Polish/Basic sentences 2

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Let's try to make some simple sentences.

Two things you should know are that:

  1. verbs take different forms depending on person, number and tense
  2. nouns take different forms depending on number and function in the sentence, or to be more exact, grammatical case
  • "Basia je jabłko" - Basia eats/is eating an apple.
  • "Basia je ciastko" - Basia eats/is eating a cookie.

"Basia" (English Barb) is the short form of the name Barbara. "Jabłko" means an apple.
"Ciastko" means cookie.
"je" is the appropriate form of verb that means "to eat".

Note: Polish does not have a word for "the" or "a", therefore when translating from Polish you have to add these in where they would be appropriate in an English sentence, using the context or meaning of the sentence as a guide.

There are 7 cases in Polish, with the two most important being nominative (Polish "mianownik") - for subjects, and accusative (Polish "biernik") - for direct objects.
Subject in Polish can adopt two forms - logical and gramatical; grammatical subject is a noun in nominative and logical - a noun in accusative. Logical subject is used when we want to express lack or excess of something. Grammatical subject can be represented by any part of speech. For example:

  • noun (Pol. rzeczownik) – Dom stoi na wzgórzu.
  • adjective (Pol. przymiotnik) – Chory wziął lekarstwo.
  • numeral (pol. liczebnik) – Wybiła dziesiąta.
  • verb (Pol. czasownik) - Przyjemnie jest Tańczyć.
  • pronoun (Pol. zaimek) - On czyta.
  • adverb (Pol. przysłówek) – Jutro należy do nas.
  • conjunctive (Pol. łącznik) – "I" jest spójnikiem.
  • preposition (Pol. przyimek) – "W" jest przyimkiem.
  • particle (Pol. partykuła) - "Li", "że" są partykułami.
  • interjection (Pol. wykrzyknik) – "Och" rozległo się nagle.

While word order in Polish can be changed, the most typical is:

  • Subject (in nominative) - Verb - Object (in accusative).

Declension of Polish nouns is rather regular. Nouns that end in "-o" have the same nominative and accusative (these are neutral), nouns that end in "-a" in the nominative have "-ę" in the accusative (these are feminine).

Knowing that, we can create more sentences.

For example:

  • "Dziecko je ciastko" - a child eats a cookie.
  • "Dziecko je czekoladę" - a child eats a chocolate.
  • "dziecko" - a child
  • "czekolada" - a chocolate

To practise a little more, let's use "widzi", which is the appropriate form of the verb "to see".

  • "Piotr widzi Basię" - Piotr sees Basia
  • "Basia widzi Piotra" - Basia sees Piotr
  • "Basia widzi dziecko" - Basia sees a child

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