every now and then i'm asked whether polish is a difficult language. being a native speaker, my first answer is "no, of course it's the easiest one there is!" however, a scratch on the surface of plurals and number forms reveals a tangle of craziness you might not want to keep scratching. here's a sample:
"Mozart" - singular.
plural: depends on what you are talking about.
- if you mean the family (as in "the Mozarts") - Mozartowie
- if you wish to use Mozart's name for high class musicians of a certain era (as in "the Mozarts of our day") - Mozarci
- if you're talking about the music award (like the academy award in film) - Mozarty
mind you, these are all in the nominative. each of our nouns declines in 7 cases.
try numbers...
two:
feminine (two girls, two lamps, two female cats, etc.) - dwie
masculine (two boys, two plumbers) - dwóch
non-masculine (two dogs, two tables) - dwa
neutral (two children, two doors; also a mixed gender pair of humans) - dwoje
adjectives also decline in 7 cases...
hats off to any foreigner who takes up this language. seriously.
Haha! Yes I remember you were already telling me about the 7 cases to me at Abbey School, but you used the example of 'mushroom': gjub, gjubuf, etc... (probably totally wrong spelling :-)
ReplyDeletehaha! that's right! that was because of yasushi's haircut, remember? we called him GJUB ;o) (the real spelling is "grzyb", though)
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