I’ve mentioned in a previous post How many summers do you have? that there is some magic polish grammar that changes when you’re talking about 1 thing, 2-4 things or 5+ things. It then repeats for 21, 22-24, 25+ then 31, 32-34, 35+ etc. Though for the sake of completion, I’ll note here that teens (11,12,13,14,15+) all follow the 5+ pattern, so just be aware of that.
Today I thought I’d share some more case of common words which change in the same way. I’m going to skip going into which case these come from & why today, so just worry about a few new words to learn and when to use them.
(Thanks to Marta, my great polish teacher on skype for helping my get my head around these better in today’s lesson – although any mistakes are purely my own! )
Tysiąc (thousand)
| # | word | example |
| 1 | tysiąc | tysiąc |
| 2-4 | tysiące | dwa tysiące |
| 5+ | tysięcy | pięć tysięcy |
Milion (million)
| # | word | example |
| 1 | milion | jeden milion |
| 2-4 | miliony | dwa miliony |
| 5+ | milionów | pięć milionów |
Rok (year)
| # | word | example |
| 1 | rok | jeden rok |
| 2-4 | lata | dwa lata |
| 5+ | lat | pięć lat |
Godzina (hour)
| # | word | example |
| 1 | godzina | jedna godzina |
| 2-4 | godziny | dwie godziny |
| 5+ | godzin | pięć godzin |
Minuta (minute)
| # | word | example |
| 1 | minuta | jedna minuta |
| 2-4 | minuty | dwie minuty |
| 5+ | minut | pięć minut |
There are also similar patterns in the basic number words, but it’s not quite as simple to write, so I’ll list them below and highlight, which hopefully will make sense to you with a few examples :
10 – dziesięć
20 – dwadzieścia
30 – trzydziesći
40 – czterdzieści
50 – pięćdzieściąt
60-90 – ……dzieściąt
And the 100’s
100 – sto
200 – dwieście
300 – trzysta
400 – czterysta
500 – pięćset
600-900 – ……set
Polish Lingo 