Nouns – Cases and Case Use Part I Posted by Kasia on Feb 22, 2011
Last time we talked about Polish Nouns. Today I wanted to go over cases and case use in polish grammar. Polish nouns have different forms for expressing GRAMMATICAL CASE, related to the function of the noun in a sentence. For each gender there are forms for the Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative, and Vocative…
Pope John Paul’s coffin to be exhumed for beatification ceremony Posted by Kasia on Feb 21, 2011
Today I wanted to share some news from Europe with you. I had this wonderful privilege to meet Pope John Paul II while I was on my vacation in Italy 13 years ago. He was a wonderful man, and although I only talked to him for few minutes, it was an amazing experience. I never…
Polish Nouns Posted by Kasia on Feb 18, 2011
Today I wanted to talk to you about nouns. I will try to explain this subject as good as I can. It could be a little confusing, so please ask questions in the comments. Polish does not have elements corresponding to English indefinite and definite articles a, an, the. One interprets a noun as definite…
Polish accent Posted by Kasia on Feb 17, 2011
Don’t you wonder how the English, Americans or others, even foreigners (obcokrajowcy), non native speakers of English, can easily recognize a Pole as a Pole even though he speaks (what he believes is) English. Your grammar (gramatyka) is perfect (or so you think), your Polish vocabulary (słownictwo) immaculate and nonetheless, there is no denying it…
Word order Posted by Kasia on Feb 16, 2011
Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a synthetic 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 (“Alice has a cat”), but different shades…
Feminine noun declension Posted by Kasia on Feb 15, 2011
The declension of nouns in Polish is less regular than of adjectives, but follows a pattern that is in many ways similar to adjective declension. Let’s take a look at a few typical feminine declension nouns in singular and are equal to nominative in plural): Girl (also means Girlfriend) Singular Plural Nominative dziewczyna…
Walentynki Posted by Kasia on Feb 11, 2011
Valentine’s Day (Walentynki) has not been celebrated in Poland until very recently. Only after the collapse of the Eastern European Block and the consequent opening of Poland’s borders this well known, especially in English-language cultures holiday entered polish society. Romantic Poles (romantyczni Polacy) were very quick in adopting Valentines Day and nowadays it as popular…