Polish/Past tense

Polish verbs in the past
Past form of a verb is created by adding an ending to the present form of the verb:

Examples:


 * You sleep till noon. pl - Śpicie do południa. (Wy śpicie do południa)


 * You slept till noon. pl - Spaliście do południa. (Wy spaliście do południa)

Note: In Polish you can omit the personal subject pronoun (I, she, we, you..) in a sentence. It actually sounds much more natural to say:

Poszliśmy zjeść obiad o 1 po południu.

than

My poszliśmy zjeść obiad o 1 po południu.


 * They lost their way and called for a taxi. - Zgubili drogę i zadzwonili po taksówkę. (Oni zgubili drogę i zadzwonili po taksówkę) /  Zgubiły drogę i zadzwoniły po taksówkę. (about women)


 * I've seen that movie before. - Widziałem / Widziałam już wcześniej ten film.


 * When did you go there? - Kiedy tam pojechałeś?


 * Did you see the movie I was talking about? - Widziałeś / widziałaś ten film o którym mówiłem / mówiłam? (Czy widziałeś / widziałaś ten film o którym mówiłem / mówiłam?)


 * I had a dream that I was speaking Polish - Miałem sen, że mówiłem po polsku.


 * I woke up all sweaty. - Obudziłem się / Obudziłam się cały spocony/spocona.


 * We eat breakfast at 7 o'clock. - Jemy śniadanie o 7 rano. (My jemy śniadanie o 7 rano)


 * We were eating breakfast at 7 o'clock. - Jedliśmy śniadanie o 7 rano. (My jedliśmy śniadanie o 7 rano)


 * We ate breakfast at 7 o'clock. - Zjedliśmy śniadanie o 7 rano. (My zjedliśmy śniadanie o 7 rano)

Perfective and imperfective aspects of verbs
In Polish language there's a clear distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects of verbs. Some verbs (like być) occur only in one form which stands for both perfective and imperfective aspects. Therefore, the definite majority of verbs take a different form for it's perfective and imperfective aspects.

Rough explanation: which aspect of a verb shoud I choose when talking about the past?

 * When talking about complete actions (e.g. I have done something, I did something, I had done something) you should choose perfective form of the verb.


 * When talking about incomplete actions or to emphasise the time spent doing something (e.g. I was doing something, I have been doing something, I had been doing something) you should choose the imperfective form.


 * When talking about repeated action you should also choose the imperfective form (I did it every day).

Conjugation
być - to be

mieć - to have

a curiosity: in Polish cats say 'miau' pronounced like miał, not 'meow'

bić - beat (note the similarity in the imperfective aspect of the past tense of the verb być - to be)

As you can see, the perfective aspect of a verb can be created simply by adding a prefix or by changing the first letters of the imperfective form of a verb.

Also you must note that there might be more than one form of perfective aspect of a verb. Like in the case of the verb bić, there are two different perfective aspects of it:
 * zbić - to beat something or someone
 * pobić - to beat someone (especially to emphasise the violence of the act, e.g. in assault)

Stać się (impf aspect) / zostać (perf aspect) - to become

mówić - to speak

jeść - to eat

The perfective aspect is being created by adding z- in front of the verb jeść: ja z jadłam, my z jedliśmy, ty z jadłeś, etc.


 * At the end of the verbs you can see some endings, namely: -łem, -liście, -li, -ły These are very important in past tense, if you don't attach these endings, you aren't using the past tense!