85 Comments
How come the 'ą' makes am 'ouw' sound? Does this mean that the 'ę' makes a similar sound as well?
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I see that you learn Brazilian Portuguese so remember that: Polish "ą" is similar to Brazilian "om" in "bom" and Polish "ę" is similar to Brazilian "en" in "quente".
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OK, thanks, you are right, I edited my last answer giving some better example ("en" in "quente").
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Desculpe. Você tem razão. Isso foi um erro. Aquela resposta é muito velha, então agora não lembro porque dei este exemplo. Provavelmente pensei sobre "sentou", mas esta palavra não tem este sonido nasal. Talvez o melhor exemplo é "quente", então "reparei" a minha resposta. Obrigado pela tua vigilância. :)
e-hook and a-hook are (usually) nasalized. E-hook, however, sounds just like e at the end of a word.
ę in the middle of a word will make an "en" sound. At the end of the word it's often said much closer to just a regular e. In fact, you're probably better off pronouncing it as a regular e at the end of words. It's very subtle.
Just imagine all instances of "-ę" as sounding like "-en" and all of "-ą" as "-on"/"-om" and it becomes very simplified. It's just a nasalization (except for word-final "ę" like cwks-legia pointed out just sounds "normal" to an English speaker)
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"ą" it's like "on" in French -> Japon (Japan) un pont (a bridge) "ę" it's like "in" or "ain" in French-> le pain (bread) la fin (the end)
The "woman" would be in nominative in Slovak in this sentence, not in instrumental...that's weird, I thought the cases would be the same since our languages are so close :) Haha and I thought this would be easy for me! :D
"Ona je žena." But actually, I read a comment in a different discussion that explained Polish cases in more detail and said that instrumental (with the questions "kim?" & "czym?") can be used to express who you are - as in "Who am I?". And I realized that you could actually say that in Slovak using instrumental too ("Ona je ženou."), and it is absolutely correct, it's just not at all common because we would only use it as an answer to a specific question - which is probably the reason it didn't come to my mind immediately. Funny :)
Does the name in predicative position (copula) take the instrumental case ?
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Yes, all "Y-nouns" in sentences like: "X-noun is Y-noun" or "X-personal pronoun is Y-noun" take this case.
I noticed there was an exception listed for "To jest...." or "This is..." which still takes nominative. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish/Noun_cases
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Yes, you are right. As I wrote - it only works with nouns and personal pronouns, while "Y-nouns" in sentences like "X-demonstrative is Y-noun" take the nominative case, so "Ja jestem kobietą", but "To jest kobieta".
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Feminine, singular nouns (they mostly end with "-a") get this ending in Instrumental Case. Just change "a" for "ą" and that's it ;)
Thanks. I've also noticed that it's the same with masculine nouns. Is that correct?
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Exactly. For every singular noun ending with "-a" this is the rule. I cannot recall any exception for this.
It's actually pretty simple. „Jestem” is used in first person (when you are talking about yourself) and „jest” in third person.
Why is the instrumental case used for kobieta... I wanted to put an accent on the -a but for some reason my keyboard did not have that accent
Instrumental case is used whenever something is "renamed" to something else. So "she" is being renamed to "a woman".
Is it not also used when the noun is being used to preform an action like "I run with my feet"
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Instrumental case. If you have a sentence "subject is something" you have to use that case, and "-a" becomes "-ą".
Whenever you "rename" something it is always instrumental. She is "renamed" a woman in this case.
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It depends how you translate "it". You have two ways:
"to" - undefined subject, nominative (Czy to jest mundur?) or instrumental (Czy to jest mundurem?)
"ono" - defined subject (as I, you, he), instrumental (Czy ono jest mundurem?)
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If you have a sentence like "This is a cat" (with this) in Polish you use nominative ["To jest kot"]
In case of a sentence like "A cat is an animal" (you have precised, about what you are talking, instead of using "this/that") use instrumental ("Kot jest zwierzęciem"]
who's got a good list of keyboard shortcode for polish characters, on a Mac?
I'm not sure about Mac, but the standard for most common "qwerty" type of Polish keyboard is: LeftAlt+e=ę, LeftAlt+o=ó, LeftAlt+a=ą, LeftAlt+s=ś, LeftAlt+l=ł, LeftAlt+z=ż, LeftAlt+x=ź, LeftAlt+c=ć, LeftAlt+n=ń. For the less common "qwertz" type, it's: [=ż, {=ń, ]=ś, }=ć, \=ó, |=ź, ;=ł, :=Ł, '=ą, "=ę. Is that what you were asking for?
(To JAndrzej) I think you were almost right. The sound of Ą is like the Portuguese (you musntn't use 'Brazilian', the european has (in this case) the same pronunciation) Õ (Like the prnunciation of "balÕes", but the "õE" makes a /õj̃/, and also you have to pronunciate it with the mouth more open (I don't know if 'more open' is right, but...) an Ę is like in 'em', but also "more open" and without the (nasalised) palatal approximant (j) pronunciation. Also, I think "sentu" isn't a word. Maybe you were talking about "cento"... Types from a Brazilian! Hope I helped you!
I'm confused. I cant seem to get the difference between 'jestem' and 'jest'. Could anybody explain
Must have been a bug, this is obviously not only correct but even the best translation.
I still don't understand the differences in the way kobieta is written, or the other word (the one for man, I don't know how to spell it yet.), but would jestem be for self-reference, (i, me, that stuff?), and jest for third person?
In Polish every grammatical person has their own form of a verb. "jestem" is for 1st person singular. "jest" is for 3rd person singular.
Right now you know "kobieta" (Nominative = the basic, dictionary form. Mostly used as the subject of the sentence) and "kobietą" (Instrumental). Sentences like "I am Y" or "She is Y" take Instrumental (if Y is a noun phrase). I guess you might have seen "kobietę" as well, that's Accusative. Generally Accusative is used for the direct object of the sentence. Almost all verbs encountered in the beginning of this course take Accusative.
Well, "female" is sometimes acceptable, although quite... technical.
"kobietą" for sure will not be "women".
"kobiety" may be "women" (Nominative/Accusative) or "woman" (Genitive).
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How do you differentiate between indefinite and definite articles in Polish? My guess is context.
Yup. There are no articles in Polish, it's just an unknown concept. You can only differentiate by context. Also, sometimes you may assume that "the" has basically the same meaning as "this" and therefore you can use a form of "ten".
Is there any relation between instrumental in copula and animated nouns? Or must instrumental always be used in copula? An weird example with the inanimated noun jabłko: Ja jestem jabłkiem.
"Ja jestem jabłkiem" is correct grammatically, although of course absurd semantically. A noun phrase "Y" in such a sentence (X is Y, when X is either a noun phrase or a personal pronoun) always takes Instrumental. Whether the noun phrase is animate or not doesn't matter.
I'm new at this. I don't get why "A woman" is kobieta, but "She is a woman" is kobietą.
Why "kobietą" not kobieta ? After i back to odmian.net i found it in an instrumental case?? Anyone can explain or correct me ?? Thanks
That's all right. In Polish when you use the verb "być" (jest) with a noun after it, that noun is in instrumental case.
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Come on, you could allow "She's a lady" just out of respect for pop culture. :)
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It can be pronounced like that, but the actual sound will differ from speaker to speaker and from word to word, because Polish nasals are asynchronous(unlike French, but like Portuguese) and are pronounced as oral vowel and nasal semivowel or as nasal semivowel and nasal vowel. Because of that, typical IPA transcription varies between /ɔw̃/, /ɔn/, /ɔm/.
Personally, I default to /ɔn/ and only realise /ɔw̃/ in front of ł… Not sure I ever pronounced /ɔm/ in my life.
I'm seeing this problem quite a bit with a lot of people: What's with the hooked a at the end? It makes an "um" sound from what I'm hearing so it sounds like "kobietum". How does that work?
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It's more like nasal "om". It may be difficult at first, but You'll do it :)
yes, but only if you don't need to specify about whom you're talking about, because you've already had, be it by "ona" or other identification in a previous sentence, by name, or by something else (e.g. the person in the red scarf.)
The thing is, while there's just one "ja" (me), just one "ty" (singular you) - in case of anyone else, it's necessary to somehow establish who is being talked about. Unless it's clear from the context (usually happens to "my" (we) and "wy" (plural you.))
