Duolingo Polish Grammar: Chapter XII. - Negations. Introduction to Genitive. Genitive: Nouns. Genitive: Adjectives & Determiners

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Polish Grammar: Chapter XII.

Negations

Tips and notes

“Negations? Wait, I did already encounter some negative sentences!” – Sure you did, but this skill will introduce a special kind of negation – negating Accusative.
So normally, if you negate a Polish sentence, you just put the word “nie” before the negated part. We already had sentences like:

• Ser to (nie) warzywo. = Cheese is (not) a vegetable. (Nominative)
  
• Lew (nie) jest psem. = A lion is (not) a dog. (Instrumental)
  

As you can see, negating them didn’t change much. But although you learned Accusative since the very first skill, there weren’t any negated Accusative sentences.
CRUCIAL RULE: If a verb that takes Accusative gets negated, it takes Genitive instead.
EVEN MORE CRUCIAL: No other case changes when negated. Negated Nominative is still Nominative. Negated Instrumental is still Instrumental. Negated Genitive is… well, Genitive. Taking ‘the negation rule’ too far is common among the learners and hopefully this text will make it a lot less common.
Moreover, if it’s a preposition that governs the usage of Accusative, and not a verb, it also doesn’t change the case.

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Introduction to Genitive

Having said that… welcome to Genitive, the fourth case you encounter in this course. Genitive has many usages, out of which the most important is negating Accusative verbs, showing ownership (Adam’s horse = koń Adama) and also several verbs that you’d expect to take Accusative, but they don’t. Still, this section is about negating Accusative. Let’s compare:

English	Polish	English	Polish
I love this woman.	Kocham tę kobietę.	I don’t love this woman.	Nie kocham tej kobiety.
I have a child.	Mam dziecko.	I don’t have a child.	Nie mam dziecka.
They have a key.	Oni mają klucz.	They don’t have a key.	Oni nie mają klucza.
You see these cats.	Widzisz te koty.	You don’t see these cats.	Nie widzisz tych kotów.
I like those women.	Lubię tamte kobiety.	I don’t like those women.	Nie lubię tamtych kobiet.
I know this boy.	Znam tego chłopca.	I don’t know this boy.	Nie znam tego chłopca.
Adam has a horse.	Adam ma konia.	Adam doesn’t have a horse.	Adam nie ma konia.

As you can see, in the last two rows the bolded forms are identical. Why? Well, you remember that Accusative of masculine nouns differed between the animate nouns and inanimate nouns, right? The inanimate nouns had the Accusative and Nominative forms identical. Now you can see that the animate ones have Accusative and Genitive identical.

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Genitive: Nouns

There are several other things that are worth noticing about nouns in Genitive.
Firstly, the plural Genitive of feminine nouns usually ends with a consonant, which confuses many learners, because to them the word look singular (and masculine).
Secondly, the singular Genitive of almost all feminine and neuter nouns is identical to Nominative (and Accusative) plural. This is often very confusing to learners, for whom cases are difficult (not a surprise, they are) and suddenly you see a word that you know as plural but according to the translation it is singular in the given sentence. So you have to take into consideration what verb is there in the sentence, if perhaps it’s negated (negated Accusative = Genitive, as above), or perhaps if there is a preposition. Also, other words, like determiners, pronouns and adjectives, may be helpful as they will show the grammatical number more clearly.
Anyway, compare:

• Kobiety jedzą. (The women are eating, Nominative plural)
  
• Lubię kobiety. (I like women, Accusative plural)
  
• Nie znam tej kobiety. (I do not know this woman, Genitive singular).
  

Masculine animate nouns take -a ending in Genitive. Masculine inanimate nouns take either -u or sometimes also -a. Most neuter nouns have -a ending. The feminine ending is mostly either -y or -i, and as was mentioned, it’s identical to Nominative/Accusative plural.
In plural, the masculine nouns mostly take -ów ending or -i ending. Most neuter and feminine nouns have no ending in plural, with the last vowel dropped. -ie- or -e- are inserted into some forms.

English	Nominative	Genitive
cat	kot	kota
house	dom	domu
child	dziecko	dziecka
duck	kaczka	kaczki
boys	chłopcy	chłopców
horses	konie	koni
windows	okna	okien
girls	dziewczynki	dziewczynek

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Genitive: Adjectives & Determiners

Masculine and neuter singular ending is -ego. The feminine one is -ej. Both plurals end either in -ych or -ich.

Basic form	masculine/neuter sg + Genitive	feminine sg + Genitive	both plurals + Genitive
mały (small)	małego	małej	małych
dobry (good)	dobrego	dobrej	dobrych
ten (this)	tego	tej	tych