Bits of Polish

Being able to state that things exist, and that they are located in various points in space, is one of the basic abilities you will want to acquire learning a language. English is pretty straightforward in this respect. “There’s a newspaper on the table,” you’d say, eager to translate it into Polish, and vaguely tense at the same time, since you already expect it can’t be easy. In fact, you would be really surprised if it was.

Well, it is. Kind of. Almost. There are only two things you have to remember about.

The verb

Where English uses the verb “to be” in such constructions, Polish prefers verbs that actually have a “real” meaning – ones that say something about the subject’s position in space. You can use “to be”, of course, but there will almost always be some alternative that actually sounds more natural. For example:

Na stole jest gazeta.
There is a newspaper on the table.
A grammatically correct, meaningful sentence, but it sounds like there’s something… weird with it.
Na stole leży gazeta.
There *lies* a newspaper on the table.
What a native speaker would say. read all »