Instrumental case in the Polish language. Am I understanding it right?

If I want to say It was ..... or They were...Is this correct?

Był dobrym dniem It was a good day
Był dobrym tygodniem It was a good week
Był trudnym językiem It was a difficult language
Był łatwym słowem It was an easy word
Był głupim pytaniem It was a stupid question

Była dobrą książką It was a good book
Była piękną koszulą It was a beautiful shirt
Było drugim drzewem- It was a long tree
Było krótkim zwierzętem It was a short animal

Byli trudnymi słowami They were difficult words
Byli łatwymi językami They were easy languages
Byli głupimi pytaniami They were stupid questions

Unfortunately, most of those are incorrect or sound strange.

E.g,


No, it should be: To był dobry dzień.
Your version would sound good if it contained additional info: Poniedziałek był dobrym dniem......

@pawian
I thought To Był dobry dzień= nominative case. Doesn't Był trigger instrumental case? Być verb

Być verb uses instrumental case only if someone is identifying person(s) as names of demographics in noun forms (such as names of nationalities, ethnic groups, geographical groups, job titles, and non-job titles such as customer/client, homeowner/tenant, member/user, etc)

Oh, now I see what you meant.

So, your Polish declination in instrumental case is OK. That był/byli/było written with capital letters misled me a little coz I thought they were full seperate sentences.

Some spelling mistakes:


długim


zwierzęciem

@ForumUser
Uh oh, I forgot it also includes names of religious groups in noun form "Jestem Chrześcijaninem/Chrześcijanką" ("I am a Christian") and "Jesteśmy Chrześcijan(k)ami" (We are Christians") etc

@pawian
wiktionary.org and odmiana.net both say zwierzęciem instead of zwierzętem. How do polish people remember all these endings, isn't it tiresome? ( sorry , no offense) Like, I thought pomidor locative case was definitely pomidoru not pomidorie ( didn't sound right or look right) But it turned out to be pomidorze. What the heck -ze?

hahaha Yes, they sometimes forget how to decline but only until the age of about 7-9. After that they become quite proficient.


hahaha How should I know? I don`t teach Polish but English.

But...... let me think. Well, other words which end with -or also decline like that in locative case:

lokator - lokatorze
murator - muratorze
kombinator - kombinatorze

There must be a rule concerning it.

Locative case/declension suffix -RZE (pronounced identical to Polish -ŻE...Polish Ż is pronounced like French-language J in "Bonjour", and Polish E and sometimes also Polish Ȩ pronounced like the E in the word "End"), used for all nominative singular nouns. More specifically, for all masculines ending -R, for all feminines ending -RA, and for all neuters ending in -R(-E or -O). The same -RZE declension suffix also used for masculine vocative case, and feminine dative case

Wow, that`s right!:
matura - maturze
bzdura - bzdurze.

Matura to bzdura.

@pawian
It would be nice to know why. anyone, lol? Locative singular and Genitive feminine plural are always random. Komputer-komputerze biuro-biurze. all I know.

See two posts above.

@ForumUser
wow thanks. This is quite interesting. I will add to my notes.

-ŻE declension suffix used only non-Polish feminine nouns ending -HA but excluding -CHA. So "Omaha" = "Omaże" (both dative and locative cases/declensions). Feminine nouns (of all languages of origin) ending -CHA use -SZE declension suffix for both dative and locative cases/declensions (Polish -SZ pronounced like the SH- in the word "Shrug")

@ForumUser
Are you a polish linguistic?

@ForumUser
Feminine nouns of Polish-language origin end in only -CH(-A or -O). Only words of non-Polish origin end -H(-A or -O), such as "Omaha", etc

In the "aspiring sense", yes LOL. But unlike most people who have interests in learning other languages, my interests in learning other languages is fixated on mainly orthography (spelling/writing patterns) and phonology (pronunciation patterns), and admittedly not so much on conversational speech (although I do try to pick up on a few conversational Polish phrases here & there)

@ForumUser
Sounds fun. lol What about dead languages? You dive in other languages besides polish?

@Swimfan
Well my interest in other languages seemed to arise in me just recently, and quite suddenly/unexpectedly (Maybe because there's a lot of Polish people where I live, and I guess somehow they must've "inadvertently" caused me to be more interested learning Polish grammar...not that I'm complaining about that, mind you LOL). Other than that, my first language is English, plus French-language classes in my elementary school & high school years (20+ years ago)

Do you use what you have learnt about Polish in practice? In real life situations?

In practice/real life, in terms of face-to-face & in-the-flesh types situations, mainly if I were to meet a random Polish stranger who speaks English with a heavy Polish accent (mostly small-talk in mixtures of English & Polish, not uncommonly starting along the lines of "Dzień dobry, jak się masz?...etc"). But "internet communication"-wise (especially on this message board, which I accidentally discovered only recently), mostly answering questions regarding Polish grammar do's and don'ts when it comes to Polish spelling/pronunciations/conjugations/declensions etc. I've even posted a couple of questions on this board (questions regarding Polish language/grammar do's and don'ts)

I would definitely use "Omasze" here. People may also want to use "Omaha" in the locative: Warren Buffett mieszka w Omaha.

There's actually another thread on this forum (from a few months ago), specifically asking about dative & locative case/declensions for nouns of foreign origin whose singular nominatives end in -HA but not -CHA. Some Polish grammar texts say only -SZE, while others say both -SZE and -ŻE (most probably -ŻE option used mainly for clarification/differentiation purposes...although I suppose "Omaha" = "Omaże" could be mistaken for "Omara" = "Omarze" if someone isn't familiar with the name "Omaha")

@ForumUser
Never heard 'Omaże'.
Where did you find this example?

I found another thread on this message board (from a few months ago), specifically asking about dative & locative declensions for foreign nouns ending -HA but not -CHA

Some years ago I asked a number of people (not language specialists) how they would decline words ending in -ha... often etymological factors came into play, often they said if the word seemed related to the Kresy (where a voiced h is related to Polish g) then -że and otherwise with -sze (or not decline it).

Are there many such nouns at all? The only nouns ending in -ha that I can think of are foreign ones such as Douha or Omaha.

I think I used hypothetical names...

How about foreign words ending in letters -CHA, but foreign pronunciation not equivalent to Polish -(C)HA? ===> Common foreign pronunciations of -CHA endings being equivalent to Polish -(CI or CZ)A, or -(SI or SZ)A, or Polish -KA

Or foreign words ending -CIA and -SHA, but foreign pronunciation equivalent to Polish -(SI or SZ)A? ===> Such as "Marcia"/"Marsha"?
Possibly other foreign pronunciations of -CIA endings being equivalent to Polish nonexistents -(Ć or CZ)JA, or -C(Z)IJA, or -(Ś or SZ)JA, or -S(Z)IJA

Or foreign words ending -(Consonant + H)A, but foreign pronunciation being "Silent H"? ===> Common ones being -BHA, -DHA, -GHA, -KHA, -NHA, -RHA, -WHA, etc

Lastly, foreign words ending -THA, such as "Martha"?

Would all (or at least a few) of the above just use regular Polish declensions, at least in the "spelling/writing sense"? I'd guess at least a few of the above would be fully (or at least partially, if there's even such a thing) indeclineable?

It depends on a lot of factors and a lot will be up to individual choice, I think.

If a word ends in -tha it will probably (in speaking) be changed to -ta so that I think most people would "o Marcie" (the same as Marta) but I don't know how they'd write it.

And many might simply decline to decline such words "o Martha" rather like foreign female names that don't end in -a o Alice o Janet etc...