Vocabulary - Słownictwo

Nouns - Rzeczowniki

	In Polish Po polsku	In English Po angielsku
♀	Muzyka	Music

Verbs - Czasowniki

Present tense - Czas Teraźniejszy

This lesson focuses on verbs that use the Genitive form specifically, so it also repeats some from before like chodzić and iść. Remember how to split these two. To go, and to be going. So let's see the new verbs:

* These verbs take genitive just by themselves, without any prepositions involved. In comparison, “chodzić” and “iść” take genitive because of the preposition “do”.

Potrzebować

Now, potrzebować means to need something or someone. It’s different from “I need to do” which is closer to the word must. A few examples:

Tamte dzieci potrzebują kobiety	Those children need a woman
Potrzebujesz kawy!	You need coffee! (geez, grumpy, are we?)
On potrzebuje kota	He needs a cat
Potrzebujecie konia?	Do you need a horse?
Potrzebuję go!	I need him! (No, you don’t, hon)

Notice the nouns and pronouns in genitive. Apparently for native Polish people, it’s a common mistake to use potrzebować with accusative, but we should learn the correct form here. I tried this with a Polish girl: Potrzebujesz herbaty? - Do you need tea? And she applauded my progress, but told me that needing something is stronger than wanting something, so it sounded weird to be asked that as a question. It seems that it's not a direct translation of offering something "Do you need something?" as opposed to "Would you like something?".

Słuchać

Then, the verb słuchać means to listen to something, or someone. It’s different from słyszeć which is just to hear. Słuchać means to listen attentively. Also, in some cases, it is used colloquially to mean to obey what someone else is telling you to do. Let’s see some examples:

Ja słucham muzyki	I am listening to music
Mały chłopiec słucha kobiety	The little boy is listening to the woman (Either just listening or obeying)
My słuchamy tamtego kota	We are listening to that cat (He must have a very compelling speech…)
Ty słuchasz tej kobiety?	Are you listening to this woman?
Słucham cię	I am listening to you

Again, I marked the genitive pronouns and nouns in red. Let's see another example about word order and emphasis:

Nie słuchamy ich	We don’t listen to them
My ich nie słuchamy	We don’t listen to them (as opposed to other people who do listen)
Ich nie słuchamy	Them, we don’t listen to (As opposed to other people we do listen to)

Jechać, iść, chodzić

Now, Duolingo only pointed this verb to me once in the entire 5 levels, but it’s worth checking:

Jadę do domu

I am going home

We can see it’s in present continuous, so how is this different from idę? Well, looking into the comments, we can see that it is used when the subject is using a vehicle. For example, a car, or a horse. Iść, on the other hand, implies walking on foot. We can equate it to the english verb ride: I am riding home. It sounds weird, but let’s just say that it works as an example. We also see a new example of going somewhere. This time, not a place, but a person:

Chodzimy do tego mężczyzny

We go to this man

It could be a guy they meet regularly for some business... hmm… In any case, now we know that we can go towards places, and towards people, both continuously and regularly. For example, I am walking towards that man would be Idę tamtego mężczyzny But I regularly go to this man would be Chodzę tamtego mężczyzny