Posts tagged w/ nouns

Who’s Who in the Family

Posted by Anna Ikeda
May
22
2009

Today’s post is about something that even I have problems with. Brother’s wife wife’s brother and sister’s husband and husband’s sister and sister’s daughter’s best friend’s neighbor’s son. Or something like that.

Either I’m monumentally stupid, or it’s really easy in English. Just stick “in-law” at the end of anything you’re not quite sure of (when talking about the “other” side of the family) and voila, your work there is done. So, whether you’re talking about your wife’s sister or your brother’s wife, you simply say “my sister in-law”, right?

Well, it’s not quite so easy in Polish (why would it, it’s Polish after all!) and all these people have their own individual names.
So, to be sure I get it right (because I hardly ever get it right) I consulted a book and my aunt. And while sometimes even Polish dictionaries can’t agree on what is correct, I know for a fact that my aunt is never wrong.

OK, so here’s the list (according to the book and my aunt):

  • brother’s wife – żona brata – bratowa
  • sister’s husband – mąż siostry – szwagier
  • wife’s brother – brat żony – szwagier
  • wife’s sister – siostra żony – szwagierka
  • husband’s sister – siostra męża – szwagierka

And there’s more:

  • sister’s daughter – córka siostry – siostrzenica
  • brother’s daughter – córka brata – bratanica
  • sister’s son – syn siostry – siostrzeniec
  • brother’s son – syn brata – bratanek

And now for the fun part, because we all love our in-laws, right?

  • daughter’s husband – mąż córki – zięć
  • son’s wife – żona syna – synowa

and

  • wife’s (or husband’s) father – ojciec żony (lub męża) – teść
  • wife’s (or husband’s) mother – matka żony (lub męża) – teściowa

When it comes to people like mother’s brother or father’s brother, back in the olden days (like about 20 years ago) they were called “wuj” and “stryj” respectively. But now, they’re just called “wuj”, or diminutively “wujek”, regardless of whose brothers they are.

And how for example would my father refer to my husband’s father in Polish? I have no idea. My dad has no idea either. He just said “father of my son-in-law” (ojciec mojego zięcia). Hey, works for me!

PS. And just to see if you remember your noun cases, can you tell which one we’ve been using today to describe all these people?

 
Posted under Grammar, Polish Language, Vocabulary
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Polish Diminutives - one more time

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Apr
7
2009

I think I should add a brief explanation regarding my previous post on diminutive proper names.

I am fully aware that if you really want to you can create zdrobnienia of just about any name out there, including Agnieszka, for example. The difference between some names and others is this: while very few perfect strangers would think to address a grown woman they don’t know as “Pani Agusia” (Agnieszka), they consider it perfectly normal and natural to say “Pani Krysia” (Krystyna) or “Pani Asia” (Joanna).

A few weeks ago when I was calling the pharmacy to find out if my prescriptions were ready for pick up, the pharmacist said this: “Pani Aneczko, lekarstewka są gotowe” (polite Pani, then my name in one of its diminutive forms, medicines are ready). For a sec I had to think who this “Pani Aneczka” was. And no, I’m not friends with the lady who works at the pharmacy, I don’t even know her name. But just because she knows my name, where I live and what kind of yeast infection treatment I use, she thinks it gives her the right to call me “Pani Aneczka”???

And “lekarstewka”??? Isn’t it a bit of an overkill? But unfortunately, this is what happens in Polish.

  • lekarstwo (neuter, plural: lekarstwa) – medicine

The pharmacist used “lekarstewka” – plural of “lekarstewko”, which would be what exactly, huh? Itsy bitsy medicine?

This use of diminutives in every day conversations is so widespread, that I don’t even remember the last time I was offered something other than “herbatka” (tea, diminutive) or “kawka” (“kawunia” or “kawusia” in some cases, either way, it’s coffee, diminutive) to accompany a “ciasteczko” (cake, diminutive) or a “kawałeczek placuszka z jabłuszkami” (piece of apple pie/cake, diminutive).

You know you are fully fluent in Polish when you stop getting confused if I asked at the store whether you prefer “szyneczka” (ham, diminutive) or “polędwiczka” (different kind of ham, diminutive). And then make your own “kanapeczki z pomidorkiem i ogóreczkiem” (sandwiches with tomato and cucumber, diminutive) with “plastereczki” (slices, diminutive) of either your “szyneczka” or “polędwiczka“.

Though wait a sec here.

“Kanapka” is one of those goofy nouns. It’s a diminutive already – of “kanapa” which means “sofa.” But “kanapka” is a sandwich. And “kanapeczka” (sandwich, diminutive) is what you may offer your unexpected guests for a quick lunch. And oh yeah, “kanapeczka” doesn’t have to be small. One of my friends makes “kanapeczki” (plural of diminutive sandwiches) the size of wagon wheels.

And now, if you excuse me, because this is tydzień wielkanocny (Easter week), I have been tasked with preparing a traditional Polish Easter in this far-away exotic land that I am currently visiting. So, I need to go out and buy “jajeczka” (eggs, diminutive) to make “pisaneczki” (painted eggs, diminutive) and sort out a nice “koszyczek” (basket, diminutive) for “święconeczka” (diminutive of “święconka“ which is an assortment of food put in a basket and taken to church to be blessed on Great/Holy Saturday.)

There’s no church here to take my “święconka“ to, but I guess it’s the thought that counts, right?

Wesołych Świąt Wielkiej Nocy!!! - Happy Easter!!!

 
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Gender and Occupations, continued…

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Mar
28
2009

Remember when I mentioned that the EU head honchos in Brussels want us to stop using gender specific names for professions? I also said that it was something I agreed with.

Wow! I never thought that that particular post would provoke so many emails. Both for and against.

But you see, we already have many nouns for occupations and professions that are gender–neutral. Or at least they are now, because the same form is used by both men and women.

I have a friend, a female friend, who works on a cargo vessel. She refers to herself as “marynarz” (sailor). Another young woman I know lists her job as “pilot”. And I don’t mean here a tour guide (known in Polish as “pilot wycieczek”), she is a real pilot flying planes for a shipping company.

To that, we can add tons of other women, who can say they are:

  • inżynier – engineer
  • oficer - officer
  • kierowca - driver
  • lekarz - doctor - even though, there is a female form – “lekarka” most women doctors I spoke to agreed they preferred the masculine version - “lekarz”
  • weterynarz - veterinarian
  • architekt - architect
  • strażak – fire fighter
  • redaktor - editor - same as with doctors, ladies who do this job, refer to themselves using the male term – “redaktor” and when necessary add “naczelna” making “redaktor naczelna” if they are editors-in-chief. (I actually called several magazines to ask their editors about it.)

Why do they prefer the male noun? For exactly the same reason that Russ mentioned in his comment to the previous post on this subject.
Take the word “autor” for example. It means “writer” or “author” or “male writer” or “male author.”
“Autorka”, on the other hand, makes it very clear we are talking about a female.

So if I say that “Moja ulubiona polska autorka to Joanna Chmielewska” does it mean that Joanna Chmielewska is my favorite Polish female writer? Or my favorite Polish writer in general? Or should I rather say that “Mój ulubiony polski autor to Joanna Chmielewska”?

Why do I have to distinguish if my favorite writer is male or female? If I were talking about Bharati Mukherjee for example, we wouldn’t have this problem, simply because most people wouldn’t know anyway. Then why do we do it in Polish? Personally, I would say that “Mój ulubiony polski autor to Joanna Chmielewska”, because I prefer her humorous crime stories to other books by Polish authors, be it male or female. (What can I say? I’m not really into heavy-duty literature. Pity Ms. Chmielewska’s books have not been translated into English yet.)

And then, what do we do with those occupations that have been performed by females for so long that we don’t even think about how they would sound in their male versions? Or if they even have masculine forms at all.

In English it’s simple. A nurse is a nurse, regardless of his/her gender. In Polish, a nurse is definitely female, almost by default – pielęgniarka.
The male form – pielęgniarz just sounds awkward and stiff. I had a hard time finding a male nurse in Poland, but when I finally did, and we chatted on skype last week, I asked him what he preferred to be called.

He said, “you know what Anna, either word is fine, heck, any word is fine, as long as the old ladies in my care would finally accept me as a fully qualified, competent nurse. But still… it must be even worse to be a male kindergarten teacher…”

And yeah, he had a point. Female kindergarten teachers are “przedszkolanki” (singular: przedszkolanka). What on earth do you call a guy? Definitely not “przedszkolak” (kindergartener). :)

PS. The male nurse said that most of the time, everybody, his patients and female co-workers call him “rodzynek” (raisin), meaning he’s the only one of his kind.

 
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Polish Numbers Revisited

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Mar
12
2009

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th (piątek, trzynastego) but instead of writing about superstitions (przesądy), I thought we should take another look at liczebniki (numbers) instead.

A number (no pun intended) of you had questions about numbers, and since they are all very valid questions, it’s more convenient to answer them in a separate blog post, instead of diddling in the comments section.

So, let’s take it from the top:

Pinolona wanted to know how to order food and specify the quantity. She already knows how it works with drinks:

  • proszę jedno piwo, dwa piwa, pięć piw, etc…

It all comes down to cases, really. When you ask for something, in Polish you ask for kogo? co? These questions answer to only one specific case, and that is the accusative case.

UPDATE:

REVISED GRAMMAR EXPLANATION BELOW!

After I posted it yesterday, I’ve been thinking all night about pretzels, and finally got up to consult my brand new “Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” and wouldn’t you know it, precel is one of those evil nouns that has not one, but TWO correct accusative forms. So, Pinolona was right and my original explanation was correct, too.

So, if you ask for precle (pretzels), you say this:

  • jeden precel proszę or jednego precla proszę (hehehe!), dwa precle proszę, pięć precli proszę, etc.

Just a reminder - precel is a non-personal masculine noun. And a totally confusing noun, because in the accusative form you can say either:

  • jeden precel, or
  • jednego precla

But if you say “jednego precla” you might also be using the genitive case of this horrible noun. That one answers to questions: kogo? czego? In casual speech you will hear plenty of people asking for “jednego precla” or “jeden precel“, and as it turns out - both are correct. Just be careful! When asking for stuff, you use the accusative case, when talking about stuff you don’t have - the genitivie case.

Instead of precel, let’s try to buy rower (a bicycle, also a non-personal, non-animate masculine noun) and see what happens. Not that you’d ever try to buy more than one bike, but who knows, you might be buying for a whole family, ok?

  • jeden rower proszę - one bike please  - asking for kogo? co? - accusative)
  • jednego roweru nie mam - one bike is missing, literally: I don’t have one bike (you’re counting your family’s bikes parked outside, for example) - when talking about stuff you don’t have, it’s kogo? czego? - genitive)

You can see the difference super clearly when you start asking for feminine nouns, for example – róże (roses). Proszę o (kogo? co?):

  • jedną różę, dwie róże, trzy róże, cztery róże (though someone once told me you should never buy an even number of flowers) and pięć róż.

So far, so good…

Now, take a look at those roses in the genitive case (kogo? czego?):

jednej róży, dwóch róż, trzech róż, czterech róż, pięciu róż, etc.

You wouldn’t ask for “pięciu róż” at the florist, now would you? You’d ask for (kogo? co?) pięć róż.

So, if you are still in doubt when it comes to numbers, try to quickly check how those numbers behave when attached to a noun of a different gender. Just avoid those nouns that have two correct accusative forms and you should be fine.

This ties in nicely with Russ’s comment about the accusative/genitive confusion. Here’s a copy of my reply to him (with additional information added for everyone’s benefit):

If you are just talking about straight plurals, without any numerals, then you have psy, kobiety, (dogs, women) etc… THEN their accusative case is psy, kobiety. That’s just simple plurals. Things get really strange if you add a number to the noun.

If you say “pięć psów” (five dogs), that answers both to: kto? co? (nominative) and kogo? co? (accusative). In the genitive case, it would answer to kogo? czego? - pięciu psów.

So, for example:

  • kto/co to jest? - pięć psów, sześć kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (nominative - as in: kto? co?)
  • kogo/co widzimy? - pięć psów, sześć kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (accusative - as in: kogo? co?)
  • kogo/czego nie ma? - pięciu psów, sześciu kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (genitive - as in: kogo? czego?)

Now the difference is very clear.

I thought reposting this comment here would be a good idea, since those numbers are indeed funky and make the nouns behave differently than they would otherwise normally do.

And finally, Barb had a real killer. She wanted to know how to translate the following sentence: “Lucas and two of his friends got lost.” Ouch! How closely translated do you need it?

  • Łukasz wraz z dwoma kolegami zabłądzili.

This would be how it should look in Polish. If you say “Łukasz i dwaj koledzy”, that appears to be correct, but sounds goofy.

So, just to show you that even native Poles would mess this one up, I decided to conduct a little poll and ask what the masses on the street would say. Or rather, the masses in my living room, as I had a house full of people at that time. The masses were more or less equally divided between “Łukasz i jego dwaj koledzy zabłądzili” and “Łukasz i dwóch jego kolegów zabłądzili.”

Which one is correct? I consulted my brand new “Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” and according to the explanations there it’s “kto (who) zabłądził (got lost)?” Kto (who) is Łukasz i dwaj koledzy (nominative). However, this is good only for a short answer.

If you stretch it into a full sentence, it sounds odd. Therefore, we tend to automatically say that “Łukasz z dwoma kolegami zabłądzili.”

And just for the fun of it, let’s take a look at what would happen if those friends were female (koleżanki). This makes it very clear:

“Łukasz i dwie koleżanki zabłądzili” sounds odd (though this is exactly the sort of stuff one tends to find in Polish grammar workbooks for foreign learners).

We’d say - “Łukasz wraz z dwoma koleżankami zabłądzili.”

And that would make Lucas a very lucky man…

 
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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)!

 
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