'him'. Then the OP should conceive some simple English sentences using those pronouns, then change them into the nominative forms like 'I went to see her' ---> 'I went to see she'. Then he quickly realizes what the language with the case system really is and why it is necessary to use cases when using such a language. Perhaps the OP does know it already, but he doesn't know how to master the use of those cases. What the OP should realize is that the relation between 'I' and 'she' in the sentence above is reflected by putting the 'she' into the accusative case (the word 'accuse' in the name of the case rightly indicates that the verb 'see' sort of 'accuses someone'), so 'she' becomes 'her'. It isn't, however, reflected in another sentence which uses 'Mary' rather than 'her' ---> I went to see Mary'. It would be reflected in Polish, however ('Poszedłem odwiedzić Marysię' and not 'Poszedłem odwiedzić Marysia). I think that the need for reflecting relations linguistically should become a necessity in his mind. Whenever he learns a sentence in Polish he should form the image of this relation and glue it to the forms he uses.

Also, the OP has also the 'Saxon genetive' at his disposal in English which can broaden his 'feel' for the cases substantially :-).

yes good idea - that really helped me when I was learning Greek. Then later with Polish, the concept was not alien.
the problem with us English is that most of us under 75 did no grammar in school at all as it was not 'fashionable'.
No wonder we have such problems learning other languages!

English is an analytic, Polish, a sythentic language! Case in Modern vs.Old English is reflected in words themselves rather than permutations of morphological change, e.g. " my house" (mój dom) vs. "I'm going to my house." (Idę do mojego domu) etc. Polish signals change through altering the basic word composition, whereas English doesn't.

Most intriguing for non-Slavic native speaker Polish learners such as yours truly is the accusative/genitive switch when using certain masculine virile "animate" nouns, e.g. "Widzę stary pies." vs. "Widzę swojego brata." Both "pies" and "brat" are masculine, though "pies" is NOT "virile" and "brat" is. "Widzę budynek" is accusative, not genitive, because "budynek" is masculine "INANIMATE"!!!!!

Took me a while to get used to this logic:-)

Actually "Widzę stary pies." is wrong, it should be "Widzę starego psa" just like "Widzę swojego brata"

OK. Thanks! See, the pitfalls, oh' the pitfalls (of Polish)
:-)

Thanks everyone for all the useful and interesting responses :) Yes, I'm familiar with the concept of grammatical case, which I first encountered in German..... but my main difficulty seems to be with the inconsistencies of the endings themselves. For example, the instrumental case I can handle - because the endings are straightforward and consistent! I encounter difficulty where there's more than one choice of ending per case/gender, and where this is governed by seemingly complex and arcane rules.

Cases in Polish don't always replace English prepositions - they are often used in addition to!

Interesting point about absorbing cases naturally - for example, I know it's "w Londynie" and not "w Londyn", because "w Londyn" just SOUNDS wrong!

Maybe it's possible to classify it in different ways, but from what I have learnt on the Polish classes in the primary school (I am a native Polish speaker) - in both situations it's genitive (biernik).

We used, of course, the Polish cases without any problems not knowing that they exist, as we had learnt them naturally, but in primary school we had to learn them, just like different other grammar topics. And we had to learn by heard a table of cases with typical questions they answer to and with single examples of typical verbs they go with. So:

1. Mianownik - kto? co? jest
2. Dopełniacz - kogo? czego? nie ma
3. Celownik - komu? czemu? przyglądam się
4. Biernik - kogo? co? widzę
5. Narzędnik - (z) kim? (z) czym? idę
6. Miejscownik - o kim? o czym? mówię
7. Wołacz - O! (there is no typical verb and has no typical question, so here goes an exclamation instead of a question)
From my grandmother I know also, that in the past the numeration of the cases was different - the wołacz was after biernik. I don't know why they moved it to the end. Maybe because it's currently really rarely used (it's usually replaced with mianownik) and it's quite different from the other cases.

For "living" objects biernik has a different question than from "static" ones. Of course, these questions don't reflect the situation very accurately, it's a simplification. Let's look even at the error from this thread, with the dog. The question words like kto?, kogo?, komu? refer only to people. If you ask about animals, you usually use co?, czego?, czemu? (although it's still rather awkward and I would try to rephrase the whole sentence rather than use these words with respect to animals, it sounds like you were referring to an animal as to a thing). But for animals biernik looks exaclty like dopełniacz, not like mianownik.

This is still not so difficult if you realize that for some nouns biernik look like mianownik or like dopełniacz depending on the situation :)

In an e-mail to a friend you may write: "Tydzień temu wysłałem do ciebie maila...". But in an official one, you would rather write "Tydzień temu wysłałem do Pana mail...". Both of them mean: "A week ago, I sent to you an e-mail...".

By the way, we observe here an interesting phenomenon concerning borrowing words from other languages. In English, as all we know, the word "mail" refers to the traditional post. The one that goes through the Internet is "e-mail", from "electronic mail". After e-mail as a means of communication came to Poland, the Polish term for an electronic letter, after borrowing it from English, quickly got shortened from "e-mail" to "mail". Even without a change of spelling. In Polish the word "mail" hadn't existed before, so now it refers only to the electronic mail. Such changes of meaning often happen while borrowing words, but we can see here how this process looks like :)

And again by the way, anything like Past Perfect tense doesn't exist in Polish. There exist reminders of such a construction that existed in Polish in the past (200-300 years ago and before) - the "normal" past form of the "defective" verb "powinien", whose present form behaves like the past forms of "normal" verbs, and it's why its past form is "powinien był". But this is not Past Perfect, it's just a construction, used now probably only with this one single verb. Nobody, absolutely nobody, uses this construction as the Past Perfect case, replacing the word "powinien" with "szedł", "robił", "widział" etc., as it was done in the past. Let's take a sentence form my previous paragraph:

In Polish the word "mail" hadn't existed before...

Its translation to Polish is:

W języku polskim słowo "mail" nie istniało wcześniej...

which could be translated to English equally well as:

In Polish the word "mail" haven't existed before...

maybe even as:

In Polish the word "mail" didn't exist before...

although I am not sure if the last one would be considered as correct English. Maybe in the US yes, but in the UK not? I have no idea. But if we cut off this "before"/"wcześniej" and leave the beginning of the sentence up to the word "existed"/"istniało", then all three will be for sure a correct translation of the Polish phrase.

A Polish beginner in English has here the same dillema, as you learning Polish cases. One Polish expression, which can be replaced by three different ones in English. But afer some time of learning English, I am comfortable with using them. As I have already said before, I think that this comes mostly with reading texts in the foreign language.

I have also written somewhere that I am currently learning German and I have problems with German cases. Even though they are much simpler than the Polish ones. Simpler, but they work in a bit different way, and the cases that go with different words and prepositions are often different than in Polish. Not to mention that you have to remember all these endings of two types of articles and after adjectives before which goes each type of article or no article.

And I am still wondering if all these what I am writing in English is a proper English :) For example the last sentence from the pervious paragraph:

Not to mention that you have to remember all these endings of two types of articles and after adjectives before which goes each type of article or no article.

Is this "goes" on a proper position? Maybe it should be at the end? Isn't the construction of this sentence, generally, "too Polish"?

Please, please, please do not call Polish illogical! Every time someone mistakenly say that I feel personally offended and, believe me, angry NocyMrok is the NocyMrok You can't stand. :D

I think most languages could be accused of being illogical, including English! :D

kpc21 -


The second sentence is correct English, the first is incorrect.

your English is good kpc., do not forget that there is no 'academy' of English to state what is 'correct' or not, unlike eg French, Spanish or German.

This is English's strength as a world language.
Nonetheless your second sentence is much more acceptable than the first.

Should be: "In Polish the word "mail" hadn't existed before..." so, past perfect rather than present perfect.


"Not to mention that you have to remember all these endings for two types of articles, and after adjectives, before which there can be either type of article, or no article" sounds better. But your English is pretty good, kpc21! :)

Generally, I notice that Polish people do tend to struggle with articles in English - for example, often getting confused between "a" and "the", and omitting articles where they are needed and using them where they are not needed. Which is understandable considering it's not a feature of the Polish language. Again, an example of people encountering difficulty with concepts that their native language doesn't have - like cases for me!

Btw am I right in thinking that in Polish, perfective verb forms correspond with the English perfect tenses?

Not exactly. I don't have much knowledge considering the grammar terminology, especially the grammar of Polish in English, but I assume that you mean for example jeść as an imperfective form and zjeść as a perfective form (in Polish - aspekt niedokonany and aspekt dokonany).

If so, then I would say that they rather correspond with the English continuous tenses.

For example you wouldn't rather translate:

Zjadłem obiad o 15:00.

as:

I have had dinner at 15:00.

but rather as:

I ate dinner at 15:00.

Jadłem obiad o 15:00.

would translate as:

I was having dinner at 15:00.

But:

Zjadłem już obiad.

is in English (I think so):

I have already had dinner.

From what I was taught while learning English, you use Present Perfect in English when you want to say that something has happened and not when it happened. When you want to say when something happened, you use Present Simple. Unless you want to say that something has been happening since some moment and it is still happening. Then you use Present Perfect Continuous or Present Perfect (especially in case of the verbs that aren't generally used in the continuous form, like love, have meaning possess, feel meaning have a feeling etc.).

In Polish all this isn't distinguished at all.

But let's look at German. They don't have anything resembling the continuous tense at all (unlike Polish), maybe except the passive form, in case of which they use the "werden" verb very often (the so called Vorgangspassiv - "process passive").

For:

The door is being painted.

they say:

Die Tür wird gemalt.

which literally means:

The door becomes painted.

And they theoretically have their equivalents of Past Simple (Imperfekt/Präteritum) and Present Perfect (called just Perfekt), but... they use them interchangeably (their Past Simple is used more in writing and their Present Perfect more in speaking) and mean exactly the same. I have once watched the news on the website of the German TV with subtitles, and the Perfekt in speaking was replaced with Imperfect in the subtitles :)

Wrong, zrozumienic!

It is precisely this LACK of world standard which has led to the downfall of English as a language of culture and erudite conversation:-)

Perhaps only the OED is a sort of standard bearer of modern English, but then, not of American usage! At least German, Polish and French have standard and their speakers take aesthetic pride in their language!!!!

H.L. Mencken once tried, but failed:-)

Yeh but coz of that, da English language is well adaptable innit? It's a dynamic language, and has been ever since Anglo-Saxon English came into contact with Norse, and then subsequently with Norman French. English is what it is. But one can, if one so chooses, be erudite and take aesthetic pride in English....

That's a helpful explanation kpc21 - thanks :)

no Lyzko I am not "wrong" thank you - you can disagree with me, but shouting 'wrong' to introduce yourself to a debate is hardly 'erudite; is it- ? English has been an extraordinarily successful world language.

As K says, it is dynamic and constantly changing, and it is able to do that due to the lack of some stuffy 'academy;
It can be your "erudite" language or the language of 'Bizniz"

If "biznis" no longer adheres to standards as it once did, then what's the point in practicing it at all? Fact is, non-native speakers of English were far more appropriately modest about their "NON-native" speaker status than many are today! Once, a Pole, German, Italian abroad (or at home) was painfully aware of the poverty of their English language skills, usually and correctly, apologizing to native English speakers (for which they were mosty forgiven) at not speaking as well as the foreigner spoke THEIR respective language.

That all seems to have changed and when one encounters so-called multi-lingual European youth, one has the feeling they're empowered more by arrogance than by abilty, often drawing from the lowest rather than the highest common denominator of what riches modern English has to offer.

Stick to the topic please

As one poster already commented on the comparison between Polish and German case morphology, German is also "repetitive", that is, many identical endings can be confusing for first-time learners especially. Polish masculine accusatives vs. genitives present however different issues of semantic meaning, not merely usage:-) Distinguishing "virile" from "non-virile" masculine nouns doesn't even exist in German, therefore requires special attention for beginning, sometimes even intermediate, Polish speakers:-)

Maybe just try and concentrate on getting to grips with a couple of the cases to start with. Sometimes when you try to do too much at a time it all starts to blur in your head. Once you feel more confident, move onto other cases.

I've felt like giving up on many an occasion, but I must be a glutton for punishment because I always come back to it.

If you have the opportunity, try and talk to as many native speakers as possible, this will be a big help.
Also, try not to focus too much on the things you don't know as you will get frustrated. You probably know more than you think you do, and even if you only learn a couple of new words a day, it will help with the grammar.

If you feel it's all too difficult, take a break from it for a while. If learning it starts to feel like a chore, you're more likely to not want to keep at it.

Best of luck, don't give up!


This is very interesting but I feel that this approach is dependent on the OP having contact with native speakers and hearing and speaking the language.

When I first started learning Polish, this is how I learned, from contact with native speakers, as I didn't have a working computer at the time, so no internet access for any help. I had a dictionary and that was it, so I was listening and repeating what I heard. I had absolutely no knowledge of the cases at all at that time, let alone that there were 7 of them. So you are right, I was learning the cases without knowing what they were, or what case I was using when speaking. Having said that, my Polish was absolutely rubbish.

So building a mechanism from the ground as it were,at least in the sense you're talking about, is going to be possible only if the OP has a lot of contact with native speakers. After all you need to be able to hear what's being spoken don't you?

That's what I think personally, but hey what do I know! People learn in many different ways but yes, the approach you're talking about makes far more sense to me than learning case endings parrot fashion.

Learning ANY language as an adult with little to zero prior background in that language, I like to compare with re-wiring our brain circuitry and blasting off in our virtual spaceship into a new galaxy. This is oddly enough what it can feel like for some of us.

Polish, even more than German, for an Anglophone is rife with unfamiliar territory. Cases are oddly the least of the problem. I myself discovered that, for example, as soon as I stopped trying both to translate into German, eventually to stop comparing Polish aspectual distinctions with tenses, I made a lot more progress that I might have otherwise!

Dictionaries are frequently the equivalents of an incomplete road map for someone who already knows the destination and more or less how to get there. They can be helpful for the most rudimentary issues, e.g. spelling, plural markers and the like.

Other than that, I've found them of little use, even less so for more advanced translation.