After learning the names of the months last time, it’s time for the days of the week. In the example sentences, they appear in their Accusative singular forms – that’s the form you use to talk about on which day something happens. Yes, it’s different from the Locative form used with months, and no, there’s no sensible rationale behind this. None that an average speaker knows of.

Notice that the days of the week, unlike in English, are not capitalized!

You’ll also notice that in the phrase we wtorek, the preposition w gets an extra letter. Why? Well, try to pronounce *w wtorek… There are two other instances where some speakers will add an e to the preposition: we środę and we czwartek. These forms appear probably as frequently as their equivalents with w, and are just as correct. So you can pick and choose ;)

poniedziałek – Monday
W poniedziałek mam ważne spotkanie.
On Monday I have an important meeting.

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Polish is special among European languages in that it doesn’t use the Latinate names for months you’re already familiar with from English and many other languages, such as German, Spanish, Russian, etc. The Polish month names are, well, typically Polish – they originated from natural phenomenons. The word for July, for example – lipiec – comes from the name for the linden tree, lipa, as this is the period when lindens are in bloom.

So, since the Polish month names are so special, there’s no choice but to learn them! Here are they listed both in their basic, Nominative singular, form, as well as in the Locative singular, which is the case you use to talk about in which month something took place. At the same time you can get familiar with ordinal numbers from one to twelve.

styczeń – January
Styczeń to pierwszy miesiąc roku.
January is the first month of the year.
W styczniu często pada śnieg.
It often snows in January.

luty – February
Luty to drugi miesiąc roku.
February is the second month of the year.
W lutym jest bardzo zimno.
It’s very cold in February.

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Adverbs are those handy little words you can use to give details about how something is done – in what manner, how long, etc. They’re pretty easy to use since, unlike almost everything else in Polish, they don’t inflect. Today we’ll look at some of the answers that answer questions: when? and how often?

Kiedy? When?

dawno – for a long time ago, for ages
Dawno się nie widzieliśmy!
We haven’t seen each other for ages!

dzisiaj – today
Dzisiaj muszę wykąpać kota.
I have to bathe the cat today.

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The verb mieć – to have – has a number of idiomatic uses. Even a beginner should get familiar with at least some of them, since they’re very common, and, to make matters worse, they often don’t translate literally. Translating things literally can have disastrous consequences. Believe me, you don’t want to ask a Polish woman for her age by doing a word-to-word translation of the English “how old are you?”; in Polish the word for old – stary – feels much more negative than in English, and suggesting a woman she might be stara only works for you if you’re suicidal. Doing it the Polish way, you simply ask her how many years she has.

Even though you should know better than to ask about such matters in the first place.

1. mieć ochotę – to feel like

If you want to say you feel like doing something, you use the infinitive form of the verb:

 

Mam ochotę uczyć się gramatyki.

I feel like studying grammar.

Nie mam ochoty napić się wódki.

I don’t feel like drinking vodka.

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There are some Polish words whose meaning is pretty easy to guess – demokracja, matematyka, komputer, telewizja… It might be easy to get in a rut and assume that every word that sounds more or less like an English one must mean the same. In fact, there are plenty of so-called false friends – Polish-English word pairs that look similar enough, but have quite different meaning. They are a source of confusion for learners of Polish and English alike, so let’s get to know some of them.

1. lektura - a read, also: a book on a school reading list
Jej nowa książka okazała się ciekawą lekturą.
Her new book turned out an interesting read.
Ta książka to lektura obowiązkowa dla studentów historii.
This book is a compulsory reading for history students.

lecture - wykład
Studenci słuchają wykładu z filozofii.
The students are listening to a philosophy lecture read all »