More on nouns - genders

There are two gramatical numbers in Polish - singular and plural (pojedyncza and mnoga). There are few surprises here.


Depending on the classification we choose we can distinguish either three or five genders in Polish:

• masculine (męski):
  
  • masculine personal (męski osobowy)
    
  • masculine animate (męski nieosobowy żywotny)
    
  • masculine inanimate (męski nieosobowy nieżywotny)
    
• feminine (żeński)
  
• neuter (nijaki)
  

In plural męskoosobowy (masculine-personal) and niemęskoosobowy (non-masculine-personal) are used for masculine personal and the remaining ones respectively.


Unlike German, and more like Italian, it is usually possible to find out gender by looking at the noun ending and the meaning of the noun.

• Nouns that end in "-a" are usually feminine.
  
  
  • Exceptions include words that end in "-ista" (like "komunista" - communist) which are person-masculine
    
    
  • And words that end in "-awca"/"-owca" (like "sprzedawca" - salesperson, "kierowca" - driver) that are also person-masculine
    
    
  • One particularly annoying word is "mężczyzna" which means adult male person, which is obviously person-masculine.
    
    
  • Some other masculine words, like "tata" (dad), "poeta" (poet), "sędzia" (judge).
    
    
  • Despite not being feminine, their declension is quite similar to declension of feminine nouns that end in "-a".
    
    
• Nouns that end in "-o" or "-e" are usually neuter.
  
  
  • like dziecko (child), zawiniątko (package), jedzenie (food), wyjście (departure, exit, solution),
    
    
• Nouns that end in "-ść" are usually feminine.
  
  
  • They are often abstract nouns, like "miłość" (love, from adjective "miły" - nice, liked) and "wysokość" (height, from adjective "wysoki" - high)
    
    
• Most other nouns that end in a consonant are masculine, and their exact gender agrees with their meaning. The most usual exceptions are nouns that are animate-masculine which aren't really animate, especially in the spoken language.
  
  
• Nouns that end in "i" or "u" in nominative singular are rare and are mostly of foreign origin. Native Polish words ending in "i" are feminine, like gospodyni (hostess or farmer's wife) or pani (lady).
  

Now some examples:

Gender	Nominative
Feminine	Coffee	Kawa	Kawę
Neuter	Milk	Mleko	Mleko
Person-masculine	Adam (male name)	Adam	Adama
Animate-masculine	Cat	Kot	Kota
Inanimate-masculine	Computer	Komputer	Komputer

• "Adam pije kawę" - Adam drinks coffee
  
  
• "Kasia widzi Adama" - Kasia sees Adam
  
  
• "Kot pije mleko" - A cat drinks milk
  
  
• "Adam widzi kota" - Adam sees a cat
  
  
• "Adam ma komputer" - Adam has a computer
  

For learning Polish Category Uncategorized Level Unspecified Second language English Created May 13, 2008 15:12 Views 1022 Share:

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