Posts tagged with "declensions"

Genitive Case, part 4

Posted by Anna No Comments
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.

Dative Case, part 1

Posted by Anna No Comments
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!

Genitive Case, part 3

Posted by Anna No Comments
Aug 18 2008


I just realized that we’ve never really finished talking about the genitive case (dopełniacz in Polish). My bad. We had too much fun with all the other things, lazy males and beetle tongue-twisters, and we totally forgot about the declensions. So, let’s get it done and over with this genitive.

I told you that in Polish this case has five different uses, or rather, it’s used in five different situations. We’ve already covered four of them, if I remember correctly. I didn’t really want to talk about the last one, because needless to say, it’s my least favorite, and that’s why I’ve been procrastinating.

Anyway, let’s quickly recap. The genitive case is used:

  • 1. to indicate when something (or someone) belongs to someone
  • 2. when a verb affecting the object expresses negation
  • 3. in expressions of quantity
  • 4. in expressions of description or origin

and finally, the last one:

  • 5. with certain verbs.

Read More »

Genitive Case, part 2

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jul 21 2008

Since we’re in the midst of a little grammar kick, I thought we might as well continue. But to keep things interesting, we should let the adjectives rest for a while and talk about something else. Remember when we discussed the genitive case – dopełniacz? Yes, I know, it was a while back. So here I’m going to give you some time to go and read the past entry about dopełniacz. It’s no rush, I’ll be here when you’re done. In the meantime, while you’re busy reading, I will prepare some new interesting dopełniacz examples.

OK, you’re back? That was quick!

Last time when talking about dopełniacz, I said that it has five different functions in Polish. And I think we discussed two of them in that post. Let’s review:

Read More »

Cases in Polish: Genitive

Posted by Anna 12 Comments
Jun 27 2008

It’s time for some grammar now, don’t you agree? And since we’ve already started with nouns and declensions a couple of weeks ago, I think we should continue.

The case we’re going to discuss today is my least favorite. Why? Because on the surface, it seems deceptively easy. Almost too easy, in fact. Yet when you start looking at it up close, it’s anything but. Of course, in everyday speech we don’t stop to think, “oh gee, there’s a genitive in this sentence”. We just say what we need to say without paying much (or any) attention to the grammatical bits and pieces.

And yes, it’s time for the GENITIVE case today.
dopełniacz = genitive

You all know what the genitive case does in English. It shows that one noun is the possessor of another noun. And it also indicates various relationships other than who owns whom or what. In English, in it most basic form it’s done by the handy construction of “apostrophe plus s”. Like this one:
Agata’s cat.

Actually, as several generations of Polish children know, it’s not Agata, but Ala, who has a cat. So let’s keep the tradition alive and add Ala to our examples:
Ala’s cat.

That’s in English, stick an apostrophe and an “s” and your work is done. In Polish it’s not quite as simple, because to decline a noun you need to change its ending. In this example, our nouns are two lovely ladies named Agata and Ala. Read More »

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