#polish grammar

[lipowanoc]

Describing people in Polish - a few grammar remarks

Describing people in Polish requires either the use of Nominative or Instrumental case. Here's the short guide to it.

Quick reminder how to conjugate być (to be) in present tense:  ja jestem / ty jesteś / on  ona ono jest / my jesteśmy / wy jesteście / oni są

1.  być + noun in Nominative (the dictionary form)

Thanks goodness you can introduce yourself with the pattern " I + verb to be  + noun in Nominative (dictionary form, no strange endings)".  But that's actually limited to stating your name.

(Ja) jestem Tomek - I am Tomek

Wy jesteście Maria i Piotr? - Are you Maria and Piotr?

Note: You omit personal pronouns when it is clear who you're talking about. And while stating  "Jestem Tomek" it is obvious you talk about yourself because the verb "jestem" indicates it. You might use personal pronouns to put emphasis or contrast. Ex To jest Piotr, a  ja jestem Tomek - This is Piotr, and I am Tomek (contrast)

2.  być + noun in Instrumental

If you want to add any other noun to describe yourself or other people, then - here comes Instrumental.  To get Instrumenal,  you mostly add -"em" to masculine/ neutrum nouns and  you change the ending for  "ą" in feminine nouns (it's more complicated matter but let's stay with the basics for now). If you use adjectives or pronouns that describe the noun, then these adjectives and pronouns should be in Instrumental as well.

Nominative: silny  mężczyzna - Instrumenal: silnym mężczyzną  (strong man)

Nominative: znany lekarz - Instrumental: znanym lekarzem ( well-known doctor)

Nominative: dobra nauczycielka - Instrumental: dobrą nauczycielką (good female teacher)

Jestem dyrektorem firmy - I am a director of a company

Zaufaj mi, jestem inżynierem - Trust me, I am an engineer.

Maria jest nauczycielką w szkole podstawowej.  - Maria is a teacher in an elementary school.

Ona jest dobrą nauczycielką, dzieci ją lubią. - She is a good teacher, children likes her.

Państwo Wajda są naszymi sąsiadami - Mr. and Mrs. Wajda are our neighbours.

Wszyscy jesteśmy ludźmi i popełniamy błędy - we are all humans and we make mistakes.

3. być + adjective in Nominative

Uff, finally something easy. When you want to describe yourself or others just with the use of an adjective, then you use Nominative (dictionary form).

Ta nauczycielka jest dobra - This (female) teacher is good.

Ten lekarz jest bardzo znany - This doctor is very well-known.

Jestem piękna i mądra - I am beautiful and smart (female form).

but: Jestem piękną i mądrą kobietą (I am beautiful and smart woman) - here comes Instrumental, because adjectives don't stand alone, but describe a noun that follows.

Jesteś głupi - you're stupid - Nominative because you use an adjective

Jesteś idiotą - you're an idiot - Instrumental because you use a noun

4. "to / to jest + Nominative form "

"To jest ......"  could be translated as "This is....". Plural form: "To są..... " = "These are...."

This form is actually limited to description of a third person singular or plural. In its primary function it is a demonstrative form, like you point your finger and name things around you.

To jest kot!  - This is a cat.

To są moje kochane koty. - These are my beloved cats.

But you can build normal descriptive sentences  with this form. Often you can use only " to" ommitting "jest/ są".

Maria to (jest) dobra nauczycielka. - Maria is a good teacher.

Tomek to (jest) dyrektor firmy. - Tomek is a director of a company

Państwo Wajda to (są) nasi sąsiedzi - Mrs. and Mr. Wajda are our neighbours. 

So what's the difference between Maria  jest nauczycielką and Maria to nauczycielka? Well, it's subtle and both forms are quite interchangeable. To me "to jest" form is a little bit less formal, more conversational, used as a quick reaction or explanation. For example if you ask who is that Maria everybody are talking about, or why Maria is a little bit stuck-up, then you'd rather get an explanation that Maria to nauczycielka. But if you write Maria's bio, you'll use the form "Maria jest nauczycielką". Or if you ask about Maria's job, this form is likely to follow.

Edit: @gardens-and-cats thanks for correcting me!

[tkpolski]

Plurals

[atalienart]

What are your tips on improving writing?

I don't think I'm at the level to give such tips. I myself try to read a lot of different books and learn from the authors that way. I watch youtube writing channels that talk about story structure, character development, or give advice how to improve prose and what to avoid. It's good to have someone who can look at your writing and give some feedback too. Also, I write. After some time, when I go back to my writing, I can see the mistakes better.

I can share some things that I've learnt from others and I think are good advice, for example:

use strong verbs (the person may walk but may also stroll, march or tiptoe);

there are more interesting verbs than to be;

weave description into action (The building was big. She walked towards it. ➜ She lifted her head as the stone walls grew before her. or He took the book in his hand nervously. He was tall, had brown hair and was wearing glasses. ➜ He reached for the high shelf without an effort. Book in hand, he pushed glasses up his nose to read the title - "Magic spells to improve writing." "This is it," he murmured, nervously running fingers through his brown hair.) (or some shit like that);

write sentences of different length so they don't sound monotonous;

If you want to write quick scenes. Short sentences. Actually. Make them slower. Why? Because periods. Are. Long. Pauses. xD

leave the most important words for the end of the sentence (He was thinking about the woman, while drinking his tea. ➜ He was drinking his tea, thinking about the woman.)

avoid filter words like hear, feel, see, etc. (She heard the noise that startled her. ➜ The noise startled her. or She was startled by the noise. or She jumped at the noise.)

be careful with time shifts (She noticed him behind the trees and smiled. Her beautiful monster. She runs to him and takes his hand and all of a sudden everything is all right. "Where is your hat?" she asks, but he just stares at her. He's always been a monster of few words, soft and quiet, but the lack of answer still surprised her. - is this present or past tense? confusion)

every scene should have a purpose - advance the plot, develop the character, add some conflict; ideally it will do all these things;

white room syndrom is bad - avoid;

use as many characters as you need; if one character can do the work of two, you need only one, scrap the other;

every character should want something!

give a character a desire, fear and misbelief;

Here are some of them. I hope they're useful. (They were useful for me even if I write in Polish :)) Of course some of these are optional but I think they make my writing better. I read somewhere that you should write only necessary words, so I'm trying to go by this rule. This is rather hard btw xD

[vocalsynths]

Dracula (Vladimir Yaroshenko) and Jonathan (Patryk Walczak) tango from the Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa's version of Dracula (2024)

Video source provided by operanarodowa

[zyrafowe-sny]

Fascinating! To my Americanized, heritage speaker ear, the dukaisms feel like a regional accent you could encounter in some rural part of Poland. And now I might have another book to add to my TBR.

thoughts on like. Polish gender neutral pronouns? I’m increasingly hearing that there’s no way to de-gender a gendered language at all which i totally get but also what do non-binary people do

it's not really possible to de-gender a gendered language, yeah - a table, for example, has to be masculine in Polish, and it'd be rather counterproductive to try and deny that or change that.

but it's not counterproductive to look for a way to talk about and to someone - or about yourself - without gendering the person. is it a bit wonky in a language as strict as Polish? perhaps. will it take a long time to get widely accepted, and especially as correct Polish? of course.

but from neutrative forms, plurals, to dukaisms - the nonbinary (and not only) community in Poland has found many ways of self identification through language. and while it might sound strange at first, they work - and they can continue to do so with just a bit of effort on our end.

I would recommend the website zaimki.pl run by the “Neutral Language Council” collective - and their various language versions - and especially the bit about Polish language in English.

language is an ever-growing collective user-run project - it is human-made and human-used, and it will always keep evolving. that's what it's for!

[notthiscoolkid]

Au where Geralt, Jaskier and Ciri lives in wood cabin :P

I FINALLY END MY SUMMER JOB!!! And when i was working, my mind was full with the wicher. Im still reading books but i seriously like this stories. You know, im polish and the books are also polish. This is my bonding moment with cultures and this shitty country. Anygays.

Here are some details about this au:

1. Geralt was injured after a fight with some monster and Ciri finds this house. She decided to stayed there for some days for recovery. That was really late autumn and nights were starting to get cold. House seem nice and able to live in casually. Had bathroom at attic and free rooms at botto. And a really cozy taras. Also at the back, more deep in forest was small "stable" for Roach. They stayed there for winter.

2. House was not far from town, at bottom of mountains. Geralt ride before first snow for some food and important things. He met Jaskier in local inn. After small talk, witcher proposal him, to went together to cabin, ofc if he didn't have plans for weekend. (And because he missed him sm). Jasker immediately said "yes".

3. Snow fell and Jaskier needs to stayed with them for a little while, because the road to the city was covered with snow. (That was just good excuse to stay. Geralt normally went to city with killed monsters and to did his job) Sleeping on very uncomfortable couch.

4. After one week Jaskier's back had enough. He took his pillow and went to Geralt's room. Witcher was fine with sleeping in one bed with bard. They talk about putting mattress on attic but they never did. Sleeping in each other arms was to good.

[Here is plan of this house😌:]

[thecruleangel]

Polski fandom Bibli ma za mało yaoi.

Przepraszam że moj Polski nie jest za dobry ale ktoś musi coś powiedzieć.

Prubował!m znaleźć Jezus x Judasz w Polskim Tumblrze ale wogule nie mogł!m znaleźć.... Myślę że to duży problem i naprawdę ktosz muszi coś zrobić.

Jeśli jest yakisz tag który ma dobry fanów Bibli to proszę mi powiedzieć.

[skinnypaleangryperson]

My BoJack x reader fanfiction that came out a couple of years ago solely from a profound spiritual borderline psychotic experience mixed in with severe alcoholism and terrible jobs and an American crisis not being able to believe that this is the rest of my life has finally reached over the 2 million mark on Archive of our own, which basically means that my writing career is about to either take off, stay the same, or people are going to write articles about how bad it is once it gets big enough to appease people's boredom in their free time

[hatekawa]

Hihi! On the 8th panel of your last comic you should rephrase “until we’re not sure there’s a cure for Mikey,” to “until we’re sure there’s no cure for Mikey.”

“Not sure” means they do not know what follows after that (in this case: a cure for Mikey). Being sure means that they do know what follows after that.

Hope that makes sense!!! Keep up the awesome work :D

AAHHH it does make sense!!! Thank you :D

[offorestsongs]

MUTUALS 🫵🫵🫵 drop your OC or OC x canon and i'll assign them a polish song 💥🎉

[nearlydark]

Finally after years of like…needing my notes to be a certain way I have let go and embraced chaos (but planned). I think my biggest gripe w learning languages is the amount of resources and how to properly track what you’re learning from where but at the end of the day it’s all going to the same place (my brain) so who fucking cares??? So right now my system is to just chug along in this book and use duolingo for practice, maybe some YouTube channels for more listening practice/understanding but have it all in this notebook. Wish me luck 🇵🇱

[fruitfulchaos]

What I think the English language is really lacking are proper diminutives and augmentatives. All you have is stuff like cat -> kitty or lord -> overlord. As a polish speaker, this sucks ass. Our diminutives and augmentatives are MUCH more expressive and y'all are really missing out. We can diminutivise words until they become nearly unintelligible. Example:

1. kot (cat)

2. kotek (kitty)

3. koteczek (smaller/cuter kitty)

4. koteczuniek (even more)

5. kotesiunieczek (holy shit)

Not only that, but we can also diminutivise adjectives, verbs, pronouns and adverbs. You can cuteify the adjective "cute"!

More linguistic yapping:

That is, because not only do we include the process of deminutiva sensu stricto, which is your average diminutive, but we also make use of hypocorisms (the process of pet-name-ification) in a much wider area of speech. The diminutive can also be used in a demeaning way and that is actually, factually a separate type of diminutive!

Not only that, but because of, yknow, the way language is used, often words which were already diminutives have replaced its root word in degree of usage, which led to NEW diminutives being created for these diminutives!

An example could be the word książka, as in book. It came from diminutivising the word księga, but soon the roles reversed and książka became the root word, with księga being treated as an augmentative. That meant, however, that książka still needed a further diminutive - that's how książeczka came to life.

I could write an entire article about it but I'll spare myself the work lol this is me exposing myself as a linguist

[sewi-li-suwi]

so, i made a speedlang a month or so ago that i'd love to develop further and polish. i'm considering posting my progress on it / explaining various aspects on it on tumblr (either here or on a sideblog).. is that something people would be interested in seeing? it'd be cool to share it with other ppl and hear their thoughts/feedback on it

[strawberrystepmom]

not to be meta but i've been thinking a lot lately about what is so appealing about writing and reading and being a part of this bigger fan fiction writing community and tbh it's that everything feels so human.

there's a piece of every author i follow in what they write and that is such an interesting comparison to what, i feel, is an overly sanitized, digestible, dumbed down literary world. i honestly cannot tell you the last time a new book that just came out, shiny and spine unbent, wowed me upon reading it. i can't and i read A LOT.

im wowed by you guys and what you write every single day and that's so special. you can't find that anywhere else.

[abalidoth]

Problem: Arithmetic notation is ambiguous (ex. 2 + 2 x 4 could be 16 or 10)

Need: Unambiguous notation

Solution: Polish notation (or reverse). From now on all mathematics must be written with the operators at the end to reduce ambiguity. 2 2 + 4 x = 16 and 2 2 4 x + = 8. I see no issues with the solution whatsoever.

None whatsoever :D

[hanzajesthanza]

i worry about running into mistakes with auto-translate in my web-delving, but then i remember i can’t possibly run into anything worse than david french sword of destiny something more part iv “she ordered me to cheat you. and kill it.”