Appendix:Polish nouns

Polish nouns have lexical gender and can be masculine personal, masculine animate, masculine inanimate, feminine or neuter. They inflect by number and case. There are 7 cases with the following traditional order:


 * Nominative (mianownik)
 * Genitive (dopełniacz)
 * Dative (celownik)
 * Accusative (biernik)
 * Instrumental (narzędnik)
 * Locative (miejscownik)
 * Vocative (wołacz)

Masculine nouns

 * Regular. There is lot of variance of masculine forms and it is virtually impossible to divide them neatly into a few declension groups. Here they are divided by gender:

Singular:

For inanimate masculine: accusative is always equal to nominative.

For animate masculine: accusative is equal to genitive.

Plural:

For Masculine Personal: Accusative plural is equal to genitive plural.

For ‘Not-Masculine Personal’: Accusative plural is equal to nominative plural.

Basic declension
In the following description, we consider the word without the final -a.


 * Genitive singular adds -y.
 * Dative singular palatalizes (softens) the final consonant cluster and adds -e, -i or -y. See below for a list of palatalizations.
 * Accusative singular adds -ę.
 * Instrumental singular adds -ą.
 * Locative singular is always the same as dative singular.
 * Vocative singular adds -o.
 * Nominative plural adds -y, -e or -i depending on the final consonant. If it is k or g, the ending is -i. If the consonant is hard, e.g. n, m, z, the ending is -y. If it is palatalized (soft), such as ni, si, zi, the ending is -e.
 * Genitive plural usually does not add anything, but sometimes adds -i depending on the final consonant cluster. A popular cluster that requires -i is wl, found in,.
 * Dative plural adds -om.
 * Accusative plural is the same as nominative plural.
 * Instrumental plural always adds -ami.
 * Locative plural always adds -ach.
 * Vocative plural is the same as nominative plural.

List of palatalizations in the dative and locative

 * -ba → -bie
 * -bia → -bi
 * -ca → -cy
 * -cha → -sze
 * -cia → -ci
 * -cza → -czy
 * -da → -dzie
 * -dza → -dzy
 * -dzia → -dzi
 * -dża → -dży
 * -fa → -fie
 * -ga → -dze
 * -ja → -ji
 * -ka → -ce
 * -la → -li
 * -ła → -le
 * -ma → -mie
 * -na → -nie
 * -pa → -pie
 * -pia → -pi
 * -ra → -rze
 * -rza → -rzy
 * -sa → -sie
 * -sia → -si
 * -sła → śle
 * -sna → śnie
 * -sma → śmie
 * -sta → -ście
 * -sza → -szy
 * -ta → -cie
 * -wa → -wie
 * -za → -zie
 * -zda → ździe
 * -zia → -zi
 * -zła → -źle
 * -zma → -zmie
 * -zna → -źnie
 * -ża → -ży

Moving e
In some words, an e is inserted in the genitive plural to break up a final consonant cluster.

Shift of o to ó
In some words ending in -owa, -oba, -ota, the o in the final syllable shifts to ó in the genitive plural. This change happens in some words and not in others, and is not predictable. Examples include, , , , , , ,. Counterexamples where this phenomenon does NOT happen include,.

Latinate feminine noun declension
Many nouns that end in -ia are borrowed from Latin and have a special declension that adds a geminated i.

Declension of nouns ending in a consonant
(to be written)

Examples

 * długość (length)
 * miłość (love)