Home Lessons Tables FAQs Resources

What you know so far [Toggle]

Lesson 24: PAST TENSE - Asked, Was

Now if people are going to start asking you things like 'Dlaczego nie miałeś telefon?' and you understand them you're going to need some replies

But first of course ... "Witam! Witam. Dzień dobry albo Dobry Wieczór! No to dobrze. Mamy lekcję ... dalej".

OK ... when someone asks me why I didn't have something when I obviously should have had it, like "Dlaczego nie miałeś telefon?'" ... my most common answer is:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I don't remember

"to remember" is a well behaved verb so, along with all the other stuff you know, you should be able to get these:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
You don't remember
You remember
I remember

And there is nothing strange about how we add "Why", "What", "Where", "When" or "How"

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
You don't remember why
You don't remember what
I don't remember where
I don't remember when
I don't remember how

And you can extend any of these to explain what it is you don't remember if the situation needs clarity (such as if someone asks you what you don't remember).

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I don't remember why I didn't have a telephone
I don't remember what I had
I don't remember where the supermarket is
I don't remember when I wanted to have coffee
I don't remember how to do it

Important

Now sometimes someone will ask you a question that isn't relevant to what you are saying. Maybe it will interrupt your flow. Then you say:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
Unimportant

Which isn't as rude as it sounds in English if said softly or in a friendly fashion. Now we can split this word to get "it is not important".

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
It's not important why

Which gives us "Ważne" - "Important".

Now remember that a random aspect in your story won't have a gender so it's neuter which is why "ważne" ends in 'e' here. So what would it be if used with other genders: :

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
This is an important document
It's not an important restaurant
He had an important secret

To ask

Do you remember "question" from lesson 17?

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
It's an important question

"Tak jest". Well the verb "to ask" is almost the same:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
Why do you ask?

Yes, always the water tight way - answer a question with a question! And now you have the 'you (informal)' form you can think out the others!

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I'm asking now
We are asking why
He/she is asking me

You might not have got the last one. Perhaps you thought it was 'pyt' which would be a fair guess. What I'll say is this: Polish is a language which bounces along so its rare to have a verb in the middle of a sentence that has a hard ending.

To ask in the past

Now if you look up "to ask" in the dictionary you'll find "pytać / zapytać" just as we saw two versions for "to do" - "robić / zrobić" in a previous lesson. Kust like with "robić / zrobić:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I asked why
I used to ask why

Do you see the difference? The first one - "Zapytałem dlaczego" - happened at a specific moment in time and then was finished. The second "Pytałem dlaczego" may have been a true situation for years.

Now when it comes to all the different forms of the verb we've actually learnt them already with "miałem, miałeś, miał, mieliśmy" so have a go at thinking out "zapytać"

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
Robert, did you ask why?
Magda, did you ask why?
He asked why
she asked why
We asked why

And now let's try that but with "zapytać":

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I used to ask why
Robert, you used to ask why
Magda, you used to ask why
He used to ask why
she used to ask why
We used to ask why

Yes, that 'we' form is a bit of a mouthful. Again these are not forms to remember by heart - all you need is one form and then you can pull out the rest if you need them.

OK - let's try a mega sentence: "I don't remember when I wanted to go but it's not important. Why do you ask?".

So "razem". But remember, don't try and tackle the whole sentence all at once. Start at the beginning and go step by step and word by word. You will be slow, you will be clunky but you will remember it faster.

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I don't remember when I wanted to go but it's not important. Why do you ask?

PAST TENSE - To Be

So we know how to say "we had" and "we wanted", the next key verb in the past tense is "we were" ... or basically the verb "to be" in the past tense.

OK - let's get the 'to form' of "to be" which is very memorable

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
To be

Yes ... it does sound like 'Son of a Bitch'! OK - let's get it over with. You know this one if you think it out:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
To be or not to be

Good. That's our Shakespeare done and out the way. Now let's use it in some phrases you already know:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I want to be there
I also want to be there
I want to be in the bank
I like being old
I like being small
I also like being small
I don't like being small

The last one might raise your eyebrows. Isn't this the "Nie masz/lubisz/mówisz" case so it should be "małego"? Not quite. If we don't like to be small that means we are small (so that's not missing ... even if you wanted it to be).

Also "mały" is ending in 'y' which is fine if you are a man. However if you are a woman you need to finish it following the femine rules for nouns - as if you were saying "I don't like to be a small woman" - so that's "Nie lubię być mała".

Don't worry if you put "Też" somewhere else, it doesn't matter much and you'll hone it's natural placement in different phrases the more you speak and listen to Polish.

It/he/she was

Now we've already touched on a form of "to be" in the present tense - "jest". As you can see "Być" and "jest" don't seem to have any connection (unlike, say "Pytać" and "Pyta"). That's not unusual for a core verb just as "To be" in English doesn't sound at all like "He/she/it is".

But there's a recognizable connection between "Być" and it's various forms in the past tense so we'll start there:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
It was a warm July
It was a cold winter
It was a beautiful summer

Again those endings to "Był" are affected by the gender of the noun just as we saw with "Miał, Miała, Miało" and "Chciał, Chiała, Chciało". This is common throughout the past tense.

You can also probably spot that connection between the words for "Cold" and "Winter" - "Zimna" and "Zima". No conicidence - it was once, in the not too distant past, very cold in Poland during the winter ... but not so much now.

So let's mix them up:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
It was a beautiful July
It was a cold summer
It was a warm winter

Now we've already looked at a masculine noun ("Lipiec"), a femine noun ("Zima") and a neuter noun ("lato") so we know how to say the he/she/it forms of "Być":

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
He was
She was
It was

For the other forms (I/you/we) "Być" follows the same sort of pattern as ","Mieć" in its past tense form - "Miałem", "Miałeś", "Miałaś", "Mieliśmy".

So now think out the rest of "Być" in the past tense by following the standard pattern:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I was
You were (talking to a male)
You were (talking to a female)
We were

So let's put that into action!

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
I was there because I had a ticket
Robert, you were here but you didn't want pizza
She was in the house when I was in the restaurant
We were in the hotel on Saturday
I had beer but it was warm

The limits of was/were

While the phrase "I was" is widely used in English - "I was talking", "I was going', "I was having" - this is not true of Polish. Here it's "I talked", "I went", "I had". "Was/were" is pretty much limited to:

Excellent

Let's end by adding a word I want to use more often given the progress we're making:

EnglishEnglishPolishPolish
Excellent!

Lovely word that you can use whenever you think something is excellent and a handy alternative if you have only been using "revelacja" to complement other people's cooking!

Lesson 25: Plurals - They are, They were, There are, There were