Accusative Case

I know only the masculine animate and the feminite nouns only change but do they have plural endings or do they take the genitive plural endings?

Masculine nouns take the genitive endings and the feminine take the nominative plural

Znam tego pana-I know that man singular accusative case
Nie znam tego pana I do not know that man in the genitive singular case
Znam tych panów I know those men in the plural accusative case
Nie znam tych panów I do not know those men in the genitive plural case

Znam tę dziewczynę I know that girl in the singular accusative case
Nie znam tej dziewczyny I do not know that girl in the genitive singular case
Znam te dziewczyny I know those girls in the plural accusative case
Nie znam tych dziewczyń I do not know those girls in the genitive plural case

Osioł is masculine. Not to such a degree as horses, donkeys are animate, so...

Nom sing: Osioł
Nom plur: Osły
Gen plur: Osłów
Acc sing: Osła
Acc plur: Osły ???

Nom sing: Oślica
Nom plur: Oślice
Acc sing: Oślicę
Acc plur: Oślice

Have I got the accusitive plural (in bold, to make it easier to spot) right or wrong?
Help!

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish:Masculine_noun_declension

good luck :D

Thanks.

A very helpful forum member helped me out with some of this.
Then my even more helpful 'teacher' changed a few things. Now I have a feeling it changed from being right to being wrong.

edit (well, actually some additional stuff added a few minutes after the rest of it):
It seems my ''teacher'' was taking Osioł as being person-masculine rather than just animate-masculine.

Am I really going to get all of this or should I just learn a load of endings, just stick one on the end of the word and hope for the best?

Hm, would it not maybe be (Acc sing) Osioł, (Acc pl) Ośły?
er, I'll have to go and look this up now lol, homework

well, i always hope for the best while speaking English, and it not always comes out correctly... life is brutal ....


osłów??? i would go with osły....

Polishgirltx's link is quite good (probably).

I'm sticking with osła for the singular (for now).
As in:

"Przyprowadź osła!"
"Nie!"
"Przyprowadź osły!"
"Nie! Nie! Nie!"

Does that look like the start of a great work of Polish literature or just the ramblings of a retard?


My "teacher" finds 'a'/'an' and 'the' very difficult, so he either picks one at random, ignores both of them, or (his current favourite) he uses the word 'some'.

I am the edit-addict. I just had to put inverted commas around the word teacher.

"Osłów" is used only when talking about people, otherwise "osły" should be used.

and there's only one Osioł here who's actually a person.
As I claim to be an actual donkey, osły is my word of the day.

Hmm, a bit of both really :)
Osioł is not listed in my grammar book. so it must be reasonably regular in it's declension, (hence my suggestions above)

what we need is...., a polish person to assist us!

here I come :)
I think we already had the full declination of donkey/jenny in some other thread (including the differences resulting furhter: RJ_cdn's example).
Anyway Osiol's examples (post #3) are correct.

The only problem is what RJ_cdn mentioned


The word "osioł" is quite popular for calling names in Polish, it means either 1/ someone very stubborn or 2/ someone a little retarded (or at least having trouble with understanding simple things) - with such meanings the word "osioł" behaves like normal "person"-noun

Examples with Dative case (Celownik)
Daj siana osłu (Give the donkey some hay)
Tłumaczyłem temu osłowi już dwa razy a on nadal nie potrafi pomnożyć 3 przez 7.
(I was explaining it to that retard already twice and he still cannot multiply 3 with 7).

Dziękie - now i know my donkeys in Polish...

Dzięki

Dziękuję.

I've already forgotten most of the little that I learnt.

Lol, thanks - this is a word I always spell in correctly!

Merged: ACCUSATIVE.Animate/Inanimate.Masc/Fem/Neut?

Rule= Masc, Animate
Add 'ego' to adjective/s, 'a' to noun/s.
Inanimate
NO change.
Feminine, Animate and Inanimate
Add 'ą' to adjective/s, 'ę' to noun/s
Neuter. Animate/ Inanimate
No change.

Example:
Proszę .................... [mała kawa] = fem/Inanimate.
Proszę małą kawę. (Please may I have a small coffee)
Because 'mała kawa' is fem I hook the 'a' of the adjective and and change the 'a' of the noun (kawa) into an 'ę'.

Example 2:
Proszę ............... [jedna mała pizza]= fem/inanimate.
Proszę jedną małą pizzę. (Please may I have one small pizza)
Jedna is a numeral so is treated as an adjective.

HELP:
Proszę ........... [jeden mały kurczak]= masc/animate.
Proszę jedenego małyego kurczaka.
??Am I being correct by simply adding 'ego' to the masc 'mały'??

Hints, tips and explanations welcome.
Dziękuję.

Proszę jednego małego kurczaka.

No explanation this time - I'm running out of power :)

You're correct, the "ye" just gets shortened into "e". I can't think off a Polish word, that would have "ye", "ya" or "yu".

More rules, for some less common nouns:
Masc, Animate:
add 'a' to nouns ending with a consonant, but 'ego' to nouns ending with '-y' or '-i', and 'ę' to most nouns ending with '-a'.

Feminine: No change for nouns ending with consonant, for nouns ending with '-a', change it into '-ę'.

examples:
młody uczony - młodego uczonego (Masc. Anim.)
szybki zombi - szybkiego zombiego (Masc. Anim.)
stary artysta - starego artystę (Masc. Anim.)
mała kość - małą kość (Fem.)
duża wieś - małą wieś (Fem.)

But these nouns are really less common, so your rules are quite accurate. I can also treat the masculine adjectives (I think all end with '-y' or '-i') as nouns ending with '-y' or '-i'.

stary artysta - starego artystę (Masc. Anim.)
This pattern is common for masculin nouns with -a ending (usually -ista/-ysta, komunista, populista, dentysta etc., other like "poeta", they are mostly borrowed from Latin, but there are some Slavic too, like "mężczyzna"), they simply follow the feminine declension pattern.

młody uczony - młodego uczonego (Masc. Anim.)
This pattern applies to nouns that are in fact adjectives (for example spalony - offside, from the verb spalić), their declension follows the adjective pattern (also for female forms, for example: polskiej uczonej (Genitive, Dative, Locative), polską uczoną (Accusative, Instrumental)).

Sędzia (male, a judge) has a mixed declension.

Duży żubr (Big Bison) [Masc. Anim.]
Jeden (One)

Jedenego (or do I drop the 'e' = Jednego?)
Dużyego (oe do I drop the 'y' = Dużego?)

Jednego Dużego Żubra?


???Because the particular adjective is being used as a noun???


Example, please?
I'm unsure what you mean.

"Polanski...."
The '...ski' ending to a name turns it's usage into that of an adjective??

Those are correct.


right on spot


No, it simply is a noun :)
you have a verb (uczyć - to teach) from which you can create an adjective (technically it's participle, not adjective) "uczony" (taught), you can still use this form as a normal adjective, but it also became a noun (= a wise man, scientist). Still, being a noun it keeps the declension pattern of an adjective.


I meant some of the forms follow the pattern of male nouns ending in -a (so female declension pattern, for exapmle Narzędnik - Instrumental), but most forms follow adjective declension pattern.

Mian. sędzia
Dop. -dziego (-dzi),
Cel. -dziemu (-dzi),
Bier. -dziego (-dzię),
Narz. -dzią,
Miejsc. -dzi (-dzim)
Woł. -dzio;

Plural (regular declension)
Mian. -dziowie,
Dop./Bier. -dziów
Cel. -dziom
Narz. -dziami
Miejsc. -dziach

Merged: Polish Accusative's: Help required

I have a task of completing sentences using the correct form of accusative nouns and adjectives.
Example:
Q1. Czekam na ............ [mój brat].
Because it is masc and animate it is:
A1. Czekam na mojego brata.

I am having trouble because I know there are different rules regarding names.............but I have forgotten them!
Q2. Czy czekacie na ...................... [pan Kowalski].
Q3. Czy czekacie na ...................... [profesor Nowak].
Q4. Czekam na ................. [pani Anna].
Q5. Czekam na ................. [pani Lewińska].

If someone could refresh my memory on the rules regarding names in the accusative case it would be a great help.
I seem to remember that -ski is considered an adjective?
Either male or female names do not change?

...na Pana Kowalskiego?


...na profesora Nowaka?


...na Panią Anne.


...na Panią Lewińską.

Maybe somebody else will explain you the rules...

Thanks Polish girl.

I understand the first example.

Treat as masculine/animate. Pan=Noun/Kowalski=Adjective.

I'll need an explanation for the remaining three.

Merged:Mixed genders in Accusative case?

Czytam ................ [ciekawa powieść]

The adjective (ciekawa) is feminine, the noun (powieść) is masc/inanimate (so would remain nominative).
Do I change the adjective and noun to their respective genders or does the noun dictate the gender of the full sentence?

it's because Kowalski is an adjective as has been said, where as Nowak is treated as a noun, hence Nowaka in example 2.

Examples 3 and 4 you have Anna -> Annę (noun fem acc) and Lewińska is an adjective hence Lewińską (adj fem acc).

powieść is feminine.
But to answer your question anyway, any adjectives used have to agree with the noun.

it's the verb that decides the case of a noun or adjective+noun group, czytam requires Accusative, so both will be in Acc. forms.

Czytam ciekawą powieść.

Why is it feminine?


I am going to post a few examples of my exercise to clarify my task.

E1. Oglądam ................ [stara fotografia]
stara fotografia = feminine, so:
Oglądam starą fotografię

E2. Czy masz ............. [mój klucz]
Mój klucz is masc/inanimate so remains nominative, so:
Czy masz mój klucz

E3. Czy masz .................[młodszy brat]
młodszy brat is masc/animate, so:
Czy masz młodszego brata

I hope this will explain my task better.
I have not been instructed on using the verb to determine the case but to use the noun and adjective, as above.

Some words are masculine, some are neuter, some are feminine. You just have to learn the gender when you learn the new word. There is no real logic as to why a word is one gender or not. Having said that, most of the time you will get a feel for the gender of a word from its ending.

For example lots of words ending in a hard sound (e.g. materiał, saxofon) are masculine. Most words ending in -a are feminine (e.g. praca, kobieta). Lots of latin looking words like muzeum are neuter, as are ones with -ie (like ubranie or zdjęcie).

Yes Krzysztof's answer was much better than mine - the case is determined by the verb or the preposition used in the sentence.

You need to change the case of the noun and the adjective to fit the sentence, and that is determined by the verb in your exercise.

For example E1:
Verb is oglądać which takes accusative. The object of this verb is your "stara fotografia", hence this object changes to accusative as you have done correctly.

E2: The verb is to have, mieć. Like in English (I have my key) the object changes to accusative. Mój klucz does not remain in the nominative. So your object is masc/inaminate accusative (which looks like the nominative though):

Czy masz mój klucz?

E3: Same as E2, but this time you have masc/anim acc.

I have only been learning for four weeks so I recognise the gender of nominative/singular words by the endings:

Masculine=consonant
Feminine= '-a' or occasionally '-i' (pani, gospodyni)
Neuter= '-o', '-e', '-ię', '-ę' and '-um'.

POWIEŚĆ ends in a consonant so I thought it would be masculine.
Does the accent make it feminine?

First names are nouns.
Surnames are also nouns unless ending with -ski, -ska. In which case they become adjectives.

Am I correct in the above statement?

If I am correct are there any more names/parts of names that are treated as anything other than nouns?