Mianownik— Nominative

Before studying the cases, identify what kind of word you are looking at. The traditional school classification distinguishes ten parts of speech: five inflected and five uninflected. Not every inflected word declines for case.

Inflected parts of speech

Nouns and adjectives decline for case. Many pronouns and numerals do too. A verb is inflected, but it changes for person, number, tense, and mood, not for case.

Declension (deklinacja) is change for case, number, and, in agreeing words, gender. Conjugation (koniugacja) is verb change: robię, robisz, robimy. A verb is therefore never nominative, genitive, or in any other case.

Uninflected parts of speech

These words keep the same form. A preposition may require a specific case in the following word, but the preposition itself does not change.

Part of speech and sentence function

A part of speech tells you what a word is, such as a noun or verb. A sentence function tells you what that word does in a particular sentence, such as subject or object. The same part of speech can perform different functions.

The nominative is the dictionary form. In a sentence, it normally marks the subject: the person or thing performing the action or being described.

Do not identify the nominative by position alone. Ask kto? for people and co? for things. In Kobieta śpi, kobieta answers kto? and is nominative.

The ending is the first clue, not an absolute rule. Meaning also matters for nouns that name people. Learn each noun together with its gender.

Masculine is not a single group. First check whether the noun names a person. If it does not, check whether it is animate, such as an animal, or inanimate, such as an object. This produces three practical groups.

In the nominative singular, all three groups use masculine agreement: mój mąż, mój pies, mój długopis. The difference becomes more visible in the plural and later in the accusative. For now, classify the noun correctly.

An adjective describes a person, animal, object, or idea. In the nominative singular, it must match the noun's gender. The dictionary form is normally masculine: dobry. Use dobra with a feminine noun and dobre with a neuter noun.

Practical rule: many masculine adjectives end in -y, feminine adjectives in -a, and neuter adjectives in -e. After certain sounds, the masculine form ends in -i and the neuter in -ie: polski, polska, polskie; wysoki, wysoka, wysokie. Learn the whole family, not only the final letter.

Common A1 adjectives

Learn all three forms together. The first column contains the masculine form used as the dictionary form.

Colors are adjectives too

A color changes to agree with the noun: biały długopis, biała koszula, białe okno. The same pattern applies to the other colors below.

The adjective before a noun and after jest

An adjective can appear directly before the noun or after the verb być. In both positions, it still agrees with the same noun.

Polish frequently uses ordinal numbers alongside cardinal numbers to express order, dates, hours, floors, and stages. Cardinal numbers answer ile? and tell us how many there are. Ordinal numbers answer który?, która?, or które? and identify a position in a sequence.

The most important cardinal forms

The numbers jeden and dwa change according to gender. At A1, learn them together with a noun because the isolated form does not show the whole pattern.

Three genders in the singular

In the singular, an ordinal agrees with the noun's gender like an adjective: pierwszy for masculine, pierwsza for feminine, and pierwsze for neuter.

Watch the case: Jest pierwsza is nominative. In Spotkanie jest o pierwszej, o pierwszej is locative, even though it looks the same as the feminine genitive form. This table shows only the nominative.

Ordinal numbers from 1 to 31 in the nominative

In compound ordinals from 21 to 31, both parts agree with the gender: dwudziesty pierwszy, dwudziesta pierwsza, dwudzieste pierwsze.

Plural endings vary according to gender and the final sound of the word. Polish also separates masculine-personal groups from every other plural group. Learn singular and plural forms together.

In the singular, we use masculine, feminine, and neuter. In the plural, agreement commonly separates oni for masculine-personal groups and one for feminine, neuter, object, and animal groups.

A noun declines through cases; a verb conjugates for person and number. The subject is usually nominative and determines the verb form. In the present tense, third-person singular does not change for gender: student pracuje, kobieta pracuje, dziecko pracuje. The meaning appears below each infinitive and each Polish pronoun.

The groups below are practical A1 patterns, not a complete academic classification. The infinitive does not always reveal the group. Learn each verb with its ja and ty forms: robić — robię, robisz.

First identify the owner: I, you, he, she, we, you plural, or they. Then check the gender of the possessed noun. The noun determines whether to use mój, moja, or moje, and twój, twoja, or twoje. The meaning in your language appears below each Polish form.

Jego, jej, and ich are invariable: they do not change with the noun's gender. Compare: jego brat, jego mama, jego dziecko; jej tata, jej kawa, jej dziecko; ich syn, ich córka, ich mieszkanie.

Use these sentences as templates. After To jest, the noun remains nominative. The possessive agrees with gender: mój for masculine, moja for feminine, and moje for neuter.

Use ten, ta, or to to point to someone or something nearer. Use tamten, tamta, or tamto for someone or something farther away. Both sets agree with the noun's gender.

The two words often appear together, but they have different jobs. To points to, identifies, or connects two pieces of information. Jest is a verb: the singular form of być for he, she, or one thing.

In the To jest structure, to does not change for gender: To jest mój brat. To jest moja mama. To jest moje dziecko. Directly before a noun, use the demonstrative forms ten, ta, or to.

Complete the sentences and classify the nouns. The exercises practice the nominative, gender and number agreement, and polite forms of address.