Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

Officially 7, yes. However, in reality, probably 6.

Six? How about the 'wołacz' or 'vocative'? That's still used, if sparingly. If I'm not in error, that is considered the seventh case. Russian doesn't have a vocative case, I've been told and remember reading long ago in a Russian grammar (translated by a German) when I was studying the language seriously.

There are 7 but if we are talking about regular use then 6. The same with tenses. Polish has sth analogous to the past perfect simple tense in English but it is seldom used.

The number of cases does not depend on the frequency of use so there are 7 cases.
Btw. any time you address someone by name, title etc you are using vocative. I'd say vocative is a very frequently used case.

6 are used more commonly, ask any Pole. All 7 can be used of course, the 7th is not obsolete but is used sparingly.

Panie profesorze, panie doktorze, panie prezydencie, panie premierze, Boże, mamo, tato, synu, córko, siostro, bracie etc. - how many times a day do you hear/see one of these forms? I'd say it's disappearing only with some first names, but with common nouns it's still very much alive and kicking.

In speech, Strzyga, or mostly in written Polish?

In speech, absolutely. When addressing somebody, you can say "Marek" instead of "Marku", but you cannot say "pan prezydent" or "pan doktor" instead of "panie prezydencie, panie doktorze".

Let's see some more examples:

ty klamczuchu
ty idioto
ty partaczu


True. But when the name is preceded by some modifiers (such as possessive pronouns, adjectives) then Vocative is still compulsory: drogi Marku.

Leaving aside how often the vocative is used, it is pretty limited to proper first names and some nouns referring to people. Theoretically forms exist for other nouns but they're extremely rare outside of bad poetry.

It's also not considered a true case in some schools of linguistic thought (case being limited to changes that indicate some relation to another part of the sentence, whether the verb, a preposition or another noun).

The weirdest thing about the vocative in Polish is how it subsitutes for the nominative in some very limited circumstances (basically a few masculine personal names in diminutive form).

quick google examples

"Kiedy Jasiu czekał w sekretariacie, nauczycielka wyjaśniła dyrektorowi całą sytuację."

"Metamorfozę przeszedł także Stasiu Pieczonka"

Litwo! Ojczyzno moja...

Dziki Wietrze Zachodni, oddechu Jesieni,
(...)
Dziki duchu, co wszędzie dotrzeć jesteś w stanie,
Który niszczysz i chronisz, usłysz me wołanie!

P.B. Shelley
and:

Attycki kształcie! Piękna figuro! Tak wiele
Marmurowych cię zdobi, prócz mężczyzn i kobiet,
Leśnych gałęzi ponad zadeptanym zielem;
Cicha formo, co sądom naszym na złość robisz,
Spokój mącisz, jak wieczność: O, Sielanko Zimna...

John Keats

:))

I am so bad at Polish but still trying to learn it. I love this language. Yes.... even if is so hard.. :p it has a charm for me :)

a) I'm not a poetry person (it's all assumed bad until proven otherwise).

b) I had no idea that Keats and Shelley wrote in Polish. Oh well, live and learn.

c) I'm was especially referring to contemporary usage, which none of the citations are examples of. Now you know ..... No, I didn't make that clear.

Okay, I'll try. Komputerze! Lodówko! Ściano! Ekranie!

... mmmmmm doesn't quite work for me.

"I had no idea that Keats and Shelley wrote in Polish....."

(.......or that Mickiewicz wrote in English:-)))!

Nice one, Mafketis.

How about the vocative in certain fixed expressions, such as "Matko Boska!", "Boże mój!" etc..

:))
I'm not a fan of the Romantic poetry either, from my Very Subjective Point of View most of it is very bad and that's exactly the reason why I decided to quote these fragments. It was supposed to be a joke. Of course these are Polish translations, good and adequate ones I must add, and vocative is absolutely necessary here, there's just no other way to render it.

As far as contemporary language goes, there are plenty of usage examples with the words: ziemia, gwiazda, ojczyzna, dom and suchlike and it's not just poetry. Granted, addressing a computer might sound funny... or it might seem so until you've experienced a major system breakdown at the worst possible moment.

OK, maybe I'm splitting hairs. But anyway, even if you limit the vocative case to nouns referring to people, it's still indispensable in the structure of the language at its present stage of development. I know quite a number of Poles who say "poszłem" instead of "poszedłem", but I have yet to meet somebody who would say "pan doktor" instead of "panie doktorze" addressing the physician at a medical examination. You can't substitute Vocative with Nominative here, there's not even room for a mistake. So maybe Nominative will completely replace Vocative at some point in future, but it's still a long, long way to go.

The thing is, I didn't say it was the vocative that was the sporadically used 7th case at all. That was attached to my name and it's not true.

so which case did you describe as used sparingly?

you are polish therefore your opinion is not valuable for this thread because you cannot be objective.

and it seems you definitely have english "disortografia"

Well, I have revised my opinion. Come to think of it, all 7 cases seem to be in regular use. I was thinking of the dative case but it really is quite widely used when you think about it.

Why would the Dative be less used? There's a delightful book entitled "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" (The Dative is the death of the Genitive) by a German language author Bastian Sick. Apparently in German, almost nobody even uses the Genitive much any longer, certainly not in speech. It's been replaced wholly by the Dative.

Are there any such cases waning in use in Polish? I wonder:-)

oh, I see. At least that would be a new idea on this forum :)

I'm not saying that it should be, I just didn't open my mind enough to how widely used it is but now I know.

The dative does seem to be less used than some of the other cases. I've read (cannot vouch for accuracy) that some of the functions of the dative in other Slavic languages have been taken over by the genetive (with a preposition) in Polish. There are also fewer prepositions that take the dative than genetive, accusative or instrumental.

I'm willing to bet that in a large corpus study that the dative occurs a lot less than what I think of as the big three cases (nominative, accusative, genetive).

They missed the point. The pronunciation is the some now.
But in medieval Polish it was quite another thing:
może sounded the same, but morze had its origin in Old Slavic mor'e with soft R (the same as you can hear in Russian even now).

As some authors say the difference started to disappear from XIV to XVII centuries.
Transformation of the word was as follows:
mor'e > morże > morze.

Old midway pronuciation of RŻ was heard in peripheral archaic dialects for example in South-Eastern Borderland, precisely in Podolia - east of Lwów, near Tarnopol.

I have heard it from my grandfather in a word GORŻKI = GORZKI (bitter).

I think you meant homophones.

Yes, Polish takes about 8 years to understand and 8 more years to be able to speak it well.

I can think of thousands of other things that I can learn in 16 years who will bring me a salary of over 500 000 USD yearly. Polish language will bring us almost nothing though.

Polish language = total waste of time and life. So complicated that it HURTS

Most common examples of 7th case:
"Ty k**wo!"
"Ty h*ju!"
... and muuuch more;)

oh yes, obviously, thanks for the correction!

Anna, arbitrary time frames are pointless. Some learn much faster and much more intensively. 16 years is just nonsense! I could use the language more than well enough less than 2 years into my stay here.

How is it a waste of time if you live here?