Polish Language Blog

Most of you are probably aware of the fact that I haven’t been as visible on the blog lately as I used to in the past. Fortunately, Adam, our resident guest blogger filled the gap very nicely, and for that I would like to offer him my heartfelt “thank you”.

You see, my personal and professional lives have got busy. Very busy. Extremely busy. Between my regular work and an avalanche of personal stuff that was happening, the time I could devote to the Polish Blog was very limited. And I do apologize for that.

And as most you are probably aware, this is my last entry on the Polish Blog. After almost two years of writing it (whoa! has it been THAT long?), I think it’s time for fresh new voices and fresh new faces to lead you into the joys of Polish language, culture, history and everything in between. Reading only Anna’s posts for such a long time provided you with only a very limited insight into all things Polish – Anna’s insight, which needless to say, is frequently very biased and far from objective.

Writing this blog has been a tremendous pleasure for me. And I hope it was equally pleasant for you to read. While preparing these blog posts, I’ve learned more about our wonderful language than I ever thought possible. But most importantly, I’ve come to realize the difference between having knowledge and transferring this knowledge to others. That is something that few native speakers of any language understand and appreciate. For that alone, I will be forever in your debt, my dear readers.

But please, don’t worry, I am not abandoning you completely. I will be checking in from time to time to see how things are going over here, though I am certain you will be in good hands.

So I won’t say “Goodbye” or “Farewell”, but simply “See you!” – Do zobaczenia!

Thank you for your comments, your support and for the best two years of blogging ever.

PS. And if you’re curious about what a Pole is doing in the Far East, feel free to visit my personal blog.

As promised, today we will take a more in-depth look at the mystical imiesłowy. Joy oh joy, I know.
To do this we need to pick a nice, easy verb. How about “pisać”? And how about “napisać”? Both mean “to write”, but pisać is imperfective, and napisać is perfective.

Ready? Ok, here we go.

• piszący – active adjectival participle – (one who is) writing

This form is normally constructed using the present tense 3rd person plural form of the verb and adding “-c” plus the appropriate adjectival ending, like this:

• pisać (infinitive) – piszą (present tense 3rd person plural) – piszący, pisząca, piszące (active adjectival participle, masculine, feminine, neuter).

And it refers to an ongoing action.

See? That wasn’t too bad.
Now let’s try it with the active adverbial participle of the same verb:

• pisząc – writing (while writing, when somebody was writing something).

This is also easy to make. Just take the present tense 3rd person plural form of your imperfective verb and stick “c” to the end of it. Like this:

• pisać (infinitive) – piszą (present tense 3rd person plural) – pisząc (active adverbial participle).

It refers to an action (or state) that happens simultaneously to another action (or state).
And luckily for us, this participle doesn’t do anything extraordinary, it doesn’t decline and has no gender. Phew!

Then there’s the adverbial participle of prior action, which refers to something that has already been completed by the time the main action is taking place.
This grammatical wonder is only formed using perfective verbs and though it may look vaguely adjectivey, it doesn’t decline. And, to be perfectly honest, you won’t hear it much in casual speech. It’s the stuff that prose is made of.

But just in case, how do we make it? Like this:
Take the masculine singular past tense of the verb:

• napisał – (3rd person singular, masculine, past tense) – he wrote

Get rid of the “ł” and add “-wszy” instead:

• napisawszy – having written

To be continued…

Today Adam and Anna jointly attempt to tackle Polish participles. Hang on, it will be a crazy ride!

This blog has, for some time, concentrated on cultural issues. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to focus on grammar for a change. Today we will look into the mystical entity called imiesłów – participle. If you asked me whether you absolutely needed to know this, I would say no. Moreover, I absolutely do not expect you to understand the concept of imiesłów just by reading this post. What I want to do, is to show you that there is a whole world of Polish grammar out there

It’s an exciting challenge to get there and get it. Some things I don’t think are even possible to be explained in English, as examples don’t really translate.

imiesłów (masc.; pl. imiesłowy) – participle – is a part of speech. Imiesłów is a form of a verb, that possesses qualities of an adjective OR an adverb.
Its counterpart in English is a participle, but unfortunately, participles in English don’t look anything special at all. Usually they look like pretty innocent verbs. And there are just two types of participles in English:
- present participle (ends with -ing, like talking)
- past participle (ends with -ed, like talked, with many irregulars, like done)

Of course things are much different in Polish, where verbs inflect like crazy. Imiesłowy have distinctive forms and further complications arise when we try to negate them.

There are several types of them, but in general, they can be divided into two major groups:
1. adjectival
2. adverbial

In both of those groups, there are several sub-groups. Because it simply wouldn’t be Polish, if things didn’t get all complicated.

But first things first.

Adjectival participles are declined just like adjectives, and must agree with a noun they modify in gender, number and case. Are you still with me?
Fortunately, adverbial participles are a little bit easier, because they don’t decline. Instead they kind of act like uninflected verbs.
And fortunately, both kinds of participles are mainly used in formal writing, or formal speech. In everyday, casual speech, you can get away with using normal conjugated verb forms instead.

But, let’s get back to our participles. The story doesn’t end with “adjectival” and “adverbial”. Oh no! Nothing is ever so simple in Polish.

We can further divide them according to aspect – imperfective and perfective, and action – active or passive.
And then there are such gems as “verbal adjectives of changed state” and “verbal adjectives of ability”.

In our next installment we will look at some very exciting (not!!!) examples.