Polish/Neuter noun declension

= Neuter noun declension =

The neuter gender in Polish is least common. Many neuter words end in "-o" and their declension is somewhat similar to inanimate-masculine.

The archaic instrumental oczyma doesn't have much to do with the neuter gender - it was the Indoeuropean dual number (for a pair of things), which disappeared in almost all modern Indo-European languages. You can still find it in some expressions.

In the singular locative "krześle" you can see how softening works on a group of consonants – all consonants are softened, in that case "s" changes to "ś" and "ł" to "l".

As with other declensions, "e" may appear between two final consonants if there is no vowel after them ("null" ending).

The plural instrumental is "-ami"/"-iami" in almost all nouns, and "-imi"/"-ymi" in almost all adjectives. Here you can see one of the exceptions. For some historical reasons "a" disappeared and we have "-ćmi" instead of the expected "-ciami".

In the case of "dziecko", "oko" and "ucho" you can see that a slightly different form is used as the base for the singular and plural forms. This is also quite archaic.

If you find some neuter noun, try to decline it rather like "piwo", "krzesło" and "ciastko" rather than like "dziecko", "oko" or "ucho".

Examples:
 * Dziecko je ciastka - child eats cakes (cake in accusative)
 * Dzieci nie piją piwa - children don't drink beer (beer in genitive)
 * Oczy Piotra są zielone - Piotr's eyes are green (eyes in nominative, Piotr in genitive, green in nominative)
 * Kot jest na krześle - cat is on chair (chair in locative)


 * zielone - plural neuter form of adjective "green"

Neuter nouns ending in "-e" or "-ę"
The most common template is: Other templates are: