| nom. |
In Polish, there are seven cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, don’t start stressing, since it isn’t as bad as you might think. Cases may look scary, but they are very logical, as they help us identify the function a noun plays in a sentence. The nominative case, which is the base form of all nouns and by far the easiest case.
Polish, like most European languages, as well as all Slavic languages, has gender. Knowing a noun’s gender is crucial to being able to properly decline it. Thankfully, in Polish identifying the gender of a noun is extremely easy. Just follow some simple rules and that’s it!
Before I forget, I should tell you the function the nominative case plays in Polish. This case is used to identify the subject in a sentence.
Below you’ll find the rules to properly identify a noun’s gender along with some examples.
Note: The purpose of this post is simply to show how this case if formed.
| M [masculine nouns] | Masculine nouns end in a consonant [ć excluded]. |
| a consonant | kwiat [flower] pieprz [pepper] dzień [day] sok [juice] ołówek [pencil] dłógopis [pen] talerz [plate] wieczór [evening] dom [house] ojciec [father] |
| Ż [feminine nouns] | Feminine nouns end in the letters a, i and ć. |
| –a | córka [daughter] komórka [cell phone] kobieta [woman] bajka [fairy tale] |
| –i | pani [madam] |
| –ć | płeć [gender] |
| S [neuter nouns] | Neuter nouns end in the letters e (ę), o and um. |
| –e | srdce [heart] pole [field] |
| –o | okno [window] pivo [beer] jabłko [apple] niebo [sky] |
| –um | museum [museum] centrum [center] |
- There are unfortunately many exceptions to the rules given above. For example, noc [night] and rzecz [thing] are feminine.
- If the noun refers to a masculine person, it is masculine. The same goes for feminine nouns.
Well, I guess that’s all for this post. There will be more Polish posts, but they will come at a much, much slower rate.
My Slavic Studies 