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One of the things that scares the learners of Polish the most are its seven grammatical cases (przypadki, singular: przypadek). Indeed, given many irregularities and the fact that they combine with various prepositions to render different meanings makes them even more difficult. Moreover, many parts of speech change depending on their case: nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, and participles. While the knowledge of another Slavic language may help a bit, there are still some differences in the usage (sometimes very subtle ones). On top of that, many language teachers simply love using advanced grammatical terminology (not only in English but also in Polish!), which further terrifies the students. I hope that this doesn’t discourage you, though... In this blog post, I’ll try to explain to you the basic functions of the cases and the way we learn them in Polish schools. I’m not going to show you all the endings and explain the tiniest nuances, I’d simply like to give you an idea of how cases work and hopefully, after reading this short article you’ll see that they are possibly not as difficult as you initially thought. I’ll also do my best to use any grammatical terms as little as possible, I’ll use the names of the cases only for you to be able to link them to what you learn in the class.  

In Polish schools, when learning Polish grammar, the cases are explained through questions to which each of the cases ‘responds’, this will be clearer in a while. You can be sure that even though some people don’t remember the order of the cases, you can throw at them any of the case names and they’ll immediately respond with the case ‘questions’. Let’s go!

The first case is Mianownik (Nominative), it is the basic, dictionary form of a given word. It responds to the questions kto? co? – who? what? For example: chłopak, dziewczyna, dziecko (‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘child’, respectively). When nothing happens to a given word, it’s most likely in Mianownik, it is the most frequent Polish case.

The second case is Dopełniacz (Genitive) – the second most frequent Polish case. Its questions are kogo? czego? – whom? whose? so in its basic meaning, it expresses possession, just like English ‘s. Therefore mum’s car translates to samochód mamy (the first word is in Nominative, the second one in Genitive). Another very important function of this case is that it is used in the negation of existential sentences, for example, nie ma samochodu – ‘there’s no car’. If you remember these two functions – possessive meanings and negation of existential sentences (when something is not there), you’ve got most of Genitive’s meanings covered!

The third case, Celownik (Dative) answers the questions komu? czemu? to whom? and to what?, respectively. Words in this case express the meanings of giving something to someone or approaching something or someone, for example, daj mi (‘give me’) or daj chłopcu (‘give to the boy’). It also carries the meaning of benefit or disadvantage, for instance: zepsułeś mu komputer (‘you broke his computer’), literally: you broke for him but with the underlying meaning that it’s to someone’s detriment.

Biernik (Accusative) is the fourth case. It answers the questions kogo? co? a bit difficult to translate to English, as it’d simply sound who? and what? These questions are often extended to kogo/co widzę? – who/what do I see? To use linguistic terminology (sorry!), the direct object of the sentence is put in Accusative, all the verbs such as widzieć (to see), oglądać (to watch), czytać (to read) will have their objects in this case. For example oglądam telewizję (‘I’m watching TV’), czytam książkę (‘I’m reading a book’). The problem with Biernik is that sometimes has the same form as Mianownik and/or Dopełniacz – for some, it will be a relief (fewer endings to memorise) but for some, it may feel a bit confusing.

Off to the next one, the fifth case – Narzędnik (Instrumental) answers the questions z kim? and z czym? (with whom? and with what?, respectively). As its name (both in Polish and English) suggests, it usually marks tools, but also the way in which something was done, for instance jem widelcem (‘I eat with a fork’). Most commonly it occurs with the prepositions z (with), pod (under), nad (over). Importantly, you will hear Narzędnik very often when someone is talking about themselves, for example, jestem studentem – ‘I’m a student’ – in such sentences you’ll always use Instrumental.

The sixth case – Miejscownik (Locative) is used when talking about, you’ve guessed it, locations. Its questions are o kim? o czym? – about whom? about what? This case always occurs with prepositions, which makes it easier to identify. There’s an important contrast when talking about locations when using Locative and Accusative. For example na uniwersytet (‘to university’), with Accusative indicates the direction of the movement, with Locative, on the other hand – na uniwersytecie (‘at university’) indicates a ‘static’ location.

Last but not least, the seventh case – Wołacz (Vocative) is probably the easiest and, in many contexts, is the one that’s used the least. It is normally used when directly addressing someone, for example, panie profesorze (‘professor!’), people’s names also have their Vocative forms, however, these are rarely used in colloquial contexts, when Nominative is used instead, so you don’t need to worry too much in the informal contexts.

 

That’s it! I hope now it’s a bit clearer how grammatical cases are used in Polish. As I said in the beginning, I didn’t want to overwhelm you with terminology, endings and more detailed contexts of usage but if you think I skipped something or would like some further explanations, I’ll be happy to help, just let me know on the forums!