Comments on: Cardinal Numbers

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:24:26 +0000

Ayesha,
we normally say that if a noun ends in “a” it’s feminine, but then you have “mężczyzna” and “kierowca” and scores of others that are not. And then there’s “jesień” and “mysz” and tons of others that are feminine and don’t end in “a”. So, tread softly and carry a good słownik ortograficzny! I know that Polish-only dictionaries tend to scare a lot of Polish learners, but they shouldn’t, really. Once you master the basic abbreviations (like: ż for żeński – feminine, etc), you can pretty much look up any noun and determine its gender.

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:09:00 +0000

Russ,
this is one of those goofy Polish things. Yes, if you are just talking about straight plurals, without any numeral, THEN, you have psy, kobiety, etc… THEN their accusative is psy, kobiety.

BUT… if you have pięć psów, that answers both to kto?co? (nominative) and kogo?co? (accusative). In genitive, it would be kogo?czego? – pięciu psów.

So, for example:
kto/co to jest? – sześć kobiet, pięć psów, siedmiu mężczyzn (nominative – as in: kto? co?)
kogo/co widzimy? – sześć kobiet, pięć psów, siedmiu mężczyzn (accusative – as in: kogo? co?)
kogo/czego nie ma? – sześciu kobiet, pięciu psów, siedmiu mężczyzn (genitive – as in: kogo? czego?)

By: thomas westcott

thomas westcott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:23:10 +0000

Hi Anna,
Sound files please.
‘Declining’ numbers – sounds like the numbers are getting smaller.

By: pinolona

pinolona — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:40:24 +0000

We have a debate going on at the obwarzanki stand outside the school at the moment: is it ‘jeden precle’ or ‘jednego precla’? I can manage ‘proszę piwo’, ‘dwa piwa’ ‘pięc piw’, and I understand that this is because numbers act funny from five onwards, but what about ordering food? (priorities, priorities). Do I order ‘jabłko’ or ‘jednego jabłka’? Is there a rule? Does it change because I’m asking for something or is it just because of the numbers?

Thank you!

By: Ayesha

Ayesha — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:59:01 +0000

Dobra Robota good one – excellent if I do say so myself but I have a question (Like in this sentance the I is feminie and so is the myself and in english we dont distiguish that but it is just infered by speaker) so

Is there a general rule of thumb for endings when it comes to, I am sure there is but what is the rule. How can I generally (as I know in Polish any and everything does morph) tell if a word is talking about a male or female. Like in Spanish words end in an “A” is usually referring to a female and if it ends in an “O” it is usually talking about a male so for Polish what is a rule or trick I can see in words to help with this (en, i, ik, y, o, a, ć, ą, etc)
masculine
feminine
neuter