Polish Cases, declension of nouns, pronouns and adjectives
First the names of the cases and their Polish names:
Vocative wołacz
Now, I already know that Polish is a highly inflected language and that means that every noun has got a ream of different spellings depending on its role in a sentence. Mainly its just the noun endings that change and it follows a pattern that is kind of predictable when you know the gender of the word and if it is a personal, animate or inanimate noun. Polish is one of those languages where there are clear and rigid rules along the lines of: "in this set of circumstances the word has this ending... except when it doesn't" which can get your head in a spin, but lets ignore the exceptions for now so they can come and bite us in the arse later.
The variation of nouns, pronouns and adjectives by grammatical case, number and gender, is called declension.
In English, we know the role of a word in a sentence by its position in that sentence. In Polish, word order isn't as important as the case of the word. Its case tells us its role. From its case we know if it's the direct object of the sentence, for example. The direct object is the thing that is being acted on by the verb. In the sentence "I am drinking coffee" coffee is the direct object, the thing that I am drinking. So, in Polish that sentence is:
Piję kawę.
Kawa (coffee) is kawę in the accusative case and we use that case for direct objects of positive or affirmative sentences. Which are sentences expressing something that is so, that is fact, that is happening, as opposed to negative sentences like: I'm not drinking coffee / I have no coffee. In negative sentences, direct objects are in the genitive case, kawy for coffee. So, I am not drinking coffee becomes:
Nie piję kawy.
Adjectives take on the same case as the noun they are describing. So, for the sentense: I am drinking hot coffee. The adjective, hot (gorący), which will take the accusative, feminine (kawa is a feminine noun) form: gorąncą:
Piję gorącą kawę.
That's enough for now. I need a coffee.
Potrzebuję kawy*
*genitive, I guess because I need it, I lack it, therefore it's negative.
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