"Lubię ją."
Translation:I like her.
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Some sort of discussion of case would be most welcome in a "Tips and Notes" section. I realize the Polish group has an aversion to "cluttering up" the feed in some way, but a simple introduction to the new case as it comes along would not do that. The Turkish course does an admirable job, for example, and I believe the Ukrainian does rather well too. If it can be done for Ukrainian, surely it can be done for Polish. Of course, I understand if it is simply not up in beta and will be added later.
Could anyone explain why this is lubię ją rather than lubię jej? I'm having trouble keeping these forms straight. Dzięki!
Ją is accusative and jej is genitive.
Genitive (jej) is used:
- to imply possession
- with units or amounts
- after certain prepositions such as dla, do, od.
- for the direct object in a negative sentence (only if the positive sentence would use the accusative!):
Accusative (ją):
- indicates the direct object of the sentence
- is used with some prepositions to indicate a motion/change (exception: the preposition "w" (in) takes the locative when indicating a state/condition, but to imply change you must use the preposition "do" + genitive)
If you'd like to say "I don't like her" you would say "Nie lubię jej" (negative). But "I like her" is "Lubię ją".
"for the direct object in a negative sentence (only if the positive sentence would use the accusative!)"
So, in a negative sentence, all accusatives change to genitives, or am I getting it wrong? This is very unnatural to me, in Czech, there is no such change and I keep having troubles with this. :(
Yes, when this Accusative is needed because of a verb, and not a preposition (Lubię ją / Nie lubię jej vs Idę przez pokój / Nie idę przez pokój).
I put "Lubie ją" which was accepted, but I now think it should be "Lubię ją", which form is correct? Other discussions here suggest lubię but I didn't get any warnings. Thanks.
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@Deniza The 'ą' sounds more like a nasal 'o' (making it sound slightly like a 'oń'). So they sound totally different.
Thanks guys! After reading this discussion, I understand! Very helpful =]
If jej for genitive (negative) and ją for accusative Can someone explain to me "mam jej psa" It's positive and (mam) takes Acc ... why we put jej and not ją Thanks.
You also use the genitive case, 'jej', for possession. So "mam jej psa" means "I have her dog". The accusative case, 'ją' is not possessive, so it wouldn't make sense to say "mam ją psa". In English we don't differentiate between possessive and non-possessive 'her', but in Polish they are different words.
This is helpful, but i am confused by one thing. The forms ją/jej correspond to accusative/genitive cases here. Ok, got it. But the endings seem to correspond to adjectives. Lubię jej psa - no problem here as her is being used as as an adjective. But Lubię ją - here ją is a pronoun, right? So is it actually a different word, or am i missing something?
Alik usually gives here an explanation how "jej" as a possessive (in "I like her dog") comes from the Genitive form of "ona" and therefore works more like "I like the dog of her".
For me personally it seems easier to say that those ('jej' as in "I don't see her" and 'jej' as in "her dog") are two different words which happen to be identical - although of course they are related.
Thanks Jellei! Both your description and Alik's are really helpful. I'm not yet sure of the best learning approach. I may try to think about these as different words as see how that goes, or may consult a Polish lesson book and see how they roll out these possessive adjectives/pronouns.
The fact that adjectives and personal pronouns share the same declension pattern is no coincidence. In Old Church Slavonic (a documented sister language of Old Polish), inflected third person pronouns used to be added as a suffix to adjectives. In modern Polish, these forms contracted, so the pronouns aren't as easily recognisable anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Church_Slavonic_grammar#Adjectives
(take a look at the tables and the sentence above them)
Thanks Alik, this historical context and the link are really helpful and interesting!
I guess it's a possible interpretation (some 'it' that is grammatically feminine in Polish). Added now.
That's the wrong case.
Here we need Accusative, which is "ją". "jej" is Genitive, it would be used e.g. with "Potrzebuję jej" (I need her) or "Nie lubię jej" (I do not like her).