Negation Basics - Podstawy Negacji

The time has come for negative sentences! The first thing we notice is, very basically speaking, we just have to put “Nie” into the sentence for it to become negative. But we have to be careful: “Nie” always comes before the thing we want to negate. In most cases right now, we want to negate the verb of the sentence. Nie + Verb.

Nie noszę koszuli	I do not wear a shirt
To nie jest pies	This is not a dog

We have seen an exception in definitions X to Y / X to nie Y. It doesn’t really have a verb.

Lew to kot	A lion is a cat.
Jabłko to nie zwierzę	An apple is not an animal

It is as if it had some invisible 'jest': "Lew to [jest/] kot", "Jabłko to nie [jest/] zwierzę". So we could say that anyway you negate the invisible być in there. Now you may have noticed that “Nie noszę koszuli” is a bit odd. There’s a -i there, so it means… it’s in genitive? How could it be? Does it mean all negations are in genitive? Not really. Apparently a lot of misconceptions around this course prompted Jellei, the Duolingo Polish course contributor/moderator, to make a guide for negation. It is really comprehensive and helpful even in future lessons, I think, so I will link to it below: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28545847/Everything-I-hope-that-you-need-to-know-about-Polish-negations The rule is: If a verb that takes Accusative in a declarative sentence gets negated, its object takes Genitive instead. Only Accusative changes its case to Genitive. The other cases just stay the same.

For example - Na przykład

Mamy koszulę	We have a shirt	Accusative Singular
Nie mamy koszuli	We do not have a shirt	Negative Genitive Singular
Widzimy kawę	We see coffee	Accusative Singular
Nie widzimy kawy	We do not see coffee	Negative Genitive Singular
-
To jest dom	This is a house	Nominative Singular
To nie jest dom	This is not a house	Negative Nominative Singular
Jestem kobietą	I am a woman	Instrumental Singular
Nie jestem kobietą	I am not a woman	Negative Instrumental Singular

Genitive Demonstrative Pronouns

Now we saw most rules for Genitive in the previous lesson, but Duolingo doesn’t introduce the genitive demonstrative pronouns until this lesson, so I’ll put it here. Below is a table for the demonstrative pronouns in genitive (dopełniacz). https://www.clozemaster.com/blog/polish-demonstrative-pronouns