Comments on: Polish Possessive Pronouns – are they really that difficult?

By: Justin B.

Justin B. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:43:14 +0000

I think this is interesting in that, in the jego, jej an ich, gender is already present, because the most important thing to the Polish speaker isn’t the gender of the noun they are talking about, but the person who is posessing it an their gender.

If you look at this if you use ‘my,’ ‘you (s),’ ‘your (pl)’ and ‘our,’ you don’t need to know the gender of the person the posessive adjective/pronoun is referring to, because you already know it, and to the poles, the most important thing is the gender of the object in these cases.

I found that when talking about swoj to think of it as meaning “my own” and if you start a sentence with ‘I’ and you are talking about something of your own and you need a posessive adjective, it is always ‘svoi.” I hope tha thelps.

By: michael

michael — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:37:21 +0000

“Masz mapa gratis?” This is incorrect.
“Masz mapę gratis?” Correct.

How can I know when and how to change the end of the the word mapa? What is the name for this, is it a declension?

Other wrong examples maybe:
Masz lampka gratis?
Masz książka gratis?
Masz kubek gratis?
Masz krześło gratis?

Odd questions I know but it is an exercise in grammer.

By: pinolona

pinolona — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:27:15 +0000

Ahhhhh somebody already mentioned ‘swój’! I was going to flag that!
Sometimes it means ‘mine’, sometimes it means ‘one’s'…. confusion all round.
I also sometimes get mixed up and think it means ‘his’ or ‘hers’ cos my brain is Latin-oriented where languages are concerned. Ditto David and Elizabeth, please clarify!

By: Michael Farris

Michael Farris — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:27:05 +0000

Yeah, swój refers to the subject of the sentence.

It’s not so helpful in the first and second persons (where some people are sloppy with it) but it’s worth its weight in gold in the third person.

Spalił swoją książkę.

= He burned his (own) book.

Spalił jego książkę.

= He burned his (someone else’s) book.

By: David Honley

David Honley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:12:01 +0000

Hi Anna!
I’m the same as Elizabeth Sadus. The only pronouns I have difficulty with is the ‘swój, swoja, swoje’ group. I believe that if the Direct Object ‘belongs to ‘ the Subject of the sentence, then swój is used instead of mój… But maybe Anna, you could address the swój rules and give examples of how swój etc is used?
Pozdrawiam serdecznie
David