"Szukam małej torby."
Translation:I am looking for a small bag.
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Well, you have to know what case is needed with a given verb, or a preposition. "szukać" needs Genitive, so "mała torba" is in Genitive.
I don't think there's a better way to learn this than just to learn by heart... You will make mistakes, of course, but at some time you will just know.
I think Jellei meant that what in the nominative would be "mała torba" needs to go into the genitive.
i.e. "...so "mała torba" goes into the Genitive" -- małej torby
Yes. After all, the English is "to look <for something>" which would put the sought for item into the Dative, if English still had a Dative case :-) .
It is "małej torby" indeed. Or "(małej) torebki", as we usually accept diminutives when it's "small something". And frankly, it seems to me that "torebka" is more common than "torba" for a woman's handbag.
Is torba an irregular? I would think that it's genitive would be "torbi", just like other feminine nouns ended in "a"
Well, there are rules about whether a genitive takes -i or -y.
The most important rule is that nouns ending in -ga or -ka have their genitives in -gi or -ki. Many of the fem. nouns encountered in this course end in -ka, so you get to see a lot of -ki genitives.
This goes some way to explain why "torba" -> "torby" but "torebka" -> "torebki" as mentioned in Jellei's response just above this conversation.
HTH...
Yes, I wish there were a small list of words in all their forms for the words in the exercises.
I think i get it. Torba is feminine. So one would say mała torba. But with the verb szukam małej (jej) torby. Polish is bloody weird. The grammar is kicking my arse.
I think it would help learning a lot if when you click on a word it shows not only the meaning but also gender, number and case (and ideally even the root word). I made zero headway with the grammar despite reaching this point which expects quite a lot of grammatical knowledge. Eventually went and bought a book instead
If I remember correctly torebka is more likely to be a purse, or maybe a clutch.
more likely to be a purse.
Which is exactly the word used in (parts of) the USA for the Br. Eng. term "handbag".
I'd use "torebka" for most bags, including women's handbags, unless it's really quite a large one. Personally I would choose to teach it rather than "torba", although it's not like "torba" is an uncommon word.
Added "handbag". And "purse".