Polish is part of the family of Slavic languages, which also includes Russian. There are no articles before nouns. Grammatical case is directly related to the position of the noun in the sentence and pronouns can refer to men, women, or indeed both men and women together. A person determined to learn Polish would be wise to keep a Polish grammar reference guide or book at hand to decipher grammatical structures and later build sentences correctly.
Adverbs do not have genders, however, other parts of speech do, for example, nouns have a grammatical gender. For this reason, one word can have five different forms, depending on its function in a sentence. The five categories of gender are masculine, feminine, neutral, masculine person plural and other plural. The masculine person plural is always used to refer to mixed gender groups. Some numbers in the Polish language need to agree with the noun to which they refer. This means that if the noun is masculine, the number needs to also be in the masculine form. For example, one horse would translate as jeden koń (masculine), whereas one cow would be jedna krowa (feminine), i.e. "one" is "jeden" in the masculine and "jedna" in the feminine.
Differences between English and Polish grammar
The biggest difference between English and Polish is case and gender. If an English speaker looks at a Polish sentence, they might be confused by the way certain words change to show case and gender. The word still has the same meaning but may be spelled very differently. A perfect example of this is the sentence: Mieszkam w mieście. Directly translated, this means “I live in a city”, where the word “mieście” means city or town. The basic form of “city”, however, is “miasto”. “Mieście” is simply the locative form of “miasto” following the locative preposition "w".
This gets quite confusing for anyone who is trying to learn Polish, but it should never put you off it! Anyone frustrated with Polish grammar only needs to read a few books written in Polish for young children. Everyone learning a new language needs to start at the beginning, and once basic vocabulary is learned, basic grammar can then be learned and then built upon!
Learn Polish grammar with Babbel
If you are determined to learn Polish, Babbel really is the best way to go about it. The website understands that you need to concentrate on the language and that learning a new language can be very difficult. We have set up our website with no ads at all to avoid interruption or distraction while you learn Polish. You get to learn at your own pace because no one pushes you through the lessons. You get some fun, interactive activities to learn vocabulary, listening and writing as well as our very own social network. You can also use our full featured apps for iPhone, iPad or Android, or any of our vocabulary trainer apps on your Windows 8 smartphone; so you can also learn on the go! There is no better way to learn Polish than the Babbel way, because we at Babbel understand that learning a new language needs to be fun and inspiring, not forced and boring.
Don't be shy about your new venture to learn Polish. No matter what your reason for wanting to know this fascinating and interesting language, you will find your time at Babbel to be worth every single minute. Just bear in mind that while Polish has structures in common with the English language, it still contains some concepts which are unfamiliar to English native speakers. There are also a number of different pronunciations and new letters to learn, but again, if you approach this task the Babbel way with fun and excitement, you'll be speaking Polish in your own personal due time.
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