jest - są / female/male nouns - Polish Grammar help please

hello / cześć Im trying to get to grips with polish , and i am stuck on a couple of things i hope someone here could help . The first being " tu yest " and tu sa'" I know you can only use "tu sa'" when there is more than one object ( here are 3 eggs " but you can also say " tu yest " ( here is 3 eggs ) and im struggling how to identify if i should fill in the blank space on rosetta with " yest" or "sa'" when there our multiple objects . so for example - " Tu ???? piec' jajek " --- why is this a " yest" answer ? and " ile tu yest kluczy " - tu ?? cztery klucze .. why is this a sa' answer ? ... and why does kluczy become klucze

also .. is kanapki a female noun ? because i thought it would be male because it doesnt in in an ... A,e,e',um , o

Any help would be great .. the simpler and more " cave man" the answer the better thanks .

because 2,3,4 goes with są, 5 and above goes with 'jest'

thank you Soooo much , extremely helpfull .

kanapki is plural for kanapka, so yeah, femamine (damski) noun.


"ile" requires "jest" with "to be" but you quantify using "5 and above" with the noun "ile" is referring to. for example:

"ile domow jest?"

"ile samochodow jest?"

"ilu mezczyzn jest?"


for the most part, the explanation is quite straightforward, it's just a lot to digest. lots of ins and outs in Polish. if the person that's giving you grammar advice can't explain it in "caveman terms", find somebody else to ask.

the simple answer is Polish has a weird rule for counting things - things from 2-4 and from 22-24, 32-34 and so on range need the verb form 'są' and also use the nominative case (the basic form of the word be it in singular or plural - in your case klucze or jajka) - things from the range 5-21 25-31 35-41 (and so on) use another form of the word called genetive and require 'jest' 'było' verb form (jest for the present było for the past) - in your case the genetives are kluczy, jajek - there are rules on how genetive is formed from nominative but they are a bit complicated

ok so anything with 2 , 3 or 4 uses sa' and the noun keeps it normal dictionary spelling , any other numbers use yest and the noun changes acording to the sentence . i understand the ending of a lot of words change depending on if its ( I , you , he/she/it , they , we , our , etc ) ..that makes some sort of sense .. but chaging words because its a number 2 , 3 , or 4 .. now thats just mental .

but ill get there grammar is by far the hard point .

Thank you all for your help , level 1 , unit 2 underway , i will be back lol

you're just scratching the surface. consider this:

There are 2 houses.... - "Sa dwa domy....."

There aren't 2 houses.... - "Nie ma dwoch domow....."

In this example, the "normal dictionary spelling" changes, as well as the number.....even though it's the same number....all because of "are" vs. "are not".

enjoy.

wouldn't worry so much about it, there aren't/isn't in Polish, translated word for word, means 'doesn't have' as in it doesn't have 2 houses and since 'have' obviously governs possessive casus, you end up with 'domow'. Incidentally there isn't/aren't as it doesn't have isn't so weird, this form exist in other languages as well, for example in Thai (mai mee) which is why you hear many asians say 'no have' when they try to indicate something isn't there

i disagree.

If you ask someone to drive down a dirt road to check and see if a house, or houses are hidden behind a thick treeline, they are not going to return and say to you, in English, "It doesn't have houses." They will say, "There aren't any houses" or "There isn't a house."

There must definitely be a lot of confusion for a foreign learner of Polish with regard to the construction jest or są / nie ma which in English translates into "there is or there are / there isn't or there aren't".

Answering the question:
Czy jest tu (jakiś) dom? or Czy są tutaj (jakieś) domy?,
we really have no other choice than change the verb "be" into the verb "have" in case of the negative answer:

Nie, nie ma tu (żadnego) domu or "Nie ma tu (żadnych) domów".

One, of course, uses the verb "be" in the negative phrases, such as in the sentence "Nie jest to problem", but this phrase would rather correspond to the English "This isn't a problem". If we want to say: "There isn't a problem here" or "there is no problem", we would undoubtedly say: "Nie ma problemu".