Thegrammar of thePolish language is complex and characterized by a high degree ofinflection, and has relatively freeword order, although the dominant arrangement issubject–verb–object (SVO). There commonly are noarticles (although this has been a subject of academic debate), and there is frequentdropping of subject pronouns. Distinctive features include the different treatment ofmasculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar ofnumerals andquantifiers.[1]
Certain regular or commonalternations apply across the Polish inflectional system, affecting the morphology of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and other parts of speech. Some of these result from therestricted distribution of the vowelsi andy, and from thevoicing rules for consonants in clusters and at the end of words. Otherwise, the main changes are the following:
Polish retains the OldSlavic system ofcases fornouns,pronouns, andadjectives. There are seven cases:nominative(mianownik),genitive(dopełniacz),dative(celownik),accusative(biernik),instrumental(narzędnik),locative(miejscownik), andvocative(wołacz).
Polish has twonumber classes: singular and plural.
It used to also have thedual number, but it vanished around the 15th century. It survived only in a fewrelicts:
For true nouns (not for adjectives), there are three cases that always have the same ending in the plural, regardless of gender or declension class: dative plural in-om, instrumental plural in-ami or-mi, and locative plural in-ach; the only apparent exception being nouns that are in fact inflected as previouslydual nouns, ex.rękoma instrumental plural ofręka "hand".
There are three maingenders (rodzaje): masculine (męski), feminine (żeński) and neuter (nijaki). Masculine nouns are further divided into personal (męskoosobowy), animate (męskożywotny), and inanimate (męskorzeczowy) categories. Personal and animate nouns are distinguished from inanimate nouns in the accusative singular; for the latter the accusative is identical to the nominative. In the plural, the masculine personal nouns are distinguished from all others, which collapse into one non-masculine personal gender (niemęskoosobowy).
The following tables show this distinction using as examples the nounsmężczyzna 'man' (masc. personal),pies 'dog' (masc. animate),stół 'table' (masc. inanimate),kobieta 'woman' (feminine),okno 'window' (neuter). The following table presents examples of how a determinerten/ta/to ("this") agrees with nouns of different genders in the nominative and the accusative, both singular and plural. Adjectives inflect similarly to this determiner.
| singular | plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nom. | acc. | nom. | acc. | ||
| masculine | personal | ten mężczyzna ten pies ten stół | tego mężczyznę tego psa | ci mężczyźni | tych mężczyzn |
| animate | te psy te stoły te kobiety te okna | ||||
| inanimate | ten stół | ||||
| feminine | ta kobieta | tę kobietę | |||
| neuter | to okno | ||||
For verbs, the distinction is only important for past forms in the plural, as in the table below:
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | personal | mężczyznabiegał piesbiegał stółbiegał | mężczyźnibiegali |
| animate | psybiegały stołybiegały kobietybiegały oknabiegały | ||
| inanimate | |||
| feminine | kobietabiegała | ||
| neuter | oknobiegało | ||
The numeraldwa ("two"), on the other hand, behaves differently, merging masculine non-personal with neuter, but not with feminine:
| plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| nom. | acc. | ||
| masculine | personal | dwaj mężczyźni | dwóch mężczyzn |
| animate | dwa psy dwa stoły dwa okna | ||
| inanimate | |||
| neuter | |||
| feminine | dwie kobiety | ||
Gender can usually be inferred from the ending of a noun.
Masculine:
Feminine:
Neuter:
The distinction between personal, animate and inanimate nouns within masculine nouns is largely semantic, although not always.
Personal nouns are comprised by human nouns such asmężczyzna 'man' orsędzia 'male judge', personal names of men, as well as the nounbóg 'male god' and proper names of male gods (e.g.Rod "Rod",Jowisz "Jupiter").
Animate nouns are largely comprised by animals such aspies ("dog") orpawian ("baboon"), many members from otherlife domains, as well as a number of objects associated with human activity. On the morphological level however, such nouns are only partially similar to animate nouns, having their accusative identical to their genitive only in the singular.
Some examples :
Contrary to fungi and bacteria, most plant names of masculine gender are inanimate, e.g.żonkil ("daffodil"),hiacynt ("hyacinth"),dąb ("oak"),cis ("yew tree"), which are all inanimate. The noungoździk ("carnation") is an exception as a masculine animate. Not all technological loanwords are animate either, e.g. inanimatemodem,telefon ("telephone, cellphone"), andtranzystor ("transistor").Robot can be treated as animate or inanimate.
It is common for personal masculine nouns to change gender to inanimate to create semantic neologisms, for exampleedytor ("editor", pl.ci edytorzy) andedytor (tekstu) ("word processor software", pl.te edytory).
For non-living objects that represent humans (e.g. in games), personal masculine nouns usually change gender to animate; for example, the wordkról ("king"), which is masculine-personal when referring toa monarch (pl.ci królowie), becomes masculine-animate when referring tothe playing card orthe chess piece (pl.te króle).
There are also a few pairs of homographs that completely change their meaning depending on their gender. Examples are:
Homographs that differ only by their gender can also occur in some Polish place names; for example, the town ofOstrów (Wielkopolski) is masculine, while the town ofOstrów (Mazowiecka) is feminine.
Typical declension patterns are as follows:
| Case | klub (club) masculine inanimate męski nieożywiony | mapa (map) feminine żeński | mięso (meat) neuter nijaki | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative (mianownik) | klub | kluby | mapa | mapy | mięso | mięsa |
| Accusative (biernik) | mapę | |||||
| Vocative (wołacz) | klubie | mapo | ||||
| Locative (miejscownik) | klubach | mapie | mapach | mięsie | mięsach | |
| Dative (celownik) | klubowi | klubom | mapom | mięsu | mięsom | |
| Genitive (dopełniacz) | klubu | klubów | mapy | map | mięsa | mięs |
| Instrumental (narzędnik) | klubem | klubami | mapą | mapami | mięsem | mięsami |
A common deviation from the above patterns is that many masculine nouns have genitive singular in-a rather than-u. This includes all personal and animate masculines (ending in a consonant). Also masculine animate nouns have accusative singular equal to the genitive singular (in-a). Masculine personal nouns also have accusative plural equal to genitive plural, and often have nominative plural in-i.
The following table shows the endings nouns in singular receive in different cases.
| Case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genitive | -a (All animate nouns, plus certain other inanimate nouns; see below) -u (All other inanimate nouns) | -y (After hardened and hard consonants, except k and g) -i (After soft consonants plus k and g) | -a (All nouns) |
| Dative | -owi (Most nouns) -u (Only certain nouns; see below) | -e (After hard consonants) -y (After hardened consonants)-i (After soft consonants) | -u (All nouns) |
| Accusative | -a (All animate nouns, plus certain other inanimate nouns; see below) -∅ (All other inanimate nouns) | -ę (Nouns ending with-a,-yni, or-ini) -∅ (Nouns ending with consonants)-ą (Only used for the word "pani") | -∅ (All nouns) |
| Instrumental | -em (Most nouns) -iem (After k and g) | -ą (All nouns) | -em (Most nouns) -iem (After k and g) |
| Locative | -e (After hard consonants except k, g, and ch) -u (After soft and hardened consonants plus k, g, and ch) | -e (After hard consonants) -y (After hardened consonants)-i (After soft consonants) | -e (After hard consonants except k, g, and ch) -u (After hard and hardened consonants plus k, g, and ch) |
| Vocative | -e (After hard consonants except k, g, and ch) -u (After soft and hardened consonants plus k, g, and ch) | -o (Most nouns) -u (After soft consonants in personal nouns)-y (After hardened consonants in impersonal nouns)-i (After soft consonants and w in impersonal nouns) | -∅ (All nouns) |
In accusative and genitive cases, inanimate nouns treated as animate (see thesemantic membership section above) also receive the-a endings. In the genitive case only, many inanimate nouns ending with-ak,-nik,-ek,-us, as well as many of those that end with a hardened or soft consonant also receive-a.
In dative case, several masculine nouns receive the ending-u instead of-owi. There are:Bóg,brat,chłop,chłopiec,diabeł,kot,ksiądz,książę,lew,łeb,ojciec,pan,pies,świat,wół. Additionally, a few nouns can have either-owi or-u as their dative ending. These are:czart,kat,orzeł,osioł.
The following table shows the endings nouns in plural receive in different cases.
| Case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | Impersonal | |||
| Nominative | -i (After hard consonants except f, ł, or (c)h, k, g, and r) -y (After k, g, r, -ec, and -ca) -owie (After f, ł, (c)h, and -ek) -e (After soft and hardened consonants) | -y (Most nouns) -i (After k and g) -e (After soft and hardened consonants) | -y (Most nouns) -i (After k, g, and -(o)ść)-e (Nouns ending with soft and hardened consonant) | -a (All nouns) |
| Genitive | -ów (After hard consonants and c) -y (After hardened consonants)-i (After soft consonants) | -∅ (After hard consonants and c) -y (After hardened consonants)-i (After soft consonants) | ||
| Dative | -om (All nouns) | |||
| Accusative | -ów (After hard consonants) -y (After hardened consonants)-i (After soft consonants) | -y (Most nouns) -i (After k and g) -e (After soft and hardened consonants) | -y (Most nouns) -i (After k, g, and -(o)ść)-e (Nouns ending with soft and hardened consonant) | -a (All nouns) |
| Instrumental | -ami (All nouns) | |||
| Locative | -ach (All nouns) | |||
| Vocative | Same as nominative | |||
Adjectives agree with the noun they modify in terms of gender, number and case. They are declined according to the following pattern (dumny means "proud"):
| Case | Singular number | Plural number | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine animate męski ożywiony | Masculine inanimate męski nieożywiony | Neuter nijaki | Feminine żeński | Masculine personal męskoosobowy | Not masculine personal niemęskoosobowy, i.e. masculine impersonal, feminine, and neutral | |
| Nominative (mianownik) | dumny | dumne | dumna | dumni | dumne | |
| Vocative (wołacz) | ||||||
| Accusative (biernik) | dumnego | dumny | dumną | dumnych | ||
| Instrumental (narzędnik) | dumnym | dumnymi | ||||
| Locative (miejscownik) | dumnej | dumnych | ||||
| Genitive (dopełniacz) | dumnego | |||||
| Dative (celownik) | dumnemu | dumnym | ||||
For a table showing the declension of Polish adjectival surnames, ending in-ski/-ska or-cki/-cka, seeDeclension of adjectival surnames.
Most short adjectives have a comparative form in-szy or-iejszy, and a superlative obtained by prefixingnaj- to the comparative.For adjectives that do not have these forms, the wordsbardziej ("more") andnajbardziej ("most") are used before the adjective to make comparative and superlative phrases.
Adverbs are formed from adjectives with the endingie, or in some cases-o. Comparatives of adverbs are formed (where they exist) with the ending-iej. Superlatives have the prefixnaj- as for adjectives.
Thepersonal pronouns of Polish (nominative forms) areja ("I"),ty ("you", singular,familiar),on ("he", or "it" corresponding to masculine nouns),ona ("she", or "it" corresponding to feminine nouns),ono ("it" corresponding to neuter nouns),my ("we"),wy ("you", plural, familiar),oni ("they", corresponding to a masculine personal group – seeNoun syntax below),one ("they" in other cases; group where there are only girls/women).
Instead ofpolite second-person pronouns, Polish uses the nounspan ("gentleman, Mr"),pani ("lady, Mrs") and their pluralspanowie, panie ascourtesy titles (seeT-V distinction in Polish). The mixed-sex plural ispaństwo. All second-person pronouns and courtesy titles are often capitalized for politeness, in letters etc.
| Case | Singular | Plural | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||
| masc. | neut. | fem. | masc. pers. | non- masc. | |||||
| Nominative (mianownik) | ja | ty | on | ono | ona | my | wy | oni | one |
| Vocative (wołacz) | |||||||||
| Accusative (biernik) | mnie[a] mię[b][c] | ciebie[a] cię[b] | jego[a] go[b] niego[d] | je nie[d] | ją nią[d] | nas | was | ich nich[d] | je nie[d] |
| Genitive (dopełniacz) | jego[a] go[b] niego[d] | jej niej[d] | ich nich[d] | ||||||
| Locative (miejscownik) | mnie | tobie | nim | niej | nich | ||||
| Dative (celownik) | mnie[a] mi[b] | tobie[a] ci[b] | jemu[a] mu[b] niemu[d] | jej niej[d] | nam | wam | im nim[d] | ||
| Instrumental (narzędnik) | mną | tobą | nim | nią | nami | wami | nimi | ||
Subject pronouns (except for the polite second-person pronouns) can bedropped if the meaning is clear and they are not emphasized. Sometimes there are alternative forms available for a given personal pronoun in a given case:
Thereflexive pronoun for all persons and numbers issię.
Thepossessive adjectives (also used as possessive pronouns) derived from the personal pronouns aremój,twój,jego (m., n.)/jej (f.);nasz,wasz,ich. There is also a reflexive possessiveswój. The polite second-person pronouns have possessives identical to the genitives of the corresponding nouns, although there is a possessive adjectivepański corresponding topan.
Thedemonstrative pronoun, also used as a demonstrative adjective, isten (feminineta, neuterto, masculine personal pluralci, other pluralte). The prefixtam- can be added to emphasize a more distant referent ("that" as opposed to "this").
Interrogative pronouns arekto ("who") andco ("what"); these also provide the pronounsktoś/coś ("someone/something"),ktokolwiek/cokolwiek ("anyone/anything"),nikt/nic ("no one/nothing").
The usualrelative pronoun isktóry (declined like an adjective). However, when the antecedent is also a pronoun, the relative pronoun used iskto orco (as inten kto "he who" andto co "that which"). The wordktóry also means "which" as an interrogative pronoun and adjective.
The pronoun and adjectivewszystek means "all". It is used most commonly in the plural (wszyscy means "everyone"), and in the neuter singular(wszystko) to mean "everything". The pronoun and adjectivekażdy means "each, every", whileżaden means "no, none".
For full information on the declension of the above pronouns, seePronouns in the article on Polish morphology.
When the referent of a pronoun is a person of unspecified sex, the masculine form of the pronoun is generally used. When the referent is a thing or idea that does not correspond to any specific noun, it is treated as neuter.
Polish has a complex system ofnumerals and relatedquantifiers, with special rules for their inflection, for the case of the governed noun, and for verbagreement with the resulting noun phrase.
The basic numerals are 0zero, 1jeden, 2dwa, 3trzy, 4cztery, 5pięć, 6sześć, 7siedem, 8osiem, 9dziewięć, 10dziesięć, 11jedenaście, 12dwanaście, 13trzynaście, 14czternaście, 15piętnaście, 16szesnaście, 17siedemnaście, 18osiemnaście, 19dziewiętnaście, 20dwadzieścia, 30trzydzieści, 40czterdzieści, 50pięćdziesiąt, 60sześćdziesiąt, 70siedemdziesiąt, 80osiemdziesiąt, 90dziewięćdziesiąt, 100sto, 200dwieście, 300trzysta, 400czterysta, 500pięćset, 600sześćset, 700siedemset, 800osiemset, 900dziewięćset.
These numerals are inflected for case, and also to some extent for gender. For details of their inflection, seeNumbers and quantifiers in the article on Polish morphology.
Thousand istysiąc, treated as a noun (so 2000 isdwa tysiące, etc.). Million ismilion, billion (meaning a thousand million) ismiliard, a million million isbilion, a thousand million million isbiliard, and so on (i.e., thelong scale is used).
Compound numbers are constructed similarly as in English (for example, 91,234 isdziewięćdziesiąt jeden tysięcy dwieście trzydzieści cztery).
When a numeral modifies a noun, the numeral takes the expected case, but the noun may not; also the gender and number of the resultingnoun phrase may not correspond to that of the noun.
The numeraljeden (1) behaves as an ordinary adjective, and no special rules apply. It can even be used in the plural, for example to mean "some" (and not others), or to mean "one" withplurale tantum, e.g.jedne drzwi "one door" (drzwi has no singular).
For other numerals, one of the two rules may apply:
1. The noun is plural and takes the same case as the numeral, and the resulting noun phrase is plural (e.g.4 koty stały, "4 cats stood").
2. If the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun takes the genitive plural form, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular (e.g.5 kotów stało, "5 cats stood"), otherwise the same as rule 1
All numerals for personal masculine plural nouns follow the second rule, while numerals for non-personal-masculine-plural nouns use the first rule with the numeralsdwa,trzy,cztery (2, 3, 4), and compound numbers ending with them (22, 23, 24, etc. but not 12, 13, or 14, which take-naście as a suffix and are thus not compound numbers in the first place). Other numerals for non-personal-masculine-plural nouns follow the second rule.
Numbers that end with the nouns for 1000 and higher quantities are treated as normal nouns and not part of the numeral.
There're also alternative formsdwaj,trzej andczterej which are only used in the nominative case for masculine personal nouns for numerals 2, 3 and 4 respectively. They follow rule 1 and don't apply for compound numerals like 22
Polish also has a series of numerals calledcollective numerals(liczebniki zbiorowe), namelydwoje (for 2),troje (for 3),czworo (for 4),pięcioro (for 5), and so on. These are used with the following types of nouns:
For the declension of collective numerals by case, see themorphology article section. They all follow the rule that when the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun becomes genitive plural, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular. In this case the genitive noun is also used after the instrumental of the numeral.
Certainquantifiers behave similarly to numerals. These includekilka ("several"),parę ("a few") andwiele ("much, many"), which behave like numbers above 5 in terms of the noun cases and verb forms taken. There are also indefinite numeralskilkanaście, kilkadziesiąt, kilkaset (and similar forms withparę-), meaning "several-teen", several tens and several hundred.
Quantifiers that always take the genitive of nouns includedużo ("much, many"),mało ("few, little"),więcej ("more"),mniej ("less") (alsonajwięcej/najmniej "most/least"),trochę ("a bit"),pełno ("plenty, a lot").
The wordsoba andobydwa (meaning "both"), and their derived forms behave likedwa. However the collective formsoboje, obydwoje (in the nominative/vocative), when referring to a married couple or similar, take the nominative form of the noun rather than the genitive, and form a masculine plural noun phrase (oboje rodzice byli, "both parents were", cf.dwoje rodziców było).
For the declension of all the above quantifiers, see themorphology article section.
Polishverbs have the grammatical category ofaspect. Each verb is eitherimperfective, meaning that it denotes continuous or habitual events, orperfective, meaning that it denotes single completed events (in particular, perfective verbs have no present tense). Verbs often occur in imperfective and perfective pairs – for example,jeść andzjeść both mean "to eat", but the first has imperfective aspect, the second perfective.
Imperfective verbs have threetenses:present,past andfuture, the last being a compound tense (except in the case ofbyć "to be"). Perfective verbs have a past tense and a simple future tense, the latter formed on the same pattern as the present tense of imperfective verbs. Both types also haveimperative andconditional forms. The dictionary form of a verb is theinfinitive, which usually ends with-ć (occasionally with-c). The present-day past tense derives from the oldSlavic "perfect" tense; several other old tenses (theaorist,imperfect) have been dropped.
The present tense of imperfective verbs (and future tense of perfective verbs) has six forms, for the threepersons and twonumbers. For example, the present tense ofjeść isjem,jesz,je;jemy,jecie,jedzą (meaning "(I) eat" etc. – subject pronouns may be dropped), while the future tense of the corresponding perfective verbzjeść iszjem,zjesz etc. (meaning "(I) shall eat" etc.)
The verbbyć has the irregular present tensejestem, jesteś, jest, jesteśmy, jesteście, są. It also has a simple future tense (see below).
The past tense agrees with the subject in gender as well as person and number. The basic past stem is in-ł; to this are added endings for gender and number, and then personal endings are further added for the first and second person forms. Thus, on the example ofbyć, the past tense forms arebyłem/byłam ("I was", masc/fem.),byłeś/byłaś,był/była/było;byliśmy/byłyśmy ("we were" all gender mixes (except:)/a group of all fem.),byliście/byłyście,byli/były.
Theconditional is formed from the past tense,by, and the personal ending (if any). For example:byłbym/byłabym ("I would be", masc/fem.),byłbyś/byłabyś,byłby/byłaby/byłoby;bylibyśmy/byłybyśmy,bylibyście/byłybyście,byliby/byłyby.
The personal past tense suffixes, which are reduced forms of the present tense ofbyć, areclitics and can be detached from the verb to attach to another accented word earlier in the sentence, such as a question word (as inkogoście zobaczyli as an alternative tokogo zobaczyliście "whom did you see"), or (mostly in informal speech) an emphatic particleże (co żeście zrobili? "what did you do"). The same applies to the conditional endings (kiedy byście przyszli as an alternative tokiedy przyszlibyście "when would you come").
Ifby introduces the clause, either alone or forming one of the conjunctionsżeby,iżby,ażeby,aby,coby, it forms thesubjunctive mood[2]and is not to be confused with the conditional cliticby.[1] For example, "He wants me to sing" might bechce, aby(m) śpiewał,chce, żeby(m) śpiewał orchce, by(m) śpiewał. Such clauses may express "in order that", or be used with verbs meaning "want", "expect", etc.
The future tense ofbyć ("be") follows the pattern of a typical present tense:będę, będziesz, będzie, będziemy, będziecie, będą.The future tense of other imperfective verbs is formed using the future ofbyć together with the infinitive, or the past form (inflected for gender and number, but without any personal suffixes), of the verb in question. For example, the future ofrobić ("do, make") has such forms asbędę robić/robił/robiła,będziecie robić/robili/robiły. The choice between infinitive and past form is usually a free one, but with modals governing another infinitive, the past form is used:będzie musiał odejść (notbędzie musieć...) "he will have to leave".
The second personal singularimperative is formed from the present tense by dropping the ending (e.g.brać: 2/3S presentbierze(sz), imperativebierz), sometimes adding-ij or-aj. Add-my and-cie for the 1P and 2P forms. To make third-person imperative sentences (including with the polite second-person pronounspan etc.) the particleniech is used at the start of the sentence (or at least before the verb), with the verb in the future tense (ifbyć or perfective) or present tense (otherwise). There is a tendency to prefer imperfective verbs in imperative sentences for politeness; negative imperatives quite rarely use perfectives.
Other forms of the verb are:
Polish usesprepositions, which form phrases by preceding a noun or noun phrase. Different prepositions take different cases (all cases are possible except nominative and vocative); some prepositions can take different cases depending on meaning.
The prepositionsz andw are pronounced together with the following word, obeying the usual rules for consonant cluster voicing (soz tobą "with you" is pronouncedstobą). Before some consonant clusters, particularly clusters beginning with a sibilant (in the case ofz) or withf/w (in the case ofw), the prepositions take the formze andwe (e.g.we Wrocławiu "inWrocław"). These forms are also used before the first-person singular pronouns inmn-; several other prepositions also have longer forms before these pronouns (przeze mnie, pode mną etc.), and these phrases are pronounced as single words, with the stress on the penultimate syllable (the-e).
Common prepositions include:
Common Polishconjunctions includei (and less commonlyoraz) meaning "and",lub andalbo meaning "or",ale meaning "but",lecz meaning "but" chiefly in phrases of the type "notx buty",że (or more formally sometimesiż) meaning "that",jeśli meaning "if" (alsogdyby, whereby is the conditional particle),czy meaning "whether" (also an interrogative particle),kiedy orgdy meaning "when",więc,dlatego andzatem meaning "so, therefore",ponieważ meaning "because",choć/chociaż meaning "although", andaby/żeby meaning "in order to/that" (can be followed by an infinitive phrase, or by a sentence in the past tense; in the latter case theby of the conjunction is in fact the conditional particle and takes personal endings as appropriate).
In written Polish,subordinate clauses are normally set off with commas. Commas are not normally used before conjunctions meaning "and" or "or".
Basic word order in Polish isSVO; however, as it is asynthetic language, it is possible to move words around in the sentence. For example,Alicja ma kota ("Alice has a cat") is the standard order, but it is also possible to use other orders to give a different emphasis (for example,Alicja kotama, with emphasis onma ("has"), used as a response to an assertion of the opposite); general word order controlstheme and rhemeinformation structure with theme coming first.
Certain words, however, behave asclitics: they rarely or never begin a clause, but are used after another stressed word, and tend to appear early in the clause. Examples of these are the weak pronounsmi,go etc., the reflexive pronounsię, and the personal past tense endings and conditional endings described underVerbs above.
Polish is apro-drop language; subject pronouns are frequently dropped. For example:ma kota (literally "has a cat") may mean "he/she/it has a cat". It is also possible to drop the object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. For example,ma ("has") ornie ma ("has not") may be used as an affirmative or negative answer to a question "does... have...?".
Note the interrogative particleczy, which is used to start ayes–no question, much like the French "est-ce que". The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogative character of the sentence.
Negation is achieved by placingnie directly before the verb, or other word or phrase being negated (in some casesnie- is prefixed to the negated word, equivalent to Englishun- ornon-). If a sentence contains a negative element such asnigdy ("never"),nikt ("no-one"), etc., the verb is negated withnie as well (and several such negative elements can be combined, as innikt nigdy nic nie robi, "no-one ever does anything", literally "no-one never doesn't do nothing").
The equivalent of the English "there is" etc. is the appropriate part of the verbbyć ("to be"), e.g.jest... ("there is..."),są... ("there are..."),był(a/o)... ("there was..."), etc., with a noun phrase in the nominative. The negative form is always singular (and neuter where applicable), takes the noun phrase in the genitive, and usesma rather thanjest in the present tense:nie ma kota ("there isn't a cat", also "the cat isn't there"),nie było kota etc. (as usual, the word order is not fixed).
Where two concepts are equated, the particleto is often used instead of a part ofbyć, with the nouns expressing the concepts in the nominative case (although verb infinitives can also be used here:istnieć to cierpieć "to exist is to suffer"). There are also sentences whereto appears to be the subject ofbyć, but the complement is in the nominative and the verb agrees with the complement:to jest... ("this/it is..."),to są...,to był(a/o)..., etc.
There are various types of sentence in Polish that do not have subjects:
The use of the cases of nouns is as follows:
Like mostSlavic languages, with the exception ofBulgarian andMacedonian, Polish classically uses no definite or indefinite articles, though certain words or grammatical features may substitute this, with a shift currently taking place in the language. A noun such askot may mean either "the cat" or "a cat", while sayingten kot (lit. "that cat") can function similarly to a definite article in other languages. Recent academic research has shown a grammatical shift (not unlike the one which took place in other Indo-European languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian included), where the numeraljeden ("one") or pronounjakiś ("of sorts"; different forms depending on the grammatical context) have begun to take characteristics of an indefinite article - an example here could be sayingjeden kot ("one cat"), which by an increasing number of speakers can be interpreted in a way similar to saying "a cat" in English.[3]
Polish does not regularly place nouns together to formcompound noun expressions. Equivalents to such expressions are formed using noun-derived adjectives (as insok pomarańczowy, "orange juice", wherepomarańczowy is an adjective derived frompomarańcza "orange"), or using prepositional phrases or (equivalently) a noun in the genitive or other case.
A group of nouns connected by a word for "and" is treated as plural. It is masculine personal plural if it contains any male person (in fact, if it contains any person and any masculine noun).
Adjectives generally precede the noun they modify, although in some fixed expressions and official names and phrases they can follow the noun (as injęzyk polski "Polish language", rather thanpolski język; alsodzień dobry "good day, hello", rather thandobry dzień).
Attributive adjectives agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify.Predicate adjectives agree with the relevant noun in gender and number, and are in the nominative case, unless the subject is unspecified (as in some infinitive phrases), in which case the adjective takes the (masculine/neuter) instrumental form (for example,być mądrym, "to be wise", although the nominative is used if the logical subject is specified)[citation needed]. The instrumental is also used for adjectival complements of some other verbs, as inczynić go mądrym ("make him wise").
With pronouns such ascoś ("something") (but notktoś "someone"), if the pronoun is nominative or accusative, the adjective takes the genitive form (coś dobrego "something good").
Adjectives are sometimes used as nouns; for example,zielony ("green") may mean "the/a green one" etc.
Compound adjectives can be formed by replacing the ending of the first adjective with-o, as informalno-prawny ("formal (and) legal").
