Posts tagged with "adverbs"

Adverbs of Time

Posted by Anna 5 Comments
Dec 10 2009

One of the readers (What would I do without you guys? I’d have nobody to hurry me up!) reminded me that I had promised to continue our little adverb lesson. I guess the lure of an easy Polish part of speech is hard to resist, huh? Is that why you want more adverbs?

But all kidding aside, yes, you are absolutely right. The post on adverbs of time (przysłówki czasu) is way overdue.

Like I said before, adverbs answer to these questions: jak? (how), gdzie? (where) and kiedy? (when). And wouldn’t you know it, those that answer to kiedy? are my favorite kind.

I remember those strange words that were neither nouns nor adjectives nor anything else even vaguely familiar, but still very useful nonetheless, always used to puzzle me when I was a kid.

I mean, those were some pretty essential words, those adverbs of time. How else would I ever answer my mother when she kept nagging: “When are you going to do your homework?” (Kiedy będziesz odrabiać lekcje?).
“Soon, mom. Soon.” (Wkrótce)

Yeah, those were the days.
Now it’s my husband who’s the master of adverbs of time.
“When are you going to fix that thing?” says Anna while fighting with a leaky faucet.
“Tomorrow,” (jutro) answers the husband.

And it’s been “jutro” for about forever it seems.

So you get the picture, adverbs of time are easy. And here are some useful examples:

  • dziś or dzisiaj – today
  • wczoraj – yesterday
  • jutro – tomorrow
  • przedwczoraj – the day before yesterday
  • pojutrze – the day after tomorrow
  • zawsze – always
  • na zawsze – forever
  • czasem, czasami – sometimes
  • nigdy – never
  • teraz – now
  • potem – then
  • wkrótce – soon

The problem arises when you get to days of the week (dni tygodnia). And right now I haven’t been able to get a definite answer whether in Polish they are adverbs or nouns. I asked dwóch polonistów (two highly educated people with fancy degrees in Polish philology) about this problem and they looked at me funny. They promised to get back to me, and wouldn’t you know it, they never did (hence the delay with writing this post – see? I had a valid excuse!).

Why is it a problem? Well, adverbs are not supposed to decline or otherwise change. But those pesky days of the week (poniedziałek, wtorek, etc) behave just like any other garden variety noun, they decline, have gender and all that.

And you see, I just knew it that adverbs would turn out to be not so simple after all. Because hey, they’re Polish adverbs, right? And nothing is ever simple when it comes to Polish.

The Oh-So-Easy Adverbs

Posted by Anna No Comments
Nov 27 2009

We haven’t covered even a smidget of grammar in a really long time, and I’m sure that by now you all must be really missing all those declensions, and cases, and tenses, and aspects and what not. Unfortunately than you will have to miss them for a few more days, because today we will talk about my favorite part of speech. Which does not decline. Does not change. Always stays always the same. Has no gender. And no, in case you’re wondering, I haven’t swapped languages while you were not looking, it’s still Polish we’re writing about on this blog.

Such a magical part of speech does exist. Even in Polish.

And yes, you guessed right. It’s adverb time!

I love adverbs. Always have and always will. Not only do they make sentences pretty, they are also fairly easy and uncomplicated. And in Polish, as I’m sure you already know, that counts for a lot. And not just any a lot, but a lot a lot.

So yes, adverbs.

  • przysłówek (noun, masculine, plural: przysłówki) – adverb

Just like in English, they answer to the questions “how?” – “jak?”, “when?” – “kiedy?” and “where?” – “gdzie?”.

So far so good. But wait, it gets better. Just like in English, Polish adverbs don’t change. For example:

  • spokojnie (adverb) – calmly
  • powoli (adverb) – slowly
  • głośno (adverb) – loudly

And by and large, these three endings: -e, -i (this one rather rarely, too) and -o are all that’s involved in simple adverbs (because adverbs of time and place can have other endings).

I know that some people who are learning Polish tend to confuse adverbs with adjectives. And I can see why it could happen. Our adjectives can end in -e, too (neuter singular and non-masculine plural). But the biggest difference is that while Polish adjectives decline, adverbs do not. Sweet, isn’t it? So basically, all you need to learn is to tell them (meaning adverbs) apart from adjectives and your work here is done.

Here are some adjective-adverb combinations, so you can see the difference for yourself:

  • spokojny – spokojnie (calm)
  • głośny – głośno (loud)
  • zimny – zimno (cold)
  • gorący – gorąco (hot)
  • ładny – ładnie (pretty)

See, it’s not all that complicated.
Next time we’ll take a look at adverbs of time and place.

Adverbs and Aspect

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jan 16 2009

When you read this post I’ll be most likely sitting on a ferry going from Antigua to Barbuda. Oh yeah!
But I couldn’t just go on vacation and leave you here with nothing to read, now could I?

So, I thought that in my absence we continue with the perfective-imperfective goodness and see where it takes us.

My very own Polish language test subject asked me if there was any way to magically divine whether a verb used in a sentence is perfective or imperfective. Well, I’m not so sure about magic – that stuff always eludes me, but there are some non- magical subtle clues sometimes. You just need to learn to look for them.

Adverbs are one of those clues. You see, some adverbs are more compatible with imperfective verbs, and some with perfective.

Here’s a handy list.

Adverbs compatible with imperfective verbs:

  • od czasu do czasu – from time to time
  • rzadko – seldom
  • wciąż – continually
  • ciągle – often
  • często – often
  • nigdy – never
  • zawsze – always
  • jeszcze – still
  • czasami, czasem – sometimes
  • zwykle – usually
  • długo – for a long time
  • regularnie – regularly

And adverbs compatible with perfective verbs:

  • za chwilę – in a moment
  • nagle – suddenly
  • właśnie – (only) just
  • dopiero co – only just
  • zaraz – right away
  • w końcu – in the end
  • wkrótce – shortly, soon
  • natychmiast – immediately
  • przed chwilą – a moment ago

For example:
Zawsze wracam późno z pracy. – I always return late from work.
Właśnie wróciłam z pracy. – I have just returned from work.

  • wracać – to return, to come back (imperfective)
  • wrócić – to return, to come back (perfective)

The Dative, part 3

Posted by Anna No Comments
Nov 19 2008

It’s been a while, a looong while actually, since our last post about nouns and cases. I think I started telling you about the dative case and then promptly began to practice avoidance. So where were we last? Oh yes, personal pronouns and indirect objects, me thinks.

So, let’s quickly go back and review. I told you that the dative case is used to modify personal pronouns and I showed you how it’s used in examples where the sentences did not have a specific subject and the dative case was used after the verb “to be” in its many different forms and tenses, such as here:

The word “zimno” is an adverb, of course. And there is a whole slew of adverbs used in impersonal “adverbial” expressions, which describe feelings and sensations. And all those expressions, needless to say, use the dative case.

I gave you one example last time, remember?

Here “przykro” is our adverb of choice. But wait, there’s a whole list of those adverbs that tend to go together with the dative.

  • gorąco – hot, as in – Jest mi gorąco. – I’m hot.
  • łatwo – easy – Nie jest nam tak łatwo. – It’s not so easy for us, as in “we can’t make ends meet,” for example. Incidentally, I heard that phrase from almost every person I spoke to in Poland during my trip.
  • miło – nice – Bardzo mi miło. – Used normally when someone’s introduced to you, as in “Nice to meet you” with the “meet you” implied.
  • smutno – sad – Jest jej smutno. – She feels sad.

And so on…

And I think I also briefly touched on the subject of indirect objects. Now, that sounded a bit weird, didn’t it? “The subject of objects…” Anyway…
You see, in Polish all noun cases have certain questions assigned to them. For the dative, these questions are:

These questions are a sure giveaway that the case you need is the dative and that it describes either a recipient of something, or a person to whom something was/is/will be said. Complicated? Nah, only a little. These examples should make it a bit easier:

Nominative: mój tata – my dad
Dative – mojemu tacie
Here, the dad is the recipient of my help.

Nominative – Jacek (a guy’s first name)
Dative – Jackowi
Here, Jacek from Olsztyn is the beneficiary of our action.
In the Polish sentence above, the possessive “our” is implied and understood, so everybody knows we’re talking about selling “nasze mieszkanie” – “our apartment” and not somebody else’s.

Nominative – sąsiadka – neighbor (female)
Dative – sąsiadce
Here our female neighbor (sąsiadka) is the recipient of the keys.

So, we can say that the dative case is normally used when you have a verb that requires you to have someone as a beneficiary of your action, for example:

And so on… and the noun (or a personal pronoun) following such a verb will most likely be in the dative case.

To be continued…

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