Polish grammar has…a reputation. Most people say it’s the hardest language in the world. In fact, that’s the reason I even started learning it.

And it’s true! The verb aspects are a pain. Even with numbers, Polish makes it unnecessarily complicated. There are some types of grammatical numbers that you can use, depending on situation and the type of thing you’re talking about. Of course, there are also the infamous case declensions.

But fear not! I’m here to clear it all up. Every type of number you’ll need, when to use them, how to use them. All in one place.

If you want to follow my language learning journey and how I got from zero to this point, don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, so you get all my tips and experiences earlier!

This guide assumes that you already know what the numbers and their declined forms are, so I can focus on how to use them and when to decline them. I won’t give you a full list, so if you’re lost, Wiktionary has all the declensions.

I also don’t recommend studying directly from this article. Instead, learn the grammar from context, and when you get confused, come back here for a reference.

The Basics…or are they?

Let’s start with the nominative and accusative. The basic, default cases that you use most. Should be simple enough, right?

In many cases, you will be using the default form (nominative) of the number, such as when the thing you are counting is the subject of a sentence. The form of the noun, though, will depend on the number:

1 (jeden): treat jeden like an adjective, and change its ending with the noun.

2–4: use the noun in the plural. Also any number that ends with 2, 3, or 4. Note that dwa becomes dwie with any feminine nouns, but trzy and cztery have no feminine forms.

The Number Takes Over

Before we get any further, I need to explain one phenomenon that I call “the number takes over“.

Normally, when you’re talking about a group of things, the things are the subject of the sentence. The verb works with the things.

Three men walk into a pub.

My two sisters don’t get along.

But in many, many situations in Polish, it works differently. The number becomes the subject of the sentence. It’s treated as the more important part of the phrase, instead of the noun itself. It’s a little bit like the words couple and trio in English, except way more common.

Continue reading

The Cantonese podcast for fans of linguistics, language lovers, and Cantonese learners. This episode discusses Bulgarian grammar, evidentiality, Signal and Telegram’s Hong Kong localisation in Cantonese, writing Cantonese in French, and names and translations within the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

Show notes and links available on the Cantonese page. Transcript below.

This podcast is also available on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe!

苗:吓,呢啲睇維基㗎咋嘛!我唔識講㗎嘛,我識……我識有呢四樣嘢,我照住讀。叫我自然噉講,我唔識㗎嘛。

以:呢個標準嘅語言學家。

苗:呢個就係語言學嘞!冇錯!

以:知道,但係唔識。

苗:You just insulted my entire race of people, but thank you.

[jingle]

Continue reading

絮言.狂想 #004

The Cantonese podcast for fans of linguistics, language lovers, and Cantonese learners. This episode starts with the English and Japanese loanwords in Cantonese and talks about special features of word borrowing among Chinese-influenced languages, as well as calques and the Balkan Sprachbund.

Show notes and links available on the Cantonese page. Transcript below.

This podcast is also available on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe!

[intro]

以:係啊係啊係啊係啊。(苗:哦,OKOK)Wiki講㗎。Wiki講一定啱㗎。

苗:哦,原來係噉。

靳:呢個係咪intro嚟㗎,我想問。

以:係啊,呢個應該係intro啊。

苗:呢個係intro喇。

[jingle]

Continue reading

絮言.狂想 #003

The Cantonese podcast for fans of linguistics, language lovers, and Cantonese learners. This language is a language-guessing game, like the Great Language Game, where two of our hosts guess Japanese, Korean, French, German, European Portuguese, Thai, Vietnamese, Swedish, Egyptian Arabic, and Polish. They explain their deductive process using phonological features.

Show notes and links available on the Cantonese page. Transcript below.

This podcast is also available on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe!

[Intro]

靳:深喉音啦,我哋啱啱講完內爆音,依家又講深喉音啦,係咪?

以:喂,咪玩嘢啊你,我笑點好低㗎

三:呢個……呢個節目係……合家歡節目嚟㗎呢個,係

[jingle]

Continue reading

The Cantonese podcast for fans of linguistics, language lovers and Cantonese learners alike. With the release of the Netflix reality show Deaf U, the second episode discusses sign languages, Deaf culture, and various ways of communicating without sound.

Show notes and links available on the Cantonese page. Transcript below.

This podcast is also available on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe!

[Intro]

苗:有一樣嘢非常之重要嘅,就係叫做……我又唔識講喇,中文。Indexing啊。手指指噉樣……

以:我唔知咩係indexing。

苗:手指……我就叫佢手指指啦,好啦。

[jingle]

Continue reading

Verb aspects are a thing that annoys many learners of Russian, Polish etc. Most learning resources just told me the basics of what they mean, but not how they function in practice.

This is a series where I, as an intermediate Polish learner, attempt to explain some grammatical features common to most Slavic languages in a simple, jargon-free and applicable way. I will be using Polish as my examples but I hope my notes will help learners of other languages too.

The perfective and imperfective verb-pairs took me a long time to figure out, but here’s what they are, in a nutshell:

The perfective aspect of verbs mean one thing: the thing is DONE. FINISHED. ONE ACTION.

The imperfective aspect of verbs can have two meanings:
1. the PROCESS of the action. Starting to do it, but not finishing it yet.
2. doing a thing REPEATEDLY.

Taking Polish as an example: zrobić – to have done; robić – to be in the process of doing OR to do repeatedly, regularly.

Now when to use which is something you need to get a feel for, but I’ll list some general principles I discovered. (I’ll be leaving the formation of the verb forms for another post.)

Continue reading