Posts tagged with "imperfective"

Czytać – To read or not to read?

Posted by Katarzyna 4 Comments
Jun 28 2010

Czytać translated is Polish for to read. I had a long conversation with one of my family members, and they pointed out how this word was simple, yet a very effective learning tool when learning the Polish language. In fact, you can use this to conjugate many verbs ending in -ać. Now I did say many, NOT ALL. As with every rule, there are exceptions. However, this one gives you a great basis, because there are several verbs that have the  -ać ending.

This is an imperfective aspect verb, meaning that the action is one that is continuous or incomplete and has no known end. It can be conjugated in past, present and future tenses. So we’ll start with the present tense. Let’s conjugate the verb czytać:

Singular, 1st person   czytam (I am reading)
Singular, 2nd person   czytasz (You are reading)
Singular, 3rd person   czyta (He/she/it is reading)

Plural, 1st person   czytamy (We are reading)
Plural, 2nd person   czytacie (You are reading)
Plural, 3rd person   czytają (They are reading)

Now for the past tense, things get a little interesting. When the verb is conjugated, the ending is based on the gender of the noun that is performing the action.

Singular, 1st person male   czytałem (I read)
Singular, 1st person female czytałam (I read)
Singular, 2nd person male    czytałeś (You read)
Singular, 2nd person female    czytałaś (You read)
Singular, 3rd person male   czytał (He read)
Singular, 3nd person female   czytała (She read)
Singular, 3nd person neuter   czytało (It read)

Plural, 1st person male   czytaliśmy (We read)
Plural, 1st person female, neuter or non-personal   czytałyśmy (We read)
Plural, 2nd person male   czytaliście (You read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   czytałyście (You read)
Plural, 2nd personal male   czytali (They read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   czytały (They read)

And last but not least, we’ll go over the future tense of the verb:

Singular, 1st person male   będę czytał (I will read)
Singular, 1st person female będę czytała (I will read)
Singular, 2nd person male    będziesz czytał (You will read)
Singular, 2nd person female    będziesz czytała (You will read)
Singular, 3rd person male   będzie czytał (He will read)
Singular, 3nd person female   będzie czytała (She will read)
Singular, 3nd person neuter   będzie czytało (It will read)

Plural, 1st person male   będziemy czytali (We will read)
Plural, 1st person female, neuter or non-personal   będziemy czytały (We will read)
Plural, 2nd person male   będziecie czytali (You will read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   będziecie czytały (You will read)
Plural, 2nd personal male   będą czytali (They will read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   będą czytały (They will read)

* Side note, the future tense can also be będę czytać, będziesz czytać, będzie czytać, etc. Essentially, this is the conjugated form of być (to be) plus the infinitive czytać.

There it is; to read conjugated in the past, present and future tenses. When I started learning to read and write, it helped me to take the Polish conjugation and write them over and over. Maybe flash cards will work for you. Whatever method works for you, this is a great verb to start with and to learn the endings. I mentioned early on that there were several verbs that were conjugated like this one. A few more to get started with are:

kochać (to love)
witać (to greet)
śpiewać (to sing)
znać (to know)
pamiętać (to remember)
odwiedzać (to visit someone)
zwiedzać (to visit a place)

Lastly, I mentioned there were some that looked like they may be conjugated like this verb but are not. So as not to confuse the issue, I won’t get into them, however, a couple examples to look out for are the verbs spać (to sleep) and stać (to stand). We’ll go over these in another lesson. And speaking of which, please let us know what you do to help yourself learn Polish verb conjugations. Your little trick may help someone else out there struggling.

Do następnego czytania…

Singular, 1st person male   będę czytał (I will read)
Singular, 1st person female będę czytała (I will read)
Singular, 2nd person male    będziesz czytał (You will read)
Singular, 2nd person female    będziesz czytała (You will read)
Singular, 3rd person male   będzie czytał (He will read)
Singular, 3nd person female   będzie czytała (She will read)
Singular, 3nd person neuter   będzie czytało (It will read)

Plural, 1st person male   będziemy czytali (We will read)
Plural, 1st person female, neuter or non-personal   będziemy czytały (We will read)
Plural, 2nd person male   będziecie czytali (You will read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   będziecie czytały (You will read)
Plural, 2nd personal male   będą czytali (They will read)
Plural, 2nd personal female, neuter or non-personal   będą czytały (They will read)

Talking About Travel

Posted by Anna 1 Comment
Mar 12 2010

Adam’s last post about different vacation options in Poland made me think about travel in general.

Podróże (travels, journeys, trips) is a plural noun. Singular – podróż (feminine).
And podróżować (to travel) is the verb we need here.
So, what do you call a person that travels? Podróżnik, but that implies someone who travels seeking excitement, adventure and really wild things in unexplored lands. Someone who just goes somewhere by PKP, that’s “podróżny”.

Though from what I’m seeing and hearing, all the hip and cool kids who like to travel use the word “wyprawa” these days. Literally it means an expedition, and personally I’m not fond of hearing that someone is planning a “wyprawa” to Koh Samui in Thailand to sit on the beach and drink cocktails with little paper umbrellas in them. In my eyes, that’s not “wyprawa”, but “wycieczka”.

Wycieczka (feminine, plural: wycieczki) can be any trip of any length, but generally (at least in my eyes) does not imply any hardships along the way the way “wyprawa” would. Or maybe I’m simply a snob when it comes to travel.

And then we have these two confusing verbs:

  • zwiedzić (zwiedzać, imperfective), and
  • odwiedzić (odwiedzać, imperfective).

odwiedzić – to visit.
You can “odwiedzić” your babcia in Pcim Dolny, or you can odwiedzić Tokyo or Paris.

And once you are in Tokyo or Paris, then what you want to do is “zwiedzać”.

zwiedzać – to engage in the activity of sightseeing, to see the sights

But zwiedzić (perfective) implies not just sightseeing, but actually the whole enchilada of traveling and seeing a place. For example:
Zwiedziłam Tajlandię.
That would suggest that I visited more than just Koh Samui and in fact traveled around and saw a bit more of the country.

Confusing? Yes, it is. Even for me. And frankly, instead of talking about it, I would much rather go somewhere. Preferably somewhere warm.

Future Tense of Perfective and Imperfective Verbs

Posted by Anna No Comments
Aug 14 2009

One of you (once again, I can always count on you, my fab readers!) wanted to know more about this whole verb aspect issue. More specifically, how to tell whether a verb is perfective or imperfective by looking at its future tense form.

And finally, this is one thing that is actually very simple, easy and straightforward in Polish. Really!

Let’s use these two verbs that you should already know from the previous post about aspect: pomóc and pomagać (to help).

Which one of those is perfective? If you know how to create future tense forms of Polish verbs, finding out the aspect is a piece of cake.

Take a look at all the future tense forms of “pomóc”:

  • ja (I) – pomogę
  • ty (you, singular) – pomożesz
  • on, ona, ono (he, she, it) – pomoże
  • my (we) – pomożemy
  • wy (you, plural) – pomożecie
  • oni, one (they, masculine, feminine) – pomogą

and now let’s see what happens with “pomagać”:

  • ja (I) – będę pomagać (or for feminine “I” – będę pomagała; masculine – będę pomagał)
  • ty (you, singular) – będziesz pomagać (or for feminine you – będziesz pomagała; masculine – będziesz pomagał)
  • on, ona, ono (he, she, it) – będzie pomagać (or for she – będzie pomagała, he – będzie pomagał, it – będzie pomagało)
  • my (we) – będziemy pomagać (or for feminine we – będziemy pomagały; masculine or mixed gender – będziemy pomagali)
  • wy (you, plural) – będziecie pomagać (or for feminine you plural – będziecie pomagały; masculine or mixed gender – będziecie pomagali)
  • oni, one (they, masculine, feminine) – będą pomagać (or for feminine they – będą pomagały; masculine or mixed gender – będą pomagali)

See the difference? The perfective form is just a single word without any “będę” in front of it. And that’s exactly how you can tell if a verb is perfective or not. All the double bits with “będę/będziesz, etc” are imperfective verbs.

I told you it would be easy. What may not be easy is how to create all those future tense forms. But that’s a whole another story for another blog post.

Verb Aspect – one more time

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jul 28 2009

Agnieszka left a comment asking for help with explaining the difference between pomóc and pomagać (to help), and prosić and poprosić (to ask). And when a reader asks – I dig out my fat Swan’s “Polish Grammar” book and get cranking.

We’ve talked about this verb aspect thingie before. Because that’s what it’s called – aspect. And it has to do with how an action is conceived and executed – whether it’s completed, or habitual, or on-going, and what not.

In English it’s done through the many tenses: continuous, perfect, and so on. And in Polish the same thing is expressed through our many verb forms. Luckily, we’ll be talking only about two of those forms, because most Polish verbs have two aspects.

One is perfective, and it refers to an action which is completed – done and over with. But not just any old done and over with, but the kind that actually produces a change in the general state of things. The other aspect is imperfective and that one deals with all sorts of other types of actions: on-going, habitual and even actions that are completed, but which did not produce any change in the general state of things.

Confusing? Let’s try it again, this time using Agnieszka’s examples.

  • pomóc and pomagać – to help

Pomóc is a perfective verb. Why? It doesn’t have a present tense form.
You can only say:

  • ja pomogę (future tense), or
  • ja pomogłem (past tense masculine) or
  • ja pomogłam (past tense feminine)

If you want to say that you are helping someone right now, you have to use “pomagać” and say:

  • ja pomagam – present tense (all genders)

The easiest way to spot the difference between these two is when looking at their past tense forms:

  • pomóc – pomogłem, pomogłam (perfective)
  • pomagać – pomagałem, pomagałam (imperfective)

The first one (pomogłem, pomogłam) clearly shows that the action is finished and that we successfully managed to help. Our help brought results.

The second one, on the other hand, only tells us that we were helping and helping and helping and that’s it. We have absolutely no clue if our help actually worked. Or not.

So, what’s the deal with prosić and poprosić? Here it gets a bit funkier, because the perfective form of the verb is created by adding a prefix: “po-“ in this case.
And so “prosić” becomes “poprosić” – to ask

But don’t worry, all the other stuff applies just the same.
“Poprosić” is a perfective verb, and as such has no present tense. You can only say:

  • ja poproszę (future tense) or
  • ja poprosiłem (past tense masculine) or
  • ja poprosiłam (past tense feminine)

And now, let’s compare this with “prosić”:

  • ja proszę (present tense, all genders)

– yep, it has present tense, so it must be an imperfective verb!

And in the past tense:

  • ja prosiłem (past tense masculine) or
  • ja prosiłam (past tense feminine)

When “ja poprosiłam” I got some sort of reaction from the person I was asking. My action of asking them is done.

But when “ja prosiłam” I was doing it over and over and got no results. And frankly, we can’t really tell if I’m completely done with all that asking, or not.

Polish verb aspect is not an easy thing to learn, but one of our readers suggested this thing: learn both verbs as totally separate words, don’t pair them up. I’ve tried that and it works. It seems like a lot more work in the beginning, but once when you get the hang of it, it’s actually a very effective way to get all this aspect mess nicely sorted out.

Good luck!

Even More Perfective and Imperfective Goodness

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jan 20 2009

Yes, I am still enjoying myself in Antigua and Barbuda. But I couldn’t just go away and leave you without a new post.
So, I thought we might as well continue with the perfective and imperfective stuff. It’s always a pain to learn, and I’m pretty sure we could keep talking about for the next 10 weeks and not get bored.

Remember how I mentioned once before that some Polish verbs turn from imperfective into perfective through the use of prefixes? I read somewhere that there are about 18 of those prefixes, but fortunately for us, these eight are the most common:

  • na-
  • z-
  • za-
  • po-
  • u-
  • o-
  • prze-
  • wy-

And I know you’re just itching to see them in action. So, here they come, just a few examples:

  • czytać (imperfective) – przeczytać (perfective) – to read
  • golić (imperfective) – ogolić (perfective) – to shave
  • słyszeć (imperfective) – usłyszeć (perfective) – to hear
  • pisać (imperfective) – napisać (perfective) – to write
  • rozumieć (imperfective) – zrozumieć (perfective) – to understand
  • robić (imperfective) – zrobić (perfective) – to do
  • płacić (imperfective) – zapłacić (perfective) – to pay
  • pić (imperfective) – wypić (perfective) – to drink
  • jechać (imperfective) – pojechać (perfective) – to ride, to go (not no foot),
  • dziękować (imperfective) – podziękować (perfective) – to thank
  • gotować (imperfective) – ugotować (perfective) – to cook
  • prosić (imperfective) – poprosić (perfective) – to ask
  • myć (imperfective) – umyć (perfective) – to wash
  • dzwonić (imperfective) – zadzwonić (perfective) – to ring, to call on the phone

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict which prefix goes with which verb. Sometimes a prefix that makes one verb perfective can completely change the meaning of another verb. So, sadly, the only way to figure it out is to memorize the verbs and the prefixes as you go along.

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