One of the readers (What would I do without you guys? I’d have nobody to hurry me up!) reminded me that I had promised to continue our little adverb lesson. I guess the lure of an easy Polish part of speech is hard to resist, huh? Is that why you want more adverbs?

But all kidding aside, yes, you are absolutely right. The post on adverbs of time (przysłówki czasu) is way overdue.

Like I said before, adverbs answer to these questions: jak? (how), gdzie? (where) and kiedy? (when). And wouldn’t you know it, those that answer to kiedy? are my favorite kind.

I remember those strange words that were neither nouns nor adjectives nor anything else even vaguely familiar, but still very useful nonetheless, always used to puzzle me when I was a kid.

I mean, those were some pretty essential words, those adverbs of time. How else would I ever answer my mother when she kept nagging: “When are you going to do your homework?” (Kiedy będziesz odrabiać lekcje?).
“Soon, mom. Soon.” (Wkrótce)

Yeah, those were the days.
Now it’s my husband who’s the master of adverbs of time.
“When are you going to fix that thing?” says Anna while fighting with a leaky faucet.
“Tomorrow,” (jutro) answers the husband.

And it’s been “jutro” for about forever it seems.

So you get the picture, adverbs of time are easy. And here are some useful examples:

• dziś or dzisiaj – today
• wczoraj – yesterday
• jutro – tomorrow
• przedwczoraj – the day before yesterday
• pojutrze – the day after tomorrow
• zawsze – always
• na zawsze – forever
• czasem, czasami – sometimes
• nigdy – never
• teraz – now
• potem – then
• wkrótce – soon

The problem arises when you get to days of the week (dni tygodnia). And right now I haven’t been able to get a definite answer whether in Polish they are adverbs or nouns. I asked dwóch polonistów (two highly educated people with fancy degrees in Polish philology) about this problem and they looked at me funny. They promised to get back to me, and wouldn’t you know it, they never did (hence the delay with writing this post – see? I had a valid excuse!).

Why is it a problem? Well, adverbs are not supposed to decline or otherwise change. But those pesky days of the week (poniedziałek, wtorek, etc) behave just like any other garden variety noun, they decline, have gender and all that.

And you see, I just knew it that adverbs would turn out to be not so simple after all. Because hey, they’re Polish adverbs, right? And nothing is ever simple when it comes to Polish.