Archive for 'Grammar'
The Oh-So-Easy Adverbs Posted by Anna on Nov 27, 2009
We haven’t covered even a smidget of grammar in a really long time, and I’m sure that by now you all must be really missing all those declensions, and cases, and tenses, and aspects and what not. Unfortunately than you will have to miss them for a few more days, because today we will talk…
Readers Ask – I Answer: Counting Things in Polish Posted by Anna on Oct 22, 2009
I was going to stay in bed and marinate under the covers for one more day (yes, my cold has morphed into a full-blown bronchitis now) but a reader’s email made me crawl out to face the enemy. The email had that panicky and ominous tone making it sound as if the intergalactic victory of…
What do you call a person who lives in Bielsko-Biała? Posted by Anna on Oct 12, 2009
In his comment to the Bielsko-Biała post Mchl posed an interesting question: what do you call a person who lives in Bielsko-Biała? Yeah, indeed… An inhabitant of Gdańsk is called gdańszczanin (masculine; gdańszczanka – feminine). A person who lives in Warsaw? Warszawiak or warszawianin, if a male, and warszawianka, if a female. In Kraków? Krakowiak…
On Bielsko-Biała and Białystok Posted by Anna on Oct 6, 2009
Polish declensions. We all love them, right? All the funky case endings, exceptions, and then exceptions to exceptions. Life in Polish is never boring. But just when you think you’ve finally managed to master the genitives, datives and accusatives, and you’re no longer kept awake at night by the adjective+noun combinations, you meet Bielsko-Biała. Or…
Reader’s Question About Polish Surnames Posted by Anna on Sep 21, 2009
A while back Sue Wilson left this comment, but due to my computer troubles (which, thankfully, are over now as I’m a proud owner of a brand new MacBook) I only managed to see it last weekend. I’m sorry Sue! I thought that Sue’s question was interesting, and actually, because she is not the only…
Polish Grammar – what’s the best way to explain it? Posted by Anna on Aug 16, 2009
Every so often I am being accused that my grammar explanations are too simplistic, too crude and too “for dummies.” That I don’t use proper linguistic, or grammatical, (or whatever those long and useless terms in “serious” grammar books are called) terminology in my blog posts and that basically, it looks like I mock the…
Future Tense of Perfective and Imperfective Verbs Posted by Anna on Aug 14, 2009
One of you (once again, I can always count on you, my fab readers!) wanted to know more about this whole verb aspect issue. More specifically, how to tell whether a verb is perfective or imperfective by looking at its future tense form. And finally, this is one thing that is actually very simple, easy…