Lesson 4: What are Nouns and What are Their Genders

Now I'm not a grammar fan but whether it is Polish or most other European languages, you are not going to get far unless you know the genders of your nouns.

But on the other hand I don't want you to get hung up on this. If you get the genders of your nouns wrong that won't stop you being understood - you'll just sound like a foreigner but you will be able to communicate.

The purpose of this lesson is to give you some shortcuts and tips and to make you aware of the concept of genders. If you get to the end of the lesson and feel "How am I going to remember that?" - don't worry and press on. Just be aware of the general concept you are about to learn in the back of your mind.

So .... nouns - words that say what a thing is - pizza, wine, food, supermarket, etc.

Knowing the gender of your Polish nouns is critical in the long run because the gender of the noun affects the entire sentence.

You might have noticed genders being used in English occassionaly. We often refer to ships, boats, yachts or cars as 'she'.

If you have ever learnt, or started to learn, another European language you will know that all 'things' (nouns) are either:

• Masculine
• Feminine
• Neuter

You'll also have been told that the gender of nouns "just has to be learnt" and it is a parrot fashion activity to burn it into your brain.

But with Polish you are in luck. Most of the time you can tell the gender of the thing based on the letter it ends with. Let's learn four new words to see this in action.

English	Polish
It's a pizza	To jest pizza
It's wine	To jest wino
It's food	To jest jedzenie
It's a supermarket	To jest supermarket

Four new bits of useful vocab ... and only one is a little tricky! I'd listen to the Pizza one again though just to hear how the double 'z' is pronounced. As I've mentioned Polish doesn't do double letters unless you are going to actually say them. If you listen carefully you'll hear the 'z' being said twice.

It doesn't matter if you don't do this to start with, everyone will understand you but listen out for it when you see double letters.

You are probably seeing that we are not using 'a' as in 'a pizza'. 'A' and 'the' don't exist in Polish, they are implied by the situation or context. If you listen to a Polish person with intermediate English skills you might well hear them say, "It is normal pizza" - a great reminder that 'a' and 'the' don't exist!

OK - so how do we tell their genders? By remembering these rules:

• Nouns ending 'a', like "Pizza", are usually feminine
• Nouns ending 'o', like "Wino", or 'e', like "Jedzenie" are usually neuter
• Everything else is masculine.

Another mental reminder is if you know any Polish women. If you do, think of their names, what letter do they end in?

• Beata
• Agnieszka
• Agata
• Maria
• Dorota
• Ewa
• etc.

Look up "Polish female names" on Google for even more.

Yes - the names all end in 'a', just like nouns which are feminine.

And, while we are on the subject of women, here is another useful mental trigger which involves learning two new words for your vocab.

English	Polish
Woman	Kobieta
Egg	Jajko

• "Kobieta" means woman and ends in 'a', nouns that end in 'a' are feminine - e.g. "pizza", etc
• "Jajko" is an egg and we don't know what is going to come out of an egg until it hatches - we don't know if it will be a male or female chick so its neuter. "Jajko" ends in 'o', nouns that end in 'o' are neuter - e.g. "wino", etc.
• "Jedzenie" food could refer to many different things, pizza or eggs or something else - we don't know if it will be a male or either its neuter. "Jedzenie" ends in 'e', nouns that end in 'e' are neuter - e.g. "jedzenie", etc.
• Everything else is masculine.

Now if you write those three words - "kobieta", "jajko" and "jedzenie" - on a piece of paper and carry it around with you until you remember them backwards - they will be your key to getting genders right ... and you will have added new words to your vocab.

As in all languages there are rules and there are exceptions to the rules but if you start by following the steps above you will be right almost all of the time.

Genders and Adjectives

My knowledge of English grammar is terrible because when I was at school the government of the day decided that Grammar wasn't that important! But it did mean I left high school not really understanding what a noun and an adjective was. Not that important in your native language but very useful if you are learning another tongue.

As we've covered a noun is the object (pizza, wine, supermarket). The adjective is something which describes the object - like its color, size or another quality it has.

So let's say we wanted to describe the pizza, wine, food and supermarket as 'normal' - nothing special.

We learnt "Normal" in lesson 1 but if you don't remember it try and remember the rule. This is a word ending 'al' but not 'ical' so we get the Polish by adding 'ny' to the end.

Well nearly. Have a look at these four sentences and see what is happening at the end of 'normal'.

English	Polish
It's a normal supermarket	To normalny supermarket
It's a normal pizza	To normalna pizza
It's normal wine	To normalne wino
It's normal food	To normalne jedzenie

The ending of the adjective, the describing word ("normal") keeps changing because it is affected by the gender of the noun (the thing we are talking about - "Pizza", "Supermarket", or "Wino").

But how to remember which ending goes with which gender?

Adjective endings

The adjective is the word which describes the noun - like "normal". It's a pizza. What's the pizza like? It's normal. We've seen the three endings of "normal" - "normalny", "normalna" or "normalne" - but how to remember which goes with which gender?

• If the noun is feminine, it ends in 'a' (e.g. "Pizza") then the adjective ends in 'a' ("normalna") - a perfect match
• If the noun is neuter, it ends in 'o' or 'e' (e.g. "Wino / Jedzenie") then the adjective ends in 'e' ("normalne") - a 50% match
• If the noun is masculine, it ends in enything else (e.g. "Supermarket") then the adjective ends in a 'y' ("normalny") - not much of a match!

But if you really want a mental trigger for masculine = 'y' endings ... here is mine - men have a dangly thing and so does the letter y (not sure what that says about my psychi but it works in terms of remembering the 'y' ending is associated with 'masculine' nouns)!

Alright ... now take your time with the next exercise. The idea here is to "think out" the Polish. It will be slow but if you "think it out" it will go into your memory far quicker than endless listen-and-repeat parrot methods. Think of it as 'slow at the beginning, faster later'.

We want to say "Yes, it's a legal definition".

I found the easiest way to start with is to write the basic sentence on a piece of paper or picture it in your mind without the describing word. So start with "Yes, it's a [blank space] definition".

• "Yes" - "Tak"
• "it is" - "to jest"
• "definition" - "definicja" (because the English word ends in 'tion')

OK, so what letter does "definicja" end in? 'a' like the ending of "kobieta" so we know its feminine.

With "legal" we know it ends 'al' so we need to add 'ny', 'na' or 'ne'. Well we've got our matching 'a' so it will end 'na'.

• "Yes" - "Tak"
• "it is" - "to jest"
• "a legal" - "legalna" (because the English word ends in 'al')
• "definition" - "definicja" (because the English word ends in 'tion')

English	Polish
Yes, it's a legal definition	Tak, to jest legalna definicja Click to Reveal

OK. Let's try it again with "Yes, it's a normal situation". Again - no need to rush here, just slowly think out each part of the basic phrase:

• "Yes" - "Tak"
• "it is" - "to jest"
• "situation" - "sytuacja" (because the English word ends in 'tion')

OK, so what letter does "sytuacja" end in? 'a' like the ending of "kobieta" so we know its feminine.

With "normal" we know it ends 'al' so we need to add 'ny', 'na' or 'ne'. Well we've got our matching 'a' so it will end 'na'.

• "Yes" - "Tak"
• "it is" - "to jest"
• "a normal" - "normalna" (because the English word ends in 'al')
• "situation" - "sytuacja" (because the English word ends in 'tion')

English	Polish
Yes, it's a normal situation	Tak, to jest normalna sytuacja Click to Reveal

This is great practice for whenever you have some free time. When you are driving, waiting for a lift, standing in a queue. Think up a Polish word and then try to think out "Yes, it's a normal [thing you just thought up]".

Don't stress out on genders

Before we go further I just want to make the point that getting genders wrong shouldn't stop you from talking - you will be understood if you say "To jest normalny pizza".

I know exactly what this is like, you're talking and realize there is an adjective coming up in the sentence ... but how should it end. OMG - in your mind you have to jump to the end of the sentence to have a look at how the noun ends while you are still talking and then, while you are still talking, select the correct ending for the adjective, hopefully before you verbally hit the adjective!

The result is that you don't feel confident to start talking because you know you're going to freeze up half way through the sentence and it was hard enough to remember "Jedzenie" anyway without having to then remember the rule about what happens with nouns that end 'e' and then sort out the adjective. Oh - it's all too difficult, I'll just say it loudly and slowly in English!

Don't - just use any version of the adjective. I spent the first few years just using "normalny" all the time. Later, when the language started to flow a bit I was able to do the mental gymnastics of jumping to the end of the sentence to see what letter the noun ended in.

Using "normalny" all the time got me up and running (and talking) which meant I was also hearing more Polish and using the vocab I knew more often which helped me remember the vocab - and I never had a case where someone did not understand that I was saying "normal".

That doesn't mean that here in the classroom where we have time on our hands we shouldn't try to get it right so let's practice a little more.

Firm / Company

Lets add one more bit of easy to learn vocab.

English	Polish
Firm / Company	Firma

OK - try working out the sentence "Yes, its a normal firm" using the system above of breaking the sentence down into parts. If it helps use a paper and pen.

English	Polish
Yes, it's a normal firm / company!	Tak, to jest normalna firma Click to Reveal

And one using a word we learnt in an earlier lesson - Operation. Remember even if you don't remember it you can find it again because this word ends 'tion':

English	Polish
No, it's not a legal operation	Nie, to nie jest legalna operacja Click to Reveal

A quick note on "Operation". Just like in English "Operacja" can refer to a business - e.g. "It's not a legal casino" as well as military operations, medical operations, etc. so its a very useful word to have.

Good

Let's try these various endings - 'a', 'e' and 'y' with the Polish word for "good"

English	Polish
Good	Dobry

In general the word you will find in the dictionary defaults to the masculine version and here we can see that in "Dobry" - men have a dangly thing, 'y' has a dangly thing, etc! Just shows how historic sexism can run so deep but anyway

In the following section I'm also going to drop the jest from To jest just so you can see an example of this in action. When we have a simple statement we can say it like "It Pizza" or "It ecological wine".

If you have ever watched Westerns with Indians in them you'll know this is how the Indians speak (in movies) - "It good food, he good man" - I have no idea if this is how native Indians really spoke but it's a good mental image of dropping the 'is' in short sentences but the sentence still retains the same meaning.

So, dropping jest, how would you say the following and get "Dobry" correct.

English	Polish
It's a good pizza	To dobra pizza Click to Reveal
It's good wine	To dobre wino Click to Reveal
It's good food	To dobre jedzenie Click to Reveal
It's a good supermarket	To dobry supermarket Click to Reveal

OK - let's think one out - "It's a good tradition"

• We've got "To" in the back.
• "Tradition" is a 'tion' word so we can drop 'tion' and add 'cya'
• The 'i' in 'Tradition' doesn't sound like ea in Team. It has that 'y' sound like at the end of "normalny" -> Tradycja
• "Tradycja" ends in 'a' like Kobieta so we know its femine. That means we need to use "Dobra".

English	Polish
It's a good tradition	To dobra tradycja Click to Reveal

Now if you sometimes think of things a little differently you can bend what you already know to say what you haven't yet learnt. So you might want to say "Yes, It's a good photo" but we haven't done photo yet. However we have learnt "Photography" and "Yes, it's good photography" basically means the same thing as "It's a good photo". In fact it's even more elegant. So how would you say it?

Take time to go through the thinking steps:

• "Photography" ends in 'phy' so we know to get to the Polish we knock off the 'phy' and add 'fia'
• In Polish if it sounds like an 'f' then it is an 'f' so we'll replace the 'Ph' at the beginning with 'f'.
• So now we have the Polish for "Photography we can see it ends in 'a' which means it is feminine.
• If it is feminine the adjective ("dobry") needs to end in 'a' as well.

English	Polish
Yes, it's good photography	Tak, to dobra fotografia Click to Reveal

Again that's quite a few steps to go through in figuring out a sentence but if you work through the steps insteady of just trying to learn by repeating the same sentence over and over again you will become faster at learning all new phrases and know how to say them without learning them parrot fashion.

'ic' and 'ical' ending words

We saw in Lesson 1 what a massive stash of Polish vocabulary we already have with many English words that end 'ic' or 'ical'. These are also adjectives, they describe the noun (which are things like "pizza", "supermarket", etc.), so their endings change depending on the gender.

So let's try and think out a phrase we haven't learnt - "It's a dramatic situation".

• Well we have "It's" nailed, that's "To"
• "Situation" is a 'tion' ending word so we change the 'tion' to 'cja' to get the Polish
• "Dramatic" is an 'ic' ending word so we change the 'ic' to 'yczny' to get the Polish.
• "Sytuacja" ends in 'a' which makes it feminine so the ending of dramatyczny must also change to 'a'.

English	Polish
It's a dramatic situation	To dramatyczna sytuacja Click to Reveal

Don't worry that it takes you ages to put such a short sentence together. Although this method of 'thinking out' what you don't know is slow at first it is a much faster method for learning a language in the long run.

Now see if you can think out the endings of adjectives in these phrases before revealing them ...

English	Polish
It's exotic pizza	To egzotyczna pizza Click to Reveal
It's an idiotic supermarket	To idiotyczny supermarket Click to Reveal
It's an ecological wine	To ekologiczne wino Click to Reveal
It's a romantic option	To romantyczna opcja Click to Reveal
It's a logical definition	To logiczna definicja Click to Reveal

A bit of useful vocab

OK, let's grab hold of a few easy to remember nouns which will build up your vocab even more

English	Polish
Bank	Bank
Bistro	Bistro
Museum	Muzeum
Coffee	Kawa

Some tips here to help you remember some of the above

• "museum" - In English although we write this word with an 's' but we say it as if it was a 'z' and Polish is written as it is said.
• "kawa" - Java beans make coffee, to get a 'v' sound in Polish we use 'w' (as we saw in "uniwersalna"). Java -> Jawa -> Kawa!

Right let's try thinking out some general gender practice using both positive and negative sentences. While you are thinking these out be aware that negative sentences (when you are saying, "No, its not", keep the "jest" in the sentence:

English	Polish
It's a good Bank	To dobry bank Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a good bistro	Tak, to dobre bistro Click to Reveal
No, it's not a good museum	Nie, to nie jest dobre muzeum Click to Reveal
No, it's not good coffee	Nie, to nie jest dobra kawa Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a good camera	Tak, to dobry aparat Click to Reveal

Now, something which I need to flag up here is a common mistake made by English speakers learning languages with genders. Many people think - and often because teachers tell them to think this way - that things have genders. Coffee is feminine, banks are masculine. But this isn't true and can cause you headaches further down the line.

"Kamera" and "Aparat" are prime examples. They can both refer to the same object but "Kamera" is femine and "Aparat" is masculine. So just remember its the word that has the gender, not the thing.

Good Day, Good Evening and Goodnight

OK - while we are talking about "Good" things now would be an ideal time to cover some popular greetings - "Good Day", "Good Evening" and "Goodnight".

Let's start with the vocab:

English	Polish
Day	Dzień
Evening	Wieczór
Night	Noc

No obviously easy way to learn these but there are some loose connections:

• "Noc" does sound a but like "night"
• "wieczór" has got a 'v' sound in it like "evening"
• both "Dzień" and "Day" start with 'd'.

However if you listen to Polish people or Polish radio you will hear these phrases all the time as people meet and greet each other. So can you think out how to include "Dobry" for each of them?

English	Polish
Yes, it's a good Day	Tak, to dobry dzień Click to Reveal
No, it's not a good evening	Nie, to nie jest dobry wieczór Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a good night	Tak, to dobra noc Click to Reveal

Yes, "noc" doesn't end in 'a' but it is feminine ... its an exception! Now it's not a huge leap from here to get your 3 greetings which are said like this:

• "Day Good"
• "Good Evening"
• "Goodnight" (i.e one word)

English	Polish
Good Day	Dzień dobry Click to Reveal
Good evening	Dobry wieczór Click to Reveal
Goodnight	Dobranoc Click to Reveal

"Dzień Dobry" is used all morning and all afternoon - there is no "Good afternoon".

Bad

So we can say something is good or not good (i.e. bad) but while we're practicing genders let's do it with the actual word for "bad"

English	Polish
Bad	Zły

So what is this 'ł' character all about? Well we saw with "uniwersalna" that the 'w' is said like 'v' in 'vocal'. In fact:

English	Polish
Vocal	Wokal

So what happens when you need a 'w' sound - for that we use 'ł' and it is always pronounced 'w' as in 'what'. Now imagine we were listening to a busker on the street who just could not sing for toffee. We might say:

English	Polish
It's a bad vocal	To zły wokal Click to Reveal

OK so see if you can work out the correct forms of "Zły" in these phrases:

English	Polish
It's a bad Bank	To zły bank Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a bad bistro	Tak, to złe bistro Click to Reveal
No, it's not a bad museum	Nie, to nie jest złe muzeum Click to Reveal
No, it's not bad coffee	Nie, to nie jest zła kawa Click to Reveal
Yes, it's bad photography	Tak, to zła fotografia Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a bad camera	Tak, to zły aparat Click to Reveal

More 'tion' words

OK, do you remember our rule for English words that end in 'tion'? We drop the 'tion' and replace it with 'cja' to get the Polish. 'Cja' ends in 'a' so the gender is ........ feminine.

So try thinking out these phrases:

English	Polish
It's a bad ambition	To zła ambicja Click to Reveal
No, it's not a bad situation	Nie, to nie jest zła sytuacja Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a bad option	To zła opcja Click to Reveal
Yes, it's a bad definition	Tak, to zła definicja Click to Reveal

Bad and Wrong

"zły" is often used more to express something is wrong rather than bad although when you think about it something that is bad is generally wrong. You'll see this if you use online translators for some of the material I cover here so "Tak, jest zła definicja" can equally mean "Yes, it's the wrong definition" and "Yes, it's a bad definition".

Lesson 5: Where is? Here and There, My and Your