In my last post I quoted a Japanese lady who is learning Polish in Tokyo. She kindly gave us several examples of why she likes Poland so much. And to show off her Polish grammar, she even used a variety of adjective-noun combinations. I don’t know about you, but if it was me speaking in a difficult foreign language to a stranger, I’d stick to one gender and one number, just to keep things simple (and not to make a fool out of myself). But not our new Japanese friend. She had to really show off. And by “really show off” I mean use all three genders in singular and one in plural. How’s that for ambitious, huh?

So let’s take a closer look at what she said. She said that Poland was a beautiful country.
piękny kraj = beautiful country

Now, remember what I said about Polish adjectives? That they have to agree in gender with the nouns they describe?
“Kraj” (country) is a masculine (non-person) singular noun, so the adjective “piękny” (beautiful) must also be masculine and singular. This is actually easy, because it just so happens that our wonderful Polish adjectives are listed in dictionaries in their masculine singular forms.

Now let’s move on to a feminine example:
piękna muzyka = beautiful music

Because the adjective acquired a new ending “-a”, you can guess this is a feminine form. Hence you can also guess that “muzyka” (music) is a feminine noun, because those adjectives and nouns must agree, right?

And finally, our neuter example was about food. Atsuko said that she liked yummy food in Poland.
pyszne jedzenie = yummy (good, tasty) food

Again, the adjective got yet another ending, this time it’s “-e”. And from that you can guess that we’re talking about either a neuter singular form, OR a plural form which is NOT masculine. Unfortunately, in order to determine the exact gender, you have to take a look at the noun. And our noun “jedzenie” (food) is technically singular, technically neuter. (I’m saying “technically”, because while it’s feasible to make plural out of it, nobody really bothers – “jedzenie” is simply “jedzenie”.)

So, now I’m sure you want to ask if there is another way to distinguish between the genders. Well, sort of. Sometimes you will see a very handy little word, which is the Polish equivalent of “this”. And now I’m sure you want to ask what “this” has to do with genders.

Remember how I said that all those combinations must agree in number and GENDER? Polish “this” is no different. It changes according to the gender of whatever noun it describes, just like an adjective.

So let’s try it out in practice. Here we go, masculine first:
ten kraj = this country
ten = this – for masculine nouns (both person and non-person masculine)

You can even say:

• ten piękny kraj = this beautiful country

And now for a feminine example:
ta muzyka = this music
ta = this – for feminine nouns

• ta piękna muzyka = this beautiful music

And finally, a neuter noun:
to jedzenie = this food
to = this – for neuter nouns

And of course you can also say:

• to pyszne jedzenie = this yummy food

So, if you see one of these little guys: “ten, ta, to” in front of a noun, you can pretty much guess if that noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. Handy little words, didn’t I tell you?

And now just for practice, let’s do it with our Japanese friend’s favorite cake – szarlotka:
“szarlotka” (apple pie of sorts) is a feminine noun, so the pronoun we need is “ta“.

Szarlotka is definitely yummy, and we can safely say:

• ta pyszna szarlotka = this yummy szarlotka

Next time I’ll show you how it works in plural.