Polish declensions. We all love them, right? All the funky case endings, exceptions, and then exceptions to exceptions. Life in Polish is never boring.

But just when you think you’ve finally managed to master the genitives, datives and accusatives, and you’re no longer kept awake at night by the adjective+noun combinations, you meet Bielsko-Biała. Or rather, Bielsko Biała. I’m confused, one dictionary I have spells it with a hyphen, the other – without. At least in the nominative case. Because both of them hyphenate it in all the other cases. And what fabulous cases these are!

I’m sure that Bielsko Biała is a great town. But couldn’t the good people of Bielsko Biała agree on a little easier way of declining that name?

You see, even though “bielsko” ends in “o”, it’s followed by “biała”, which is most definitely a feminine adjective. Which results in this:

• do (to) Bielska-Białej
• ku (towards) Bielsku-Białej
• Bielsko-Białą
• w (in) Bielsku-Białej

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also an adjective derived from that proper name: bielsko-bialski, but that one I’m not going to touch with a ten foot Pole (or a Hungarian, for that matter).

OK, so with Bielsko Biała, it’s logical to assume that both parts of this proper noun would decline, because they are two separate words.

But then how do you explain Białystok? Technically, it’s just one word, right? So why does it do this:

• do (to) Białegostoku
• ku (towards) Białemustokowi
• w (in) Białymstoku

Huh???

Now you can easily guess which two Polish towns I’m definitely not fond of. And we haven’t even covered Bielsk Podlaski yet!

PS. Any funky computer language today?