Poszłam or poszedłem

Can I say poszłam as a guy? would polish people notice? or / poszliśmy/poszłyśmy also? or Skończyłam instead

you can say it but they would notice... a former colleague, although generally very fluent, had a strong tendency to use- łam forms (because that's what he mostly heard from his Polish wife and daughters).

If they can tell you're a non-native speaker they'll mostly ignore it (and maybe chuckle now and then)

Some people say poszłem where they mean poszedłem. Others criticise it as incorrect however common it is. One of a few similar issues.

Poszłam suggests a female did the action
Poszedłem - a male.

In colloquial speech (incorrect though) some say poszłem instead of poszedłem.

Can a form become correct? How do languages evolve?

Perhaps your right but I would of thought they matter.

They matter for sure; they can grate on some people's ear. My pet hate in English is people using "less" when "fewer" is correct. It does seem to be changing as languages do.

The same with Polish liczba and ilość - a lot of people confuse these two.
If the poster says poszłem instead of poszedłem, it's not a big deal as a lot of native speakers of Polish make the same mistake.

However, if he says poszłam then he may get a smirk or two.

I remember reading one of Mark Twain's novels in English and some characters 'used' 'incorrect' English -according to what I had been taught. But was it really incorrect?

I've heard Brits (married to Poles) say "jestem chora" etc., probably just repeating what they hear!

@jon357
My godson also made the same mistake when learning to speak.
In a way poszłem may have resulted from hearing poszłam and just changing the ending to the masculine one but that's just a guess.

That's the reasonable hypothesis... also the feminine form is one syllable shorter (and people tend to be lazy and over time prefer shorter to longer forms).

What about se?

Logical; it's how languages work and how they evolve. I still like some of the quirks though.

@mafketis
You're into linguistics more than I am - you tell me :)
I don't know if you guys know Smolen and Laskowik but in one of their legendary comedy shows Smolen plays a role of a simple lady in a babushka who at some point says 'se zapomniałam' :)

According to this, you should conjugate the verb as follows:

ja poszłam / ja poszłem
ty poszłaś / ty poszleś
ona poszła / on poszł ???

whereas if you use "poszedlem", everything is OK:

ja poszedlem
ty poszedłeś
on poszedł

The incorrect "poszłem/poszłeś" have been so fiercely combatted at schools that these days only the poorly educated people use them.

Or poszeł (similar to Russian)?

for that matter, what's wrong with poszł?


Why not poszedła?

This kind of weird split tends to be resolved one way or another over time, whether language authorities accept it or not is the only real question... extreme conservatism leads to dysfunction along the lines of the Arab world where (largely religious) motivation preserves the myth of a single Arabic language (which almost no one actually speaks on a daily basis).

Except for sounding weird, I think it doesn't pronounce well and there is no such ending (szł) in any other words, even if there are words like 'rósł'.

'Poszeł' would be better, but somehow sounds very odd in Polish and possibly for this reason is never used by people using 'poszłem'. For the third singular, those people use the correct form 'poszedł'. Likewise, the ending "szeł" (or even such group of letters inside a word) is most possibly absent in Polish.

Well, the past tense forms are originally third person forms plus person clitics ( for example był, była + -m - so that 'e' in masculine forms doesn't indicate the masculine it's just to prevent otherwise unpronounceable words like *byłm) that's also why the plural forms should probably be written byli śmy etc.

But there's a lot of evidence that most speakers no longer perceive them that way which is why some people stress the i in byliśmy, modern speakers perceive the past tense more as a single thing and part of that will probably eventually include decoupling first person forms from some third person stems...

Not this year or next, but in 20 or 30 or more?

@Ziemowit
As I said above it's a mistake. Though a lot of people make it.

Ok help me here the -m turns the first part from feminine to masculine am i right?

What part? Byla feminine, bylem masculine form, it basic to be forms you just learn it by heart not by understanding ..

wut?

The -m in the past tense indicates 'ja' (first person singluar). A long, long, long time ago this was something like (j)eśm and over time it became -m

In the past (and occasionally now in some types of Polish) this -m (and other past tense first and second person markers) didn't have to follow the verb, for example my former boss (now retired) used to sometimes jokingly ask "Coś zrobił?" instead of "Co zrobiłeś"

In modern Polish the tendency is for the endings -m, -ś, -śmy and -ście to always remain on the verb.

If you look at Czech grammar then Polish grammar makes a lot more sense (the evolution has been different but the modern differences... often show where the modern language comes from)

ok so to me the cos zrobil is what did you do just now, Co czrobiles would be a longer past tense what had you done am I right ?

I know you may laugh:) but not as if I have ever had a modern polish education, but I am finding what you are talking about as very educational as I have never read or written in Polish.

I don't know ask maf about past perfect in the Polish language.
Cos zrobil byl>?


ja
jestem
ty
jesteś
on/ona/ono
jest
my
jesteśmy
wy
jesteście
oni/one
są
Czas przeszły
ja (m)
byłem
ja (f)
byłam
ty (m)
byłeś
ty (f)
byłaś
on
był
ona
była
ono
było
my (m)
byliśmy
my (f)
byłyśmy
wy (m)
byliście
wy (f)
byłyście
oni
byli
one
były

They mean the same thing, just one (coś zrobił) is slightly more country and/or old fashioned than the other...


Who uses it? Theoretically it exists but it's pretty rare - I've only heard it a handful of times (usually by people living for years in a country whose language has past perfect so I assume some mental translation is going on)? I'm not sure how much transposition of endings can happen with it... I'd think co zrobiłeś był would be the normal form (if people used it....)

Amazning explains why some things don't work for me here my parents were 4 and 14 when they left Poland, still for me the two words mean what are you doing and what were you doing in the past, amazing thanks.

Ironside im getting it thanks.

Co robisz?


Co robiłeś?

Co zrobiłeś? Would mean "What did you do?" or "What have you done?" (not really distinguished in Polish by tense)

Got it thanks, damn this is hard, my first language was Polish but I lost it over 50 years of not using it since I was a kid,

I only know it from 19th Century literature. It's a shame it isn't current; it's a very economical way f expressing something.

I've never heard it except for the only case where it is still used today, namely with the verb powinien: powinienem był / powinieneś był / powinien był.

A swoją drogą, takie zdanie jak "Poszła była do sklepu i kupiła pół litra wódki" brzmiałoby świetnie. Ciekawe czy gdzieś na wsiach tak mówią?

Not really the same thing

powinienem is an abbreviated version of "jestem powinien" or "powinienem jestem" with deletion of the 'jest' as the -m goes to the adjective
(transposition of endings used to work with the present tense of być )

so
powinien jestem
-jest
= powinienem