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Golden Duck – Złota Kaczka Posted by Kasia on Apr 14, 2011
A long time ago in Warsaw there lived a young man – Jacob. He was always the first one there when something unusual was going on. Friends often invited him to taverns so that he could entertain them with tales of his daring deeds. One thing you should know however, although Jacob was greatly liked…
Smok Wawelski Posted by Kasia on Apr 11, 2011
One of my favorite cartons when I was little girl was Wyprawa Profesora Gąbki. It was a cartoon about Smok Wawelski. A lot of you would probably ask who Smok Wawelski is. Here is a story about him… Many, many years ago, when Krakow was still the capital of Poland, there lived in the…
Different dialects in Poland Posted by Kasia on Apr 8, 2011
Polish language became far more homogeneous in the second half of the 20th century, in part due to the mass migration of several million Polish citizens from the eastern to the western part of the country after the east was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, during World War II. “Standard” Polish is still…
Word order in Polish grammar Posted by Kasia on Apr 7, 2011
Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a morpheme rich language, it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop the subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. These sentences mean more or less the same (“Kasia has a cat”), but different…
Negation Posted by Kasia on Apr 6, 2011
Learning the Polish negation is very important, because its structure is used in every day conversation. Polish negation is the process that turns an affirmative statement (I am happy) into its opposite denial (I am not happy). When a verb is negated, the negative particle nie is always placed immediately in front of it. Nothing…
Verbal nouns Posted by Kasia on Apr 1, 2011
Today I wanted to talk about verbal nouns. Pretty easy subject, however it could be a little tricky. A verbal noun is a noun derived from a verb which still retains many of the properties of the verb, including aspect. Both czytanie and przeczytanie are usually translated as ‘reading’, the first referring to the action…
Conjunctions Posted by Kasia on Mar 30, 2011
Some important conjunctions are a (and/but), i (and), ale (but),albo…albo…(either…or…), ani…ani…(neither…nor…),i….. i… (both… and), English and is usually translated by i. However, if there is any contrast, i.e. if and can alternately be translated as but, it is translated by a: Kasia jest studentem, a Marcin już pracuje. Kasia is a student, but Marcin is…