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Polish grammar A1: beginner

The complete guide from A1 to B2: the rules, examples to listen to, the usual mistakes.

Level A1 covers the grammar of first exchanges in Polish: introducing yourself, naming and describing people and things, saying what you do, have, want and can do, where you are and where you are going, counting, telling the time, and saying what happened yesterday or will happen tomorrow. Five cases of the noun and three tenses of the verb are met at this level.

What A1 covers

  • the present of the three conjugations, the past with its gender endings, the compound and the simple future;
  • the nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental and locative of nouns, adjectives and pronouns in the singular;
  • the plural of nouns and adjectives outside the virile forms, and the genitive plural after numbers;
  • the first aspect pairs, learnt as words: robić / zrobić, kupować / kupić;
  • the numbers, the clock, the days and the months.

What is new for an English speaker

  • Polish has no articles: dom is “a house” or “the house”, as the situation shows;
  • every noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, things included, and adjectives, demonstratives and possessives agree with it: nowy dom, nowa szkoła, nowe okno;
  • the role of a noun is shown by its ending, its case, not by its place in the sentence: Ewa zna Marka and Marka zna Ewa both mean “Ewa knows Marek”;
  • the ending of the verb shows the person, so the subject pronoun is usually left out: Mieszkam w Gdańsku (“I live in Gdańsk”);
  • one present translates “I read” and “I am reading”, one past “I read”, “I was reading” and “I have read”, and most verbs come in pairs, an imperfective and a perfective: czytać / przeczytać;
  • the past shows the gender of the subject: a man says byłem, a woman byłam.

The usual difficulties

  • the instrumental after być: Jestem studentem, but To jest student;
  • the genitive after a negative verb: Mam czas, but Nie mam czasu;
  • the noun after a number: dwa koty, but pięć kotów, with a singular verb in jest pięć kotów;
  • two verbs for English “go”: iść on foot, jechać by a vehicle, and chodzić, jeździć for a habit.

  1. The verb być

    The first sentences in Polish rest on the verb być (“to be”), on a few verbs in -m such as mam and mieszkam, and on to jest, which points out a person or a thing.

  2. Nouns and adjectives

    Every Polish noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, and the words used with it, demonstratives such as ten, adjectives such as nowy and possessives such as mój, agree with it in gender, number and case.

  3. The plural

    At A1 the plural is learnt outside the virile forms: for things, animals, women and children.

  4. The instrumental

    The instrumental is used after być for what someone is (Jestem studentem, “I’m a student”), after z meaning “with” (kawa z mlekiem), for the means of transport (jadę autobusem) and after a few verbs such as interesować się.

  5. The accusative

    The accusative is the case of the direct object: Mam siostrę (“I have a sister”), Mam brata, Mam dom.

  6. The genitive

    The genitive answers the questions kogo? and czego?

  7. The locative

    The locative is used only after a preposition: after w and na for where someone or something is (w sklepie, na poczcie), after o meaning “about” (o pracy) and after po meaning “around” or “after” (po parku, po obiedzie).

  8. Prepositions of place

    Polish has three questions of place: gdzie? (“where?”), dokąd? (“where to?”) and skąd? (“where from?”).

  9. Adjectives and adverbs

    An adjective describes a noun and agrees with it; an adverb describes a verb and has one form.

  10. Numbers

    In Polish the form of a noun after a number depends on the number: jeden agrees like an adjective, dwa, trzy, cztery are followed by the nominative plural, and pięć and higher numbers by the genitive plural, with a verb in the singular.

  11. Numbers and time

    Ordinal numbers are adjectives in Polish: they agree with their noun in gender, number and case.

  12. The present tense

    Polish has one present tense, which translates both the English simple present and the present continuous: czytam is “I read” and “I am reading”.

  13. Modal verbs

    Chcieć (“to want”), móc (“can, may”), musieć (“to have to”) and umieć (“to know how to”) are followed directly by an infinitive, with no word for English “to”: chcę pić, mogę czekać, muszę pracować, umiem pływać.

  14. Verbs of motion

    Where English has one verb go, Polish has two pairs: iść and chodzić for going on foot, jechać and jeździć for going by a vehicle.

  15. The past

    Polish has one past tense.

  16. Aspect

    Most Polish verbs come in pairs that share one meaning.

  17. The future

    Polish has two futures.

  18. Questions, negation and conjunctions

    A Polish question has the word order of a statement: a yes-or-no question is opened by czy, another question by a question word, and no auxiliary like English do is used.

Contents · Polish grammar