Polish/Basic grammar

= Introduction to verbs and conjugation =

Perfective vs Imperfective
Each Polish verb is either perfective or imperfective. Basically, perfective verbs imply completion, while imperfective verbs imply an ongoing action with no sense of completion.

Perfective verbs are sometimes created by adding a prefix (do-, na-, od-, po-, prze-, przy-, s-, u-, w-, wy-, z-, za-) to an imperfective verb, but not always - the prefix might also change the meaning slightly (e.g., "pisać" means "to write" and "napisać" - "to have written", but "przepisać" means "to rewrite" or "to copy the writing").

Example: czytać
The verb czytać has a very typical conjugation. Many (but not all) verbs ending in -ać conjugate in this way.

czytać, meaning "to read", is an imperfective verb. For now, we only look at the present tense:

In modern Polish, there is no grammatical difference between "W tej chwili czytam książkę." - I am reading a book right now - and "Codziennie czytam gazetę." - I read (the) paper every day.

Exercises
Przeczytać means "to have read". Polish does have an equivalent of the present perfect, but it may seem a bit unclear to an English speaker. Don't worry, there is a hidden logic to it. Remember that perfective verbs imply completion, so Przeczytam książkę means "I will read the book (and finish)." In other words, "I will have read the entire book (in the future)."

Note that, like in Spanish and Italian, subject pronouns (ja, ty, on, my, wy, oni) are usually omitted because they are redundant.

Let's try conjugating this verb (Click "▼" to check your answer):

kupować
Other ować verbs will follow this pattern.

kupować (to buy) is an imperfective verb.

This is how you conjugate it:

As you can see, it's quite regular.

Exercises
Let's try conjugating a verb of the same type. However, our chosen verb narysować (to have drawn a picture) happens to be a perfective verb. Therefore, when you conjugate it, you get the future tense.

Ok, let's start conjugating.

= Introduction to declension =

Polish has seven cases. Here's the basic idea - you should be familiar with it if you studied Latin at school:


 * The nominative case (lat. nominativus, pl. mianownik) - this is the "basic" form of a noun you'll find in the dictionary. In a sentence it serves as the subject:
 * The man went to the store.


 * The genitive case (lat. genetivus, pl. dopełniacz) - this is the possessive case (in English you just add 's. Believe me or not, the 's is the vestige of more complicated declension English used to have). Besides, the genitive is used for the direct object in negative sentences:
 * A country's citizens must defend its honour.
 * I did not buy the car.


 * The dative case (lat. dativus, pl. celownik) indicates the indirect object of a verb (To whom? or For whom?):
 * We told her the truth.
 * The man gave his daughter a book.
 * I made them dinner.


 * The accusative case (lat. accusativus, pl. biernik) - in sentences, noun in accusative is the direct object of an action:
 * I bought the car.


 * The instrumental case (lat. instrumentalis, pl. narzędnik) tells us with which? or how? an action is performed:
 * He shot it with the gun.


 * The locative case (in Latin this case merged with ablativus, pl. miejscownik) indicates a location of something/someone:
 * I live in China.


 * The vocative case (lat. vocativus, pl. wołacz) is for directly addressing a person:
 * Professor, are you O.K.?

Exercises
Which case should we use for the word or words in red?