False friends

False friends (fałszywi przyjaciele) - are words of at least two languages, that look and/or sound the
same but have different meanings.

Eventually is NOT the same as the Polish word ‘ewentualnie’.

Eventually – After some time, in the end (w końcu)
Ewentualnie – Close to English “possibly”

Actually is NOT the same as the Polish word ‘aktualny’

Actually – in fact, really (tak naprawdę, właściwie)
Aktualny – close to English “valid”, “still on” or “current”

Dress vs. dres

Whether you are a man or a woman you may be very surprised at what you get if you walk into
a sports apparel shop and tell them you’d like to buy a ‘dress’ for the gym. The English shop
keeper will give you what you asked for….a ‘sukienka’.
Be sure to ask for a ‘tracksuit’.

Verbs of motion
Iść and jechać – by far the most used verbs of motion – are both translated as “to go”, but they
mean quite different things. This is because Polish has separate verbs for “going” depending on
the means of transport used.

Iść means simply to go on foot or to walk.

Jechać means to go by vehicle. This includes all types of land transport (car, bike, train,
skateboard, horse), but not water or air transport (plane, boat). It doesn’t matter if you’re actually
steering the vehicle (in which case it is translated as to drive or to ride) or just traveling as a
passenger.

Aspects: the basics

All Polish verbs belong to one of two classes: perfective or imperfective. These are known
as grammatical aspects.
 Perfective verbs describe actions that have a clearly defined beginning and end. In other
words, actions that have clearly been completed in the past, or will be completed in the
future.
 Imperfective verbs describe actions without any reference to their completion. We know
that they have a beginning, but we don’t know anything about the end.
One of the reasons why Polish verbs of motion are so challenging is that they add another layer to
this already complex system.

Imperfective verbs of motion differ from all other Polish verbs in that they have two sub-classes:
 Indeterminate verbs describe motion that is done regularly, habitually, or without a
specific direction.
 Determinate verbs refer to motion that happens only once, mostly with a specific
direction.
Now that we’ve laid down the basics, it’s time to back up the theory with specific examples. Now
we will try to understand all individual grammatical aspects.

The imperfective indeterminate verbs of motion chodzić and jeździć are used to talk
about habits or repetitive actions, as well as to generalize:
Julia chodziła kiedyś na siłownię. (“Julia used to go to the gym.”)
Dlaczego nigdy nie jeździsz do pracy autobusem? (“Why do you never go to work by bus?”)
They are also used to talk about motion that doesn’t have a single specific direction – even if it
only happens once:
Tom chodzi po lesie. (“Tom is walking in the forest.”)
Będziesz jeździła konno? (“Will you be riding a horse?”)

The imperfective determinate verbs of motion iść and jechać are used to refer to one-
time, continuous motion, often with a specific goal:
Idę do sklepu. Chcesz coś? (“I am going to the store. Do you want anything?”)
Szedł powoli, rozmawiając przez telefon. (“He was walking slowly as he was talking on the
phone.”)
Dlaczego jedziesz tak szybko? Mamy jeszcze dużo czasu. (“Why are you driving so fast? We’ve got
plenty of time to spare.”)
Jechaliśmy tu pięć godzin. (“We drove for five hours to get here.”)

The perfective verbs of motion pójść and pojechać are used to express motion with a clear
indication of its completion:
Pójdziesz za mną na imprezę? (“Will you go to the party with me?”)
Adam poszedł do sklepu, wróci za pół godziny. (“Adam went to the store, he will be back in half an
hour.”)
Pojechałem do Krakowa pociągiem. (“I went to Kraków by train.”)
Anna pojedzie tam rowerem. (“Anna will go there on her bike.”)

Prepositions and grammatical case

Polish verbs of motion tend to occur together with certain prepositions. The three prepositions
you’re most likely to encounter in this context are do (“to”), na (“to”), and z (“from”).
The preposition do is the most common means of expressing the goal of motion, just like the
English “to”. It always requires the following phrase to take the genitive case:

Chodzę do kościoła w każdą niedzielę. (“I go to church every Sunday.”)

The preposition na, which usually corresponds to the English “on”, can also mean “to”, but it is
only used this way with a limited set of nouns. Most of them (though not all) are wide, open
spaces. These include basen(“swimming
pool”), lotnisko (“airport”), cmentarz (“cemetery”), stadion(“stadium”),
and rynek (“marketplace”).
The goal of motion after the preposition na must take the accusative case:
Idziemy na basen. (“We’re going to the swimming pool.”)
When used together with a verb of motion, the preposition z will usually mean “from” – its main
purpose is expressing the source of motion. The source itself must be put in the genitive case:
Ten pociąg jedzie z Krakowa do Warszawy. (“This train runs from Kraków to Warsaw.”)

Expressing means of transport

There are two major ways of specifying the means of transport by which the movement takes
place. The more common one is putting the means of transport in the instrumental case without
any additional preposition. This mainly applies to vehicles and roughly corresponds to how the
preposition “by” is used in English:

Przyjechałam tu samochodem. (“I came here by car.”)

Jedziemy do Francji pociągiem. (“We’re going to France by train.”)
Another way of talking about the means of transport is using the preposition na or w followed by
the locative case. However, it only works with some means of transport – mostly those which you
can “ride” in English:
Kto jeździ na tym koniu? (“Who rides this horse?”)
Tom jeździ teraz na rowerze. (“Tom is riding his bike now.”)
Lastly, if the movement is done on foot, this is expressed by adding the
adverb pieszo (or piechotą):
Chodzisz do szkoły pieszo? (“Do you go to school on foot?”)

Other Polish verbs of motion

Of course, iść and jechać are not the only verbs of motion in Polish – there is a bunch of other
verbs that work the same way, complete with imperfective indeterminate, determinate, and
perfective variants.
Nearly everything that has been said here about iść and jechać will apply to those other verbs as
well. They all have pretty straightforward English equivalents, as they refer to rather specific types
of motion.

Prepositions
If you want to be able to formulate correct Polish sentences, you should definitely pay attention to
one thing: the grammatical case that should go with each specific sense of the given preposition.

Below is the table, listing the most used Polish prepositions. Next to each preposition are its
closest English equivalent, the grammatical case taken by the object and example sentences using
the given sense of the preposition.