{"id":591,"date":"2009-07-28T10:30:04","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/?p=591"},"modified":"2009-07-28T10:30:04","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T14:30:04","slug":"verb-aspect-one-more-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/verb-aspect-one-more-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Verb Aspect &#8211; one more time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Agnieszka<\/strong> left a comment asking for help with explaining the difference between <strong>pom\u00f3c<\/strong> and <strong>pomaga\u0107<\/strong> (to help), and <strong>prosi\u0107<\/strong> and <strong>poprosi\u0107 <\/strong>(to ask). And when a reader asks \u2013 I dig out my fat Swan&#8217;s \u201cPolish Grammar\u201d book and get cranking.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve talked about this verb aspect thingie before. Because that\u2019s what it\u2019s called \u2013 aspect. And it has to do with how an action is conceived and executed \u2013 whether it\u2019s completed, or habitual, or on-going, and what not.<\/p>\n<p>In English it\u2019s done through the many tenses: continuous, perfect, and so on. And in Polish the same thing is expressed through our many verb forms. Luckily, we\u2019ll be talking only about two of those forms, because most Polish verbs have two aspects.<\/p>\n<p>One is perfective, and it refers to an action which is completed \u2013 done and over with. But not just any old done and over with, but the kind that actually produces a change in the general state of things. The other aspect is imperfective and that one deals with all sorts of other types of actions: on-going, habitual and even actions that are completed, but which did not produce any change in the general state of things.<\/p>\n<p>Confusing? Let\u2019s try it again, this time using <strong>Agnieszka<\/strong>\u2019s examples.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>pom\u00f3c<\/strong> and <strong>pomaga\u0107<\/strong> \u2013 to help<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Pom\u00f3c<\/strong> is a perfective verb. Why? It doesn\u2019t have a present tense form.<br \/>\nYou can only say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ja pomog\u0119<\/strong> (future tense), or<\/li>\n<li><strong>ja pomog\u0142em<\/strong> (past tense masculine) or<\/li>\n<li><strong>ja pomog\u0142am<\/strong> (past tense feminine)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you want to say that you are helping someone right now, you have to use \u201c<strong>pomaga\u0107<\/strong>\u201d and say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ja pomagam<\/strong> \u2013 present tense (all genders)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The easiest way to spot the difference between these two is when looking at their past tense forms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>pom\u00f3c \u2013 pomog\u0142em, pomog\u0142am<\/strong> (perfective)<\/li>\n<li><strong>pomaga\u0107 \u2013 pomaga\u0142em, pomaga\u0142am<\/strong> (imperfective)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first one (<strong>pomog\u0142em, pomog\u0142am<\/strong>) clearly shows that the action is finished and that we successfully managed to help. Our help brought results.<\/p>\n<p>The second one, on the other hand, only tells us that we were helping and helping and helping and that\u2019s it. We have absolutely no clue if our help actually worked. Or not.<\/p>\n<p>So, what\u2019s the deal with <strong>prosi\u0107<\/strong> and <strong>poprosi\u0107<\/strong>? Here it gets a bit funkier, because the perfective form of the verb is created by adding a prefix: \u201c<strong>po-<\/strong>\u201c in this case.<br \/>\nAnd so \u201c<strong>prosi\u0107<\/strong>\u201d becomes \u201c<strong>poprosi\u0107<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 to ask<\/p>\n<p>But don\u2019t worry, all the other stuff applies just the same.<br \/>\n\u201c<strong>Poprosi\u0107<\/strong>\u201d is a perfective verb, and as such has no present tense. You can only say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ja poprosz\u0119<\/strong> (future tense) or<\/li>\n<li><strong>ja poprosi\u0142em<\/strong> (past tense masculine) or<\/li>\n<li><strong>ja poprosi\u0142am<\/strong> (past tense feminine)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And now, let\u2019s compare this with \u201c<strong>prosi\u0107<\/strong>\u201d:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ja prosz\u0119<\/strong> (present tense, all genders)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2013 yep, it has present tense, so it must be an imperfective verb!<\/p>\n<p>And in the past tense:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ja prosi\u0142em<\/strong> (past tense masculine) or<\/li>\n<li><strong>ja prosi\u0142am<\/strong> (past tense feminine)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When \u201c<strong>ja poprosi\u0142am<\/strong>\u201d I got some sort of reaction from the person I was asking. My action of asking them is done.<\/p>\n<p>But when \u201c<strong>ja prosi\u0142am<\/strong>\u201d I was doing it over and over and got no results. And frankly, we can\u2019t really tell if I\u2019m completely done with all that asking, or not.<\/p>\n<p>Polish verb aspect is not an easy thing to learn, but one of our readers suggested this thing: learn both verbs as totally separate words, don\u2019t pair them up. I\u2019ve tried that and it works. It seems like a lot more work in the beginning, but once when you get the hang of it, it\u2019s actually a very effective way to get all this aspect mess nicely sorted out.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agnieszka left a comment asking for help with explaining the difference between pom\u00f3c and pomaga\u0107 (to help), and prosi\u0107 and poprosi\u0107 (to ask). And when a reader asks \u2013 I dig out my fat Swan&#8217;s \u201cPolish Grammar\u201d book and get cranking. We\u2019ve talked about this verb aspect thingie before. Because that\u2019s what it\u2019s called \u2013&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/verb-aspect-one-more-time\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7442,7510,7608],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","tag-imperfective","tag-perfective","tag-verb-aspect"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}