| In Polish Po polsku |
In English Po angielsku |
|
|---|---|---|
| ♂ | Człowiek | Human |
| ⚲ | Warzywo | Vegetable |
| ⚲ | Zwierzę | Animal |
When defining one thing as another, we can use two different grammatical structures: to and jest (być).
This is used when we are speaking about classifying things into bigger categories. A lion is a kind of cat, and cats are in the group of animals. A girl is a human, and so on, as long as the class after to is bigger than the first noun (instance to class). The nouns remain in their nominative (mianownik) form, so they don’t change. However, the opposite order (class to instance), while correct grammatically, is not correct logically. So for example you can’t say “kot to lew” - Cats are lions, because its not correct logically even though the grammar is fine (unless you’re trying to be funny and incorrect on purpose, but that’s another topic).
| Lew to kot | A lion is a cat. |
| Kaczka to zwierzę | A duck is an animal. |
| Pies to zwierzę | A dog is an animal. |
| Czy pająk to zwierzę? | Is a spider an animal? |
| Czy pomidor to warzywo? | Is a tomato a vegetable? |
| Jabłko to nie zwierzę | An apple is not an animal. |
| Ser to nie warzywo | Cheese is not a vegetable. |
| Kot to nie człowiek | A cat is not a human. |
This is used when we are stating a definition. Since the verb is być, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with classes or groups. You can say “You are a human” (instance --> class), but you could also say “This human is a man” (class --> instance). Positive sentences follow the “X jest Y - X is Y” structure. Negative sentences follow the same structure, but we have to be careful, nie (no) always goes before być, “X nie jest Y - X is not Y”, which is the opposite of the order in English.
| Jesteś człowiekiem! | You are a human! |
| Nie jestem psem, jestem kotem | I am not a dog, I am a cat. |
| Pająk jest zwierzęciem | The spider is an animal. |
| Jabłko nie jest zwierzęciem | The apple is not an animal. |
| Nie, on nie jest psem | No, he is not a dog. |
As we said before, when using the verb być, the instrumental case comes into use. This lesson introduces a few more inflections for our nouns. Let’s also revise the ones we saw before.
https://mowicpopolsku.com/polish-grammar/cases/instrumental/ All masculine nouns in Instrumental have the ending -em
| Kot | Lew jest kotem | A lion is a cat |
| Tygrys | Lew nie jest tygrysem | A lion is not a tiger. |
Masculines with diphthong ie For masculine, if it has ie diphthong at the final syllable, the ie is deleted and em is added to the end ie → em
| Chłopiec | On jest chłopcem | He is a boy. |
| Pies | Jestem psem | I am a dog. |
Masculines ending with -ś, -ć, -ń, -ź The soft sounding -ś, -ć, -ń, -ź will be replaced by their phonological match, -si, -ci, -ni, -zi in the instrumental case. Then the instrumental -em will be added.
| Koń | Jesteś koniem | You are a horse. |
Masculines ending with -g or -k Instrumental male, if it ends in g or k, i is added before the instrumental em k → kiem g → giem
| Chłopak | Jesteś chłopakiem | You are a (teenage) boy. |
| Człowiek | Jesteś człowiekiem | You are a human. |
Masculines and Feminines ending with -a For both masculine personal and feminine, if it ends with a, it changes into ą a → ą
| Mężczyzna | On jest mężczyzną | He is a man. |
| Kobieta | Jestem kobietą | I’m a woman. |
| Dziewczynka | Ona jest dziewczynką | She is a girl. |
Neuters ending with -ę There are two kinds of neuters that end with ę:
For now we just need to know one: Animal - Zwierzę
| Zwierzę | Tygrys jest zwierzęciem |
Feminine and Masculine personal ending with -a For both masculine personal and feminine, if it ends with a, it changes into ą a → ą
| Mężczyzna | On jest mężczyzną | He is a man. |
| Kobieta | Jestem kobietą | I’m a woman. |
| Dziewczynka | Ona jest dziewczynką | She is a girl. |