Posts by fancyghost

fancyghost

16 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

czekać, mówić, iść, rzeć, znalezc, plec

Are those the equivalents of nominative, genetive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative? Are they in the same order that Latin usually follows? I'm sorry if I sound like I expect you to answer all of my questions, if you don't know that's alright, but being able to apply all the Latin I've learned to Polish will give me a huge advantage.

fancyghost

16 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

I take it this is only a partial answer to your query, yes?

Yes, but it helps to know I can sort things out in a similar way. After googling for a chart, I could only find one, and it only covers tense, not nouns:

/Conjugation-Polish_Verbs.png

I wouldn't ask any of you to write out a big chart just for me, but if you did, that would be pretty sweet. And if anyone wants help on their Latin or to see my super-useful megachart on conjugating everything, just ask and I'll make one.

Never forget the useless Vocative...

I always just lumped vocative and locative with nominative and ablative, we never used either enough to justify learning them thoroughly. Same as the fourth and fifth declension, the teacher only mentioned them once because out of all 4 years we only ever learned a single 4th declension word and never had to use it.

fancyghost

16 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

That makes it very clear. Last question I have, I don't know if any of you know Latin or are familiar enough with the terms for everything in Polish, but how is the language structured? There's got to be an easy way to learn how to conjugate words properly based on their endings, right? Here's how I learned Latin, the first three declensions and the five main cases for singular use:

Latin small chart

Obviously the full thing is way bigger, but does Polish work in a similar way? Are there any charts like this out there that I could use to learn the endings?

fancyghost

16 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

it means Ewa loves somebody elses ( her ) child

Argh, I thought jej and jego could be used for one person alone and for one person out of many. Are they only for indirectly showing ownership?

Sorry if I can't get across exactly what I mean. I don't know the technical phrases for what I'm trying to say, and I don't know how or if some of the grammar conventions I'm used to would apply to Polish.

fancyghost

15 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

Ewa kocha swoje dziecko - Ewa loves her (own) child

You could also say "Ewa kocha jej dziecko", right? That makes sense, then, thank you very much.

fancyghost

15 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

I wish I'd seen that thread earlier, it's helpful but not quite what I need. Are swoje and jej sometimes interchangeable? Like in that first example, 'kobieta i jej pies,' would it be proper to say 'kobieta i swoje pies'? From what I can tell, jej/jego mean her/his and swoje is just taking that a step further, as 'his/her own'.

fancyghost

15 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

That's what I thought, thank you. To me it sounds like the majority of the time they make more of an 'ao' and 'eo' sound, sort of like they're rolling into an N but stop at the last second. It helps just knowing that they won't always make an N sound.

fancyghost

15 Jul 2012

Language / Questions about Jej vs. Swoje, ą and ę, and Latin similarities [27]

Hello. This is my first post here, I've browsed it a little for a few weeks but I don't really know the culture around here, please tell me if I say or do something frowned upon.

A little backstory so I don't feel rude and the last bit of my post will make sense: I'm a fourth-generation Pole living in America. I've always been interested in learning Polish but because of school and the language-learning requirements, I had to take Latin all four years in high school, and never had the time in my schedule to learn Polish. I was given a copy of Rosetta Stone for graduation, and here I am.

First, don't understand the difference between jej and swoje. I know that you'd say "kobieta i jej pies", and "oni czytają swoje gazety", and that makes it seem like one is singular and the other is plural, but then I'm hit with "ona je swoje jabłko" and "on czyta jego książkę", the first having a picture of one girl eating an apple, the second of a man reading another man's book. When do you use jej/jego and when do you use swoje?

Secondly, I've got a little phrasebook with things that you would say every day. In the letters and pronunciation section, it says that ą and ę sound like "on" and "en". From just listening to a few people speaking Polish, it sounds to me like that's only sometimes the case, like with pięc, but other times it sounds like there's no N at the end, like in piszą. It's difficult for me to say exactly what I mean, if this isn't clear please tell me and I'll rephrase it.

Lastly, after four years of Latin, I picked up quickly on how the last few letters of a word sometimes change how it's used grammatically, and adjectives take the form of the word they're describing. I'm used to the nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and locative cases, and three main declensions. How similar is Polish to Latin in this respect, and are there any quick reference charts I could use to help memorize the endings?