D. Chapter VIII. ↔︎ Chapter X.

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Polish Grammar: Chapter IX.
Plurals

Tips and notes.

The most important thing you have to know about Polish plurals is that they DO NOT divide into masculine, feminine and neuter ones. The Polish plurals are:

• masculine personal (used for ‘groups with at least one male person’)
  
• not masculine-personal (used for everything else)
  

Their names may be complicated, but at least they are descriptive. So, let’s check if we all are on the same page:

• mężczyźni (men) belong to the ‘masculine personal’ plural, as this noun describes a male-only group.
  
• ludzie (people) also belong to the ‘masculine personal’ plural, as this noun describes a group with at least one male person – otherwise we would use a word for “women” or “girls”.
  
• kobiety (women) belong to the ‘not masculine-personal’ plural, as logically, there are no men here.
  
• koty (cats) also belong to the ‘not masculine-personal’ plural, as they are not persons. It doesn’t matter that the singular word kot (cat) is masculine, it doesn’t denote a person.
  
• dzieci (children) are ‘not masculine-personal’ plural as well, because the singular word dziecko (child) is neuter. Even if the particular children you are talking about are all boys, if you decided to call them “children” and not “boys”, then we are still talking about ‘not masculine-personal’ plural.
  

This distinction is also a reason for which oni will be used even if there is one man and 99 women in the group, and one will only be used for an all-female group.
Please note that only some part of the following sections will be used in this skill, but it is good to put it all in one place.

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Nouns: Nominative plural

There are many possible endings in Nominative plural, this table shows the most common ones.

English	Nominative sg	Nominative pl
horse(s)	koń	konie
boy(s)	chłopiec	chłopcy
men/men	mężczyzna	mężczyźni
cucumber(s)	ogórek	ogórki
duck(s)	kaczka	kaczki
apple(s)	jabłko	jabłka

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Nouns: Accusative plural

You may remember that masculine inanimate and neuter nouns in singular had the Accusative form identical to the Nominative one. Luckily, the same goes for all the ‘not masculine-personal’ plural nouns, those forms are also identical.
A different form is needed for the ’masculine personal’ plural nouns. The most common ending is -ów (Widzę chłopców = I see boys).

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Nouns: Instrumental plural

The majority of nouns, regardless of their gender, have -ami ending in Instrumental.

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Adjectives: Nominative plural

As mentioned before, the distinction between two plurals is important for adjectives. You already learned adjectives in Nominative for all three singular genders, now we will add the two plural genders. In Nominative, the ‘not masculine-personal’ plural adjective is identical to the neuter singular one. The ‘masculine personal’ one, on the other hand, is quite different from the other forms. It is kinda softened. Compare: dobre and dobrzy, złe and źli, małe and mali.

Adjective	‘Masculine personal’ Nominative	‘Not masculine-personal’ Nominative
mały (small)	mali	małe
dobry (good)	dobrzy	dobre
stary (old)	starzy	stare
zły (bad)	źli	złe
wielki (huge)	wielcy	wielkie

Compare between mężczyźni (men) and kobiety (women): dobrzy/źli/wielcy mężczyźni; dobre/złe/wielkie kobiety.

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Adjectives: Accusative plural

Just like with nouns, in Accusative the ‘not masculine-personal’ plural form of the adjective is identical to the Nominative form, so you only have to remember the ‘masculine personal’ ending which is -ich or -ych.

Adjective	‘Masculine personal’ Accusative	‘Not masculine-personal’ Accusative
mały (small)	małych	małe
dobry (good)	dobrych	dobre
stary (old)	starych	stare
zły (bad)	złych	złe
wielki (huge)	wielkich	wielkie

Compare:

• Widzę dobrych/złych/wielkich mężczyzn.
  
• Widzę dobre/złe/wielkie kobiety.
  

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Adjectives: Instrumental plural

This is where everything becomes easy: both plurals have the same ending, which is -mi.
Compare:

• Oni są dobrymi/złymi/wielkimi mężczyznami.
  
• One są dobrymi/złymi/wielkimi kobietami.
  

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Demonstratives: plural

Last but not least, it’s time to introduce the plural demonstratives. Just like with adjectives, the ‘masculine personal’ plural form is kinda softened and it’s (tam)ci. The ‘not masculine-personal’ plural form is (tam)te. The only cases in which the plural demonstratives differ are Nominative and Accusative, in all the other cases they are identical for both plurals.

Determiner (these/those)	Nominative	Accusative	Instrumental
Masculine personal	ci/tamci	tych/tamtych	tymi/tamtymi
Not masculine-personal	te/tamte	te/tamte	tymi/tamtymi