Archive for 'Grammar'
“For” in Polish translation Posted by Kasia on May 23, 2011
The English preposition for has a wide variety of translations into Polish. The most important ones are given below: Czy te kwiaty są dla mnie? Are those flowers for me? (for the benefit of) To jest łatwe dla ciebie. That’s easy for you. (easy/hard for) sztuka dla sztuki art for art’s sake (for the sake…
Pan and Pani Posted by Kasia on Apr 29, 2011
In Polish language there is great complexity when dealing with forms of address. The forms of addressing people in one country are often different in another county. I wanted to explain some of these differences and the meanings behind them. First, let’s look at the seemingly simple forms of address such as “Pan/Pani” (Sir/Madam) and…
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…
Nouns – Cases and Case Use Part III Posted by Kasia on Feb 24, 2011
Today we will finish talking about cases. The two that we have left is Locative (miejscownik) and Vocative (wołacz). Locative Case (o czym? o kim?) Locative indicates a location and is required after the prepositions w in, na (on, at), o (about), po (after), przy (near, during, while) Ona jest teraz w szkole Now she…