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Polish grammar-why does it hate me? More perfect/imperfect questions!


Czarne OczyThreads: 21
Posts: 75
Joined: Feb 7, 08 		  Sep 10, 08, 20:51 /  #
Hello everyone, once again its me with a question about the imperfect and perfect forms. For some reason this is my hardest concept of Polish grammar to understand.

A long time ago I printed out someones reply to me about perf/imperf, and it was really thorough. Now, Im looking at it all confused.
"Uzcyć-to teach someone something"
"Nauczyć- to teach someone to do something"

The poster noted (by the way, thanks to whoever posted this, I've used it for a long time and it is very detailed:) that uczyć is imperfect, and that nauczyć is in its perfect form. My question is: Does the endings of verbs have anything to do with wether they are perfect or imperfect? I noticed in the example in this post that uczyć becomes perfect when the prefix na- is added. Another question, I was trying to organize all of the verb endings in Polish and I came across 10, or maybe in reality its 5. For example, -ać, ować, nąć, iwać...and so on. Im wondering if "-ać" and "ować" are related, and if they are, if all verbs have "two" kinds of endings. I think it has something to do with aspect pairs, but I'm not really sure. I also think I've made some huge linguistic mistake that I've been warned to watch out for...anyway dziękuję za pomoc wszyscy:)

CO
benszymanskiThreads: 9
Posts: 510
Joined: Feb 29, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 02:23 /  #
Yeah it is a pain because we don't have this concept in English. But once you've go the hang of it you will realise that it's a lot simpler than verbs in English (I drank, I was drinking, I had drunk, I have drunk etc..). I hope this helps:

1. I notice you have added 'to do' in your perfective definition. Don't - the meaning is the same it's just the aspect that is different. Imperfective emphasises the state of the verb, perfective emphasises the result or change of state.

Example:
piłem kawę i ktoś zadzwonił - I was drinking coffee and somebody called. Drinking is imperfective because I am emphasising the action of drinking, i.e. what I was doing (the state) at the time of the call.
I could have said wypiłem kawę i ktoś zadzwonil which would be - I drank my coffee and somebody called. Here I put drinking in the perfective because the action of drinking was completed and then something else happened.

2. Yes often you will see that the perfective looks like the imperfective but with a prefix such as po, na, do, s, wy etc.. but the problem is, is that it's not always the case and it's not regular.
Example:
pić and wypić, jeść and zjeść

3. Often you can take a different prefix, add it to the imperfective and you get a slightly changed meaning.
Example:
If you take 'pić' you can have -
dopić - to drink up, upić (się) - to get drunk, odpić - to sip.
This is a useful construction because if you recognise the root of the word then you can often get the meaning, or at least the gist of it, but it's also a pain because you need to recognise that these are variants. For example how do you know unless you learnt it first that 'wypić' is the perfective of 'pić' and not in fact a variant meaning 'to drink out'? You don't...
Also sometimes you can get an oddball in there - such as obchodzić. Looks like it should mean 'to walk around' but also means 'to celebrate, to observe (a Holiday, religious occasion etc...)'.

3. Sometimes the pair is not made with a prefix but with a different ending as you mentioned. But again, no regularity to this.
Example - kupować and kupić, zamykać and zamknąć

4. Sometimes the imperfective looks nothing like the perfective.
Example - brać and wziąć

I recommend the book "301 Polish Verbs" by Klara Janecki which covers a lot of this stuff. It talks about prefixes, perfective/imperfective and then lists a lot of verbs and how to conjugate them.
Guest   Sep 11, 08, 02:58 /  #
Apparently, when I speak Polish, I have been told that I have an extremely strong accent. I would like to lose my english accent to make my Polish sound more fluent. Does anyone have any suggestions??
benszymanskiThreads: 9
Posts: 510
Joined: Feb 29, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 03:14 /  #
One thing you can do is practise the correct pronounciation of the hard and soft sounds of cz, rz, ci, si, ż etc... For example most of us foreigners pronounce cz and ci the same, but they are not. Likewise with sz and si.

The difference is cz, rz, sz, ż are hard, ci, si, zi are soft.

For hard ones pout when you say them, for soft ones smile. The way I remember it is when I see "i" think smile, otherwise pout.

After that it's a case of getting native speakers to correct you.
HelenaWojtczakThreads: 31
Posts: 156
Joined: Aug 5, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 05:16 /  #
Benszymanski, as you are being so helpful, may I, too, prevail upon you?

In English we can say "I am drinking tea", meaning right now I am drinking tea, or we can say " I drink tea", meaning I habitually drink it, but we would not use it to say we were drinking a cup right now.

My question is, is it true that in Polish you don't have this distinction? You can only say pije herbata, and if you want to convey the meaning of habitually, you have to use extra words?
benszymanskiThreads: 9
Posts: 510
Joined: Feb 29, 08 		Edited by: benszymanski   Sep 11, 08, 05:26 /  #
I think so, yes. "I am xxx-ing" in English is called the present continuous. In polish just like in french and german there is no present continous and they have to add extra words to specifically emphasise right now. In french they add "en train de ...", in german they just add "gerade" and in polish "teraz" normally does the trick.

Edit - or maybe "już" instead of teraz is better - już idę! for example
intervigiliumThreads: -
Posts: 9
Joined: Sep 9, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 06:34 /  #
HelenaWojtczak:

In English we can say "I am drinking tea", meaning right now I am drinking tea, or we can say " I drink tea", meaning I habitually drink it, but we would not use it to say we were drinking a cup right now.


"I am drinking tea" <-- I would say in Polish "właśnie piję herbatę"

The word właśnie is from "właśnie (teraz)". The "teraz" word is conjectural.

I think there still could be other words we use ^_^.
HelenaWojtczakThreads: 31
Posts: 156
Joined: Aug 5, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 08:39 /  #
So, in fact, "pije herbate" means I drink it habitually, I like it, and does not mean I am drinking it right now.
singingchefThreads: -
Posts: 3
Joined: Aug 21, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 08:41 /  #
This is al very interesting, thankyou.
benszymanskiThreads: 9
Posts: 510
Joined: Feb 29, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 08:48 /  #
No, piję herbatę could mean any of the following:

I drink tea (generally, habitually)
I am drinking tea (right now)
I do drink tea

Which one depends on the context...
HelenaWojtczakThreads: 31
Posts: 156
Joined: Aug 5, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 08:50 /  #
OK now I understand! THANKS
intervigiliumThreads: -
Posts: 9
Joined: Sep 9, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 08:52 /  #
HelenaWojtczak:

So, in fact, "pije herbate" means I drink it habitually, I like it, and does not mean I am drinking it right now.


It can be both "I drink" and "I am drinking". If we feel that the difference between these two meanings is important, than we use extra words to express it.
benszymanskiThreads: 9
Posts: 510
Joined: Feb 29, 08 		  Sep 11, 08, 10:32 /  #
Now you know why Poles complain so much about learning English verbs, we have all these extra forms they don't have.
MarekThreads: 4
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Feb 15, 07 		  Sep 12, 08, 12:44 /  #
mieszkać = to live, i.e. dwell in a house, apartment etc. IMPERFECTIVE

zamieszkać = to live/dwell officially at a specific address PERFECTIVE

pomieszkać = to live/dwell somewhere a while, not permanently! PERFECTIVE

Normally, certain prefixes 'perfectivize' the root verb, by itself, an imperfective verb denoting a continuous action!

Does this make sense?
MarekThreads: 4
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Feb 15, 07 		  Sep 13, 08, 08:36 /  #
Aspects function similarly, yet not identically, to English tenses. They appear more complicated to English speakers because sometimes the two forms, perfective and imperfective, don't seem to have much in common, e.g. 'brać' vs. 'wziąć', both translated as 'to take' etc....
MarekThreads: 4
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Feb 15, 07 		  Sep 13, 08, 11:05 /  #
Czarne Oczy,

Be careful here! 'nauczyć się' means 'to learn', not 'to teach'-:)
Michal2Threads: -
Posts: 80
Joined: Aug 30, 08 		Edited by: Michal2   Sep 16, 08, 08:56 /  #
Guest:

sh, I have been told that I have an extremely strong accent. I would like to lose my english accent to make my Polish sound more fluent. Does anyone have any suggestions??

Try speaking Polish after drinking a few wodkas! All you can do is practice but I very much doubt if you will ever be able to loose it completely. I hear Poles in England who have been here for like thousands of years and they still sound really dreadful when they open their mounths and speak in English.
MarekThreads: 4
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Feb 15, 07 		  Sep 16, 08, 14:34 /  #
"when they open their mouths...."

Ditto, ditto and ditto plus!!!-:) It continues to amaze me how certain nationalities, and not unintelligent members of said species, particularly from Poland, Spain and France, can live for umpteen years in an Anglo-Saxon country and still sound as if they just got off the boat.

Somehow, I credit us Anglo-Saxon speakers, even from moderately educated backgrounds, with making more of a concerted effort at speaking a foreign language than many a foreigner makes at speaking ours. Prhaps this is because fewer expect us, especially Americans, to speak a foreign language and also too, because we were never said to 'need it', compared with most other nationalities, where English is considered soooo important, that not only is every Tom, Dick and Harry required to learn/study it, but worst of all, practically any Tom, Dick and Harry is allowed to teach it, atrocious grammar, pronounciation what have you!!!!!
z_dariusThreads: 22
Posts: 5,091
Joined: Oct 18, 07 		  Sep 17, 08, 21:48 /  #
Michal2:

I hear Poles in England who have been here for like thousands of years and they still sound really dreadful when they open their mounths and speak in English.

I know English people like that.
MarekThreads: 4
Posts: 1,120
Joined: Feb 15, 07 		  Sep 18, 08, 12:38 /  #
Indeed, Dariusz, but I'm pretty sure that it's their native language, i.e. they have inherent license to do with their mother tongue as they wish. The same though, does NOT apply to foreigners. A foreign tongue is much like a guest pass: It should be treated with care by the user and may be required back at any time....no reason necessary!-:)
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