Confusion about genitive plural

Hi

I have just noticed something in lesson 9 of the PDFs on the university of pittsburgh site regarding the genitive plural which is confusing me. Maybe some experts out there can clarify this for me?

I thought that to form the Gen. pl. of feminine nouns you just take the stem with no endings, for example with "ulicy" the stem is "ulic" so you can use that for "nie ma tych ulic".

Likewise, the stem of ciocia is "cioć", so "nie ma tych cioć". This makes sense to me so far.

But on page 8 of the PDF it says that the stems of "Maria" and "chemia" are "Marj" and "chemj". So following the regular logic that should produce the sentences "nie ma tych Marj" and "nie ma tych chemj". But the Polish people I have asked say that this is wrong and there are no such words as "Marj" or "chemj".

Have I misunderstood something? I am confused now...

Thanks in advance.

Ben

The basic problem is that words borrowed into Polish from other languages ending in -ia don't act like fully Polish words and the -ia is not the same as the -ia that ends words like ciocia or babcia.

So, most people pronounce the Polish word dania (dishes [of food]) differently than they do Dania (Denmark, the country).

Technically the country should probably be spelled Danja (or even Danija) but (maybe) to make the words look more international the spelling -ia was maintained.

similarly fotografie (plural of fotografia) is pronounced differently from fotografie (vocative case of fotograf - photographer). Again a more accurate spelling of the first would be fotografje but ....

Anyway, 'international' words in -ia are declined slightly differently than Polish words, the genetivie plural is -ii (think of that as -ji) These are similar to international words ending in -ja (like stacja, misja).

so Marii and chemii would be the (very rarely used) genetive plurals.

Like Mafketis said, these forms (Marias, chemistries) aren't really used in Plural except some very rare circumstances, so no need to worry about it.

And you'll notice later some nouns (especially those ending in two soft consonants) don't follow exactly the cioć/ulic rule (stem only)
przyjaźń / wiadomość (fiendship / news) - plural: (Nom.) przyjaźnie / wiadomości; (Gen.) przyjaźni (not przyjaźń) / wiadomości (not wiadomość).



I don't know where in Poland you live, but I never heard any difference in the pronounciation of those pairs of words. Not in real life nor in TV. Maybe I'm just deaf (or have hearing impairment).



did you mean 'fotografije'? That probably was an archaic pronounciation (maybe even spelling)

On Dania = dania

This, isn't universal, but it's true of most speakers IME (not all whom realize this before being asked - most describe Dania as having a longer soft sound, almost Dańnia).

I don't hear the difference but my ears just aren't tuned the way a native speaker's are - I don't hear the difference between proszę and prosię either.

And always there's a fair amount of both regional and individual variation involved in lots of different phonetic details in any language, I once knew a Pole who insisted that -ą and -om were always pronounced alike (as they were in his speech).

Some time ago I read an account of the history of different competing spellings for loan words ending in -ia. It was a big controversy and IIRC the church favored -ija/-yja spellings (like the radio station) and some secular authority(ies) favored -ia.
The -ia spellings reflect stress better but the -ija/-yja spellings probably were more sound linguistically.

yes, Maryja (for Virgin Mary) is still used in Church, because that's how it sounded for centuries (also Austryja, partyja and so on) , but now it's considered obsolote, with Maria, Austria, partia etc. taking over. And I have never heard in Poland anyone using the arhcaic forms (except "Maryja" in prayers), I guess those forms ceased to exist in spoken language about 50 years ago.

Thanks for the quick answers.



Yeah I guess that sums it up - nothing is regular or predicatable in Polish (at least that's how it seems).

Thanks again.

I have a question about genitive plural,
how do I know with masc. whether to use 'ów' or not 'ów'?

When in doubt say -ów, even when it's not right it's always completely understandable (and chances are some Polish people would say it that way too). Apart from that ...

The only real rule I can think of off the top of my head is that if the nominative plural is -e (usually after a soft or functionally soft stem) then the genitive plural is likely -i/-y. (lekarze, lekarzy / konie, koni)

Of course there are exceptions:

mężczyźni - mężczyzn
przyjaciele - przyjaciół
bracia - braci (here the nom. is irregular)