Polish Language Blog

Tomorrow is Friday the 13^th (piątek, trzynastego) but instead of writing about superstitions (przesądy), I thought we should take another look at liczebniki (numbers) instead.

A number (no pun intended) of you had questions about numbers, and since they are all very valid questions, it’s more convenient to answer them in a separate blog post, instead of diddling in the comments section.

So, let’s take it from the top:

Pinolona wanted to know how to order food and specify the quantity. She already knows how it works with drinks:

• proszę jedno piwo, dwa piwa, pięć piw, etc…

It all comes down to cases, really. When you ask for something, in Polish you ask for kogo? co? These questions answer to only one specific case, and that is the accusative case.

UPDATE:

REVISED GRAMMAR EXPLANATION BELOW!

After I posted it yesterday, I’ve been thinking all night about pretzels, and finally got up to consult my brand new “Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” and wouldn’t you know it, precel is one of those evil nouns that has not one, but TWO correct accusative forms. So, Pinolona was right and my original explanation was correct, too.

So, if you ask for precle (pretzels), you say this:

• jeden precel proszę or jednego precla proszę (hehehe!), dwa precle proszę, pięć precli proszę, etc.

Just a reminder – precel is a non-personal masculine noun. And a totally confusing noun, because in the accusative form you can say either:

• jeden precel, or
• jednego precla

But if you say “jednego precla” you might also be using the genitive case of this horrible noun. That one answers to questions: kogo? czego? In casual speech you will hear plenty of people asking for “jednego precla” or “jeden precel“, and as it turns out – both are correct. Just be careful! When asking for stuff, you use the accusative case, when talking about stuff you don’t have – the genitivie case.

Instead of precel, let’s try to buy rower (a bicycle, also a non-personal, non-animate masculine noun) and see what happens. Not that you’d ever try to buy more than one bike, but who knows, you might be buying for a whole family, ok?

• jeden rower proszę – one bike please  – asking for kogo? co? – accusative)
• jednego roweru nie mam – one bike is missing, literally: I don’t have one bike (you’re counting your family’s bikes parked outside, for example) – when talking about stuff you don’t have, it’s kogo? czego? – genitive)

You can see the difference super clearly when you start asking for feminine nouns, for example – róże (roses). Proszę o (kogo? co?):

• jedną różę, dwie róże, trzy róże, cztery róże (though someone once told me you should never buy an even number of flowers) and pięć róż.

So far, so good…

Now, take a look at those roses in the genitive case (kogo? czego?):

jednej róży, dwóch róż, trzech róż, czterech róż, pięciu róż, etc.

You wouldn’t ask for “pięciu róż” at the florist, now would you? You’d ask for (kogo? co?) pięć róż.

So, if you are still in doubt when it comes to numbers, try to quickly check how those numbers behave when attached to a noun of a different gender. Just avoid those nouns that have two correct accusative forms and you should be fine.

This ties in nicely with Russ’s comment about the accusative/genitive confusion. Here’s a copy of my reply to him (with additional information added for everyone’s benefit):

If you are just talking about straight plurals, without any numerals, then you have psy, kobiety, (dogs, women) etc… THEN their accusative case is psy, kobiety. That’s just simple plurals. Things get really strange if you add a number to the noun.

If you say “pięć psów” (five dogs), that answers both to: kto? co? (nominative) and kogo? co? (accusative). In the genitive case, it would answer to kogo? czego? – pięciu psów.

So, for example:

• kto/co to jest? – pięć psów, sześć kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (nominative – as in: kto? co?)
• kogo/co widzimy? – pięć psów, sześć kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (accusative – as in: kogo? co?)
• kogo/czego nie ma? – pięciu psów, sześciu kobiet, siedmiu mężczyzn (genitive – as in: kogo? czego?)

Now the difference is very clear.

I thought reposting this comment here would be a good idea, since those numbers are indeed funky and make the nouns behave differently than they would otherwise normally do.

And finally, Barb had a real killer. She wanted to know how to translate the following sentence: “Lucas and two of his friends got lost.” Ouch! How closely translated do you need it?

• Łukasz wraz z dwoma kolegami zabłądzili.

This would be how it should look in Polish. If you say “Łukasz i dwaj koledzy”, that appears to be correct, but sounds goofy.

So, just to show you that even native Poles would mess this one up, I decided to conduct a little poll and ask what the masses on the street would say. Or rather, the masses in my living room, as I had a house full of people at that time. The masses were more or less equally divided between “Łukasz i jego dwaj koledzy zabłądzili” and “Łukasz i dwóch jego kolegów zabłądzili.”

Which one is correct? I consulted my brand new “Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” and according to the explanations there it’s “kto (who) zabłądził (got lost)?” Kto (who) is Łukasz i dwaj koledzy (nominative). However, this is good only for a short answer.

If you stretch it into a full sentence, it sounds odd. Therefore, we tend to automatically say that “Łukasz z dwoma kolegami zabłądzili.”

And just for the fun of it, let’s take a look at what would happen if those friends were female (koleżanki). This makes it very clear:

“Łukasz i dwie koleżanki zabłądzili” sounds odd (though this is exactly the sort of stuff one tends to find in Polish grammar workbooks for foreign learners).

We’d say – “Łukasz wraz z dwoma koleżankami zabłądzili.”

And that would make Lucas a very lucky man…

The post where I attempted to count priests (is it “dwaj księża” or “dwóch księży”?) made me realize that we’ve never talked about numbers before. Hmmm… I wonder why I’ve been avoiding this particular topic. Really, no reason at all.
Yeah, right!

Ok, in that case, let’s get started.

I’m sure that most, if not all of you, know the simple jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, etc already.
The good news that these simple, straightforward numbers are super easy. The bad news is that these simple, straightforward numbers are only used in algebra and accounting.

In normal conversations these simple, straightforward numbers morph into more complicated forms.

But first things first. What you need to remember is that numbers in Polish must agree in gender and case with the nouns that follow them. Yeah, yeah, they decline. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

So, let’s get some examples:

masculine personal noun:

• mężczyzna – a man
• jeden mężczyzna – one man
• dwaj mężczyźni – two men
• trzej mężczyźni – three men
• czterej mężczyźni – four men

but:

• pięciu mężczyzn – five men

See what happened with the noun here? Instead staying in Nominative, the case changed to… yeah, changed to what? It may look like it’s Genitive, but on closer inspection it seems to be Accusative. And to confuse the matters even further, regardless of what it seems, it’s used just like your regular, standard issue Nominative.

masculine non-personal noun:

• pies – a dog
• jeden pies– one dog
• dwa psy – two dogs
• trzy psy– three dogs
• cztery psy – four dogs

but:

• pięć psów – five dogs

Same thing here. You hit five and stuff happens.
Let’s see how it looks with a feminine noun:

feminine noun:

• kobieta – a woman
• jedna kobieta – one woman
• dwie kobiety – two women
• trzy kobiety – three women
• cztery kobiety – four women

but:

• pięć kobiet – five women

Woohoo! Here we go again. It’s the number five curse.

And one more left-
neuter noun:

• jajko – an egg
• jedno jajko – one egg
• dwa jajka – two eggs
• trzy jajka – three eggs
• cztery jajka – four eggs

but

• pięć jajek – five eggs

However, that’s not exactly totally true when it comes to neuter nouns. Dziecko (a child) is also a neuter noun. But strange things happen to it when you try to count those kids:

• jedno dziecko – one child

but

• dwoje dzieci – two children
• troje dzieci – three children
• czworo dzieci – four children
• pięcioro dzieci – five children

See? Those pesky children – dzieci – stay the same no matter the number.

And what happens when you get to numbers above five? They still follow the same Accusative-like pattern.

And some important grammatical terms:

• liczebnik (masc., pl. liczebniki) – numeral (number)
• liczebnik główny – cardinal number
• liczebnik porządkowy – ordinal number

This post should keep you busy counting various things at least until next week.
I am moving and will be bez internetu (without internet) until March 11th.
I will try to keep an eye on you and respond to comments from a cybercafe, or somesuch. (That is, if I manage to dig myself out from under all these boxes first!)

In the meantime, take care and do zobaczenia wkrótce (see you soon)!

Thomas asked what happened to audio files with pronunciation that I used to provide on this blog. I will be reunited with my own computer and microphone on March 10th and then pliki dźwiękowe (audio files) will be back. And I do plan to go back and provide them for all the posts where they’re currently missing. This will be dużo roboty (a lot of work) but I know it will help you a lot, too.

In the meantime, let’s answer Michael’s question: what is the difference between domy and domów?

Ah, time to review noun declensions, isn’t it? Domy is the nominative plural form of “dom” (house, home, building).
So, jeden dom (one house, home, building) and dwa domy (two houses, homes, buildings).

Remember the genitive case (dopełniacz)? We talked about it here and here and here.

And why am I bringing it up again? Because it just so happens that “domów” is the genitive case of “domy.”

Dom is a masculine noun with what we call in Polish a “hard stem.” And such masculine hard-stem nouns take the ending –ów in the genitive plural form.

Take a look:

• Nominative (mianownik) – answers to questions: kto? co? (who? what?) – singular – dom
• Genitive (dopełniacz) – answers to questions: kogo? czego? – singular – domu

And now in plural:

• Nominative – domy
• Genitive – domów

For example:

• Ładne domy tutaj macie. – Nice houses you have here.
• Nie widzę żadnych ładnych domów w tej okolicy. – I don’t see any nice houses in this area.

And as you can see, the adjective “ładny” (nice) declines along with the noun it describes – dom.

• ładny (adj., fem: ładna, neuter: ładne, pl. personal: ładni, pl. all others: ładne) – pretty, nice.