Posts tagged w/ declensions

On Bielsko-Biała and Białystok

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
6
2009

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?

 
Posted under Grammar, Polish Language
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Polish Possessive Pronouns - are they really that difficult?

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jun
30
2009

Are Polish possessive pronouns really that difficult? I need an honest opinion here.

I have always thought they were one of those relatively straightforward bits in our convoluted language. But it turns out I might have been either mistaken or overly optimistic.

Yesterday I was asked this very complicated question:

Ok, so you say “moja książka” (my book) and “jej książka” (her book). But then you say: “On zgubił moją książkę.” (He lost my book) and because in this sentence “moja książka” is in the accusative (he lost kogo? co?) it became “moją książkę”. And when you say: “On zgubił jej książkę.” (He lost her book) only “książka” morphed into the accusative form, but not “jej”. Why is that?

And my answer: Because it’s Polish, that’s why.

But seriously, this is one of those instances when I realize that Polish possessive pronouns and their declensions can be totally incomprehensible even to the most dedicated learners (and to many Poles, too).

So, in order to make my life easier (because someone out there was bound to know the correct answer), I thought I’d ask this question to a couple of my native Polish friends. But ahem, their responses were not exactly all that helpful:

Friend #1: Dude, you’re right. This is weird. And how come I’ve never noticed this myself?
and
Friend #2: Because, duh, that’s how it is. Can’t you just tell your readers to memorize everything and stop bugging me?

I’ll ignore friend #2 for now, but yeah, friend #1 was right. We always tend to think about possessive pronouns as behaving kind of like adjectives. However, some of them think they’re special, or something.

Take a look:

  • my – mój (singular, masc.), moja (singular, fem.), moje (singular, neuter), moi (plural, masculine-personal), moje (plural, all other)
  • your – twój, twoja, twoje, twoi, twoje
  • his – jego
  • her – jej
  • our – nasz, nasza, nasze, nasi, nasze
  • your – wasz, wasza, wasze, wasi, wasze
  • their – ich

And see this? Those guys that have only one form – jego, jej and ich don’t decline. The nouns they describe decline as usual, but those pronouns themselves – don’t.

All others that have all the “adjective-looking” forms behave like good little adjectives should.

And to the question of “why is that?” my answer still stands – because it’s Polish, that’s why!

 
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Cardinal Numbers

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Mar
4
2009

The post where I attempted to count priests (is it “dwaj księża” or “dwóch księży”?) made me realize that we’ve never talked about numbers before. Hmmm… I wonder why I’ve been avoiding this particular topic. Really, no reason at all.
Yeah, right!

Ok, in that case, let’s get started.

I’m sure that most, if not all of you, know the simple jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, etc already.
The good news that these simple, straightforward numbers are super easy. The bad news is that these simple, straightforward numbers are only used in algebra and accounting.

In normal conversations these simple, straightforward numbers morph into more complicated forms.

But first things first. What you need to remember is that numbers in Polish must agree in gender and case with the nouns that follow them. Yeah, yeah, they decline. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

So, let’s get some examples:

masculine personal noun:

  • mężczyzna – a man
  • jeden mężczyzna – one man
  • dwaj mężczyźni – two men
  • trzej mężczyźni – three men
  • czterej mężczyźni – four men

but:

  • pięciu mężczyzn – five men

See what happened with the noun here? Instead staying in Nominative, the case changed to… yeah, changed to what? It may look like it’s Genitive, but on closer inspection it seems to be Accusative. And to confuse the matters even further, regardless of what it seems, it’s used just like your regular, standard issue Nominative.

masculine non-personal noun:

  • pies – a dog
  • jeden pies– one dog
  • dwa psy – two dogs
  • trzy psy– three dogs
  • cztery psy – four dogs

but:

  • pięć psów – five dogs

Same thing here. You hit five and stuff happens.
Let’s see how it looks with a feminine noun:

feminine noun:

  • kobieta – a woman
  • jedna kobieta – one woman
  • dwie kobiety – two women
  • trzy kobiety – three women
  • cztery kobiety – four women

but:

  • pięć kobiet - five women

Woohoo! Here we go again. It’s the number five curse.

And one more left-
neuter noun:

  • jajko – an egg
  • jedno jajko – one egg
  • dwa jajka – two eggs
  • trzy jajka – three eggs
  • cztery jajka – four eggs

but

  • pięć jajek – five eggs

However, that’s not exactly totally true when it comes to neuter nouns. Dziecko (a child) is also a neuter noun. But strange things happen to it when you try to count those kids:

  • jedno dziecko – one child

but

  • dwoje dzieci – two children
  • troje dzieci – three children
  • czworo dzieci – four children
  • pięcioro dzieci – five children

See? Those pesky children – dzieci – stay the same no matter the number.

And what happens when you get to numbers above five? They still follow the same Accusative-like pattern.

And some important grammatical terms:

  • liczebnik (masc., pl. liczebniki) – numeral (number)
  • liczebnik główny – cardinal number
  • liczebnik porządkowy – ordinal number

This post should keep you busy counting various things at least until next week.
I am moving and will be bez internetu (without internet) until March 11th.
I will try to keep an eye on you and respond to comments from a cybercafe, or somesuch. (That is, if I manage to dig myself out from under all these boxes first!)

In the meantime, take care and do zobaczenia wkrótce (see you soon)!

 
Posted under Grammar, Vocabulary
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Genitive Case, part 4

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Feb
10
2009

Thomas asked what happened to audio files with pronunciation that I used to provide on this blog. I will be reunited with my own computer and microphone on March 10th and then pliki dźwiękowe (audio files) will be back. And I do plan to go back and provide them for all the posts where they’re currently missing. This will be dużo roboty (a lot of work) but I know it will help you a lot, too.

In the meantime, let’s answer Michael’s question: what is the difference between domy and domów?

Ah, time to review noun declensions, isn’t it? Domy is the nominative plural form of “dom” (house, home, building).
So, jeden dom (one house, home, building) and dwa domy (two houses, homes, buildings).

Remember the genitive case (dopełniacz)? We talked about it here and here and here.

And why am I bringing it up again? Because it just so happens that “domów” is the genitive case of “domy.”

Dom is a masculine noun with what we call in Polish a “hard stem.” And such masculine hard-stem nouns take the ending –ów in the genitive plural form.

Take a look:

  • Nominative (mianownik) - answers to questions: kto? co? (who? what?) – singular – dom
  • Genitive (dopełniacz) – answers to questions: kogo? czego? – singular – domu

And now in plural:

  • Nominative – domy
  • Genitive – domów

For example:

  • Ładne domy tutaj macie. – Nice houses you have here.
  • Nie widzę żadnych ładnych domów w tej okolicy. – I don’t see any nice houses in this area.

And as you can see, the adjective “ładny” (nice) declines along with the noun it describes – dom.

  • ładny (adj., fem: ładna, neuter: ładne, pl. personal: ładni, pl. all others: ładne) – pretty, nice.
 
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Dative Case, part 1

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Sep
17
2008

It’s been a while since we talked about our lovely Polish noun cases, so I thought we might get back to it today.

But first, I have a little treat for you. One of our readers, as it turned out, is also a very talented poet. I mean, you have to be talented to write a poem about Polish declensions. Yep. That’s exactly what Fran did. Just take a look:

In Case of Polish

The Polish language is quite curious.
Seven cases! Yes, they’re serious.
The Nominative Case is so exquisite.
Answers the question: who or what is it?

If there’s few or even many,
Or you tell me there’s not any,
Look for something that’s a possession.
Carefully listen for a preposition
Od, ze, do, dla, or koło
Genitive case does a solo.

Now I know it sounds amusing
To what, to whom – it’s just confusing!
But if you listen to the help I give,
I lend to you this case of Dative.

I see I need to get going soon
Of course, I’d like to fly to the moon
Just remember when passing through
That any old direct object will do
And action or motion to anyplace
Always results in the Accusative case.

Whether in front or behind, above, under or below
There’s one more thing that you need know
Transportation is fundamental
When the case is Instrumental

Although it may seem quite apparent
About “on”, “in”, “by”, or “after” it is inherent
That these are prepositions of locations.
(I thank you now, for your patience.)
We’ve arrived at the case called Locative
And all that’s left – hey you! Vocative!

By Polish learner
Frances Turner

Isn’t that just great, or what?! Thank you so much, Fran, for agreeing to include it in here.

I was going to talk about dative today, but no matter what I say now, after reading Fran’s poem, it won’t look very impressive.

So let’s just stick to the basics. Dative – in Polish – celownik. The English name of the case came from Latin “casus dativus”, but where the Polish name “celownik” came from I have no idea. “Celować” is a verb and it means to aim (at somebody). Obviously, somewhere along the way, there is a connection to this grammatical case.

Next time, we will discuss how, when and where this case is used. Now let me read Fran’s poem again. She basically did all the hard teaching for me, all I will need to do next time is to give you some usage examples. And voila!

 
Posted under Grammar
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