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 good over evil (read: Polish grammar) depended solely on me.

So here I am, at your service.

What the reader wanted was this: please tell me how to count (in Polish, of course) the following nouns: dziecko (child, neuter), nauczycielka (teacher, female), pisarz (writer, masculine), jesień (autumn, feminine), mysz (mouse, feminine), and słoń (elephant, masculine). Though I am not entirely sure if the reader wanted słoń (elephant) or słońce (sun), so just in case I think I’ll do both.

Initially, I wrote back and told him to look up my previous posts on this subject, but he responded that this is the time when grammar explanations are not enough, he needs to see how it’s actually done in practice. OK, fine by me. And actually, I just wanted to throw those words at you (all my readers in general) and see what you could come up with in terms of counting them from one to five. But since the email had the “the world is going to end on Thursday at 3PM if you don’t help me” tone, I thought I’d just get up and do it myself.

But why do I have this strange feeling that I’m doing somebody’s homework here, huh?

Ok, but here we go.

• dziecko (child) from one to five:
• jedno dziecko, dwoje dzieci, troje dzieci, czworo dzieci, pięcioro dzieci

• nauczycielka (female teacher) from one to five:
• jedna nauczycielka, dwie nauczycielki, trzy nauczycielki, cztery nauczycielki, pięć nauczycielek

• pisarz (writer, male) from one to five:
• jeden pisarz, dwóch pisarzy, trzech pisarzy, czterech pisarzy, pięciu pisarzy

• jesień (fall/autumn, feminine) from one to five:
• jedna jesień, dwie jesienie, trzy jesienie, cztery jesienie, pięć jesieni

• mysz (mouse, feminine) from one to five (this is a tricky one and I hope I got it right):
• jedna mysz, dwie myszy, trzy myszy, cztery myszy, pięć myszy

• słoń (elephant, masculine) from one to five:
• jeden słoń, dwa słonie, trzy słonie, cztery słonie, pięć słoni (and we have a whole circus!)

• słońce (sun, neuter) from one to five:
• jedno słońce, dwa słońca, trzy słońca, cztery słońca, pięć słońc

OK, dear reader, I hope this is what you had in mind. And I hope I managed before your doomsday deadline.