Polish Grammar Text of Talk

8/1/13 Rules of Polish Grammar Useful for Genealogists by Fay Vogel Bussgang (Based on Second half of Talk given at International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy in Washington, D.C., July 20, 2003) Polish Grammar, as you might expect, can be quite a challenge for the English speaker. Fortunately, we don’t have to cover all of it today. The purpose of this talk is not to turn you all into linguists. It is only to help you identify the names of people and towns you are researching in order to determine whether a given document has relevance for you. Polish birth, marriage, and death documents usually follow a preset format. If you have that format, which you can get from Judith Frazin’s Translation Guide, all you need to do is identify the names of people and places. But, if you don’t understand the case endings, it is difficult to recognize exactly what those names are. How would you know that “Brzeziny” and “Brzezinach” refer to the same town while “Brzeżany” is something totally different? That’s what I hope to show you today! Please keep in mind that you don’t have to memorize all the rules I’m about to present, just as you don’t have to memorize all the words in the dictionary. It is just important for you to understand the basic concepts. [2] First, there are three CONCEPTS of POLISH GRAMMAR that may be new to English speakers––CASE, GENDER, AND STEM. The CASE of a noun indicates its function in the sentence, i.e., it may be the subject, the object, or follow a preposition. In English, nouns do not change their spelling, regardless of their position in the sentence, but in many other languages, they do. This process of changing the ending of a word according to its case is called DECLINATION. If you have taken Latin or Russian, you will already be familiar with this. In Polish, the case ending varies not only with the function of the word in the sentence, but also with its gender, number, and stem. As for GENDER, all nouns in the Polish language have gender, that is, they can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Town names, given names, and surnames are no exception. AS in English, nouns have NUMBER; they are either singular or plural. The STEM is that part of a word that remains pretty much the same so that you can recognize the word even when different endings are added to indicate the case. [3] USEFUL CASES. It so happens that there are seven different cases in Polish, but we will take a look only at the four most often encountered in genealogical research: the NOMINATIVE, GENITIVE, INSTRUMENTAL, and LOCATIVE cases. The NOMINATIVE case denotes the subject of the sentence. The name of a town or person in the NOMINATIVE is spelled as you commonly know it––Lublin or Kraków for a town, Glasman or Rozenberg for a surname. The GENITIVE case denotes “of” or possession––such as the daughter or son of a person. It is also used after certain prepositions. In vital/metrical records, the GENITIVE is often found following the word “z,” (sometimes spelled “z-e”) meaning “from,” for example, to identify the town someone comes from. ©Fay Vogel Bussgang 2004 - 1 - The INSTRUMENTAL case is used to show with or by what means something is done. It also often follows the preposition “z,” but in this instance “z” means “with.” In a marriage record, it may be used for the groom who appears with the rabbi. Please note that the same preposition––”z”––has one meaning when used with the GENITIVE and a different meaning when used with the INSTRUMENTAL. The LOCATIVE case indicates the location where an action takes place and is most often used with the preposition “w,” meaning “in.” [4] This is what a SAMPLE DECLENSION looks like. As you can see, the endings vary with the case, but the stem remains the same, and you can recognize that they all concern the city of Warszawa or Warsaw. [5] We will now take a look at how the various cases form their endings. We will start with the GENITIVE CASE. The ending used for the GENITIVE case varies according to the gender of the noun. Thus we first have to learn how to recognize what gender a town name is. FEMININE Town Names usually end in “a” in the NOMINATIVE––Warszawa, Warta, Horodenka. In addition, a few town names that end in double consonants or “ew” are considered feminine such as Byd’goszcz, Łódź, and Żół’kiew. The GENITIVE ending for all feminine towns is either “y” or “i,” depending on whether the last consonant of the word has a hard sound or a soft sound. Thus the GENITIVE of Warszawa is Warszawy, Warta becomes Warty, Horodenka becomes Horodenki. Byd’goszcz becomes Bydgosz’czy and Łódź becomes Łodzi. Please note that for Łódź, the slashes over both the “o” and the “z” are dropped. An “o” in a single or final syllable of a word often has a slash over it, but when a syllable is added, that slash is dropped. And when an “i” is added to any of the consonants that have a slash, such as the “z” in Łódź, that slash is also dropped. [6] MASCULINE TOWN NAMES, such as Kraków, Gdańsk, and Włocławek, end in a consonant in the NOMINATIVE. The GENITIVE ending for most masculine town names in Poland is “a.” Krakowa, Gdańska, Włocławka. If the name ends with a soft consonant such as “n” or “s with a slash,” an “i” replaces the slash before the “a” ending. Poz'nań thus becomes Pozna'nia, and Za'mość becomes Zamo'ścia. Most foreign cities take a “u” ending. Londyn, Londy'nu, Boston, Bosto'nu, as well as a few Polish towns that have compound names such as Raj'gród–Rajgro'du. You may have noticed that when a syllable is added to make the ending, the accent of the word shifts. Kra'ków becomes Krako'wa and Za'mość becomes Zamo'ścia. That is because in Polish, the accent is always on the next to the last syllable, the penultimate syllable. [7] NEUTER TOWN NAMES end in “o” or, sometimes, in “e” in the NOMINATIVE: Chełmno, Radomsko, Opole. To form the GENITIVE of a neuter town name, the letter “a” is added to the stem, just as it was for masculine town names: Chełmna, Radomska, Opola. [8] Polish town names not only have gender; they are sometimes plural, a concept that may seem strange to English speakers. PLURAL TOWN NAMES are those that end in “y,” “i,” and “e,” in the NOMINATIVE: Chęciny, Suwałki, Katowice. To form the GENITIVE, the final letter is dropped, so that they become Chęcin, Suwałek, Kato'wic [9] ADDING AND SUBTRACTING You may have noticed that sometimes an “e” or “ie” is added to an ending. Other times, it is taken away. The purpose in both cases is to make - 2 - pronunciation easier. Thus for Żółkiew and Włocławek, the “ie” or “i” is removed to get Żółkwi and Włocławka. The same is true for names––such as Mosiek and Herszek, which have an “e” before the final consonant. They become Mośka and Herszka in the GENITIVE. In the case of plural town names, in which the final vowel is cut off to form the GENITIVE, an “e” may be added before the final consonant if otherwise there would be two consonants clustered together. Thus the GENITIVE of Suwałki becomes Suwałek, and Siedlce becomes Siedlec. It is not important for you to remember which words add “e” or subtract it, but when you see a town or person’s name in a slightly changed form, perhaps you will remember how it got that way. [10] In general, SURNAMES follow the same rule as town names in forming the GENITIVE, and like towns, surnames have gender, and they may not always agree with the gender of the person. For instance, surnames that end in “a” are treated as feminine, whether they belong to a man or a woman. The GENITIVE of the name Kwarta is Kwarty and the genitive of Spira is Spiry. Surnames that end in “o” also have feminine endings in the singular, so that it is impossible to tell from the GENITIVE whether the original name is Spira or Spiro. While these names are the same for men and women, there are names that are based on adjectives, which do have different endings for men and women, and we will get to those a little later. [11] GIVEN NAMES also follow the same rules in forming the GENITIVE, and given names also have gender independent of the person who bears them. Given names for men that end in “a” are treated like feminine names. Thus Szlama becomes Szlamy and Szaja becomes Szaji. On the other hand, I have never seem a woman’s given name, even if it ends in a consonant, declinated like a masculine noun. Thus, in the GENITIVE both Ruchel and Ruchla become Ruchli. Sometimes a feminine name like Jachwet or Maryem is treated like a foreign word and not declinated at all. [12] Now we come to the SURNAMES that are not really nouns at all but ADJECTIVES that have come to be used like nouns. These are the names that end in “c-k-i” or “s-k-i.” These names form the GENITIVE using adjective endings and are different for men and women. In the NOMINATIVE, the name Kowalski and Sawicki are used for a man and Kowalska and Sawicka are used for a woman.

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