This post includes:
– information about numerals in Polish;
– cases used with numerals;
– online exercise;
– handout and exercises to download
For most Polish learners variety of numeral forms as well as their usage are extremely difficult. But don’t worry, even native speakers of Polish struggle with them from time to time! Pictures bellow present all forms of numbers 1-10 and syntactic constructions with them.
a) After the forms dwa, dwie and dwaj, we use mianownik (nominative case). The forms dwóch and dwoje take dopełniacz (genitive case).
b) In Polish, numerals are used with two cases mianownik and dopełniacz:
2, 3, 4 + mianownik plural
5 to 21 + dopełniacz plural
22, 23, 24, 32, 33, 34 etc + mianownik plural
all other numbers + dopełniacz plural
c) masculine-person nouns have two forms of numbers 3 and 4 (trzej/trzech, czterej/czterech), they can be used interchangeably e.g. trzej studenci przyszli na lekcję / trzech studentów przyszło na lekcję (this structure takes a verb in singular form ‘ono’)
c) By ‘collective nouns’ we mean nouns that name things that often go in pairs (e.g. buty) and nouns that include both genders (e.g. rodzice, studenci (when there are both boys and girls in the group), dzieci). Compare the phrases below:
trzej studenci (ony boys) vs troje studentów (both boys and girls)
ośmiu kandydatów (only men) vs ośmioro kandydatów (both men and women)
NOTE:
– for maculine-person nouns, biernik plural (accusative) is the same as dopełniacz plural (genitive)
e.g. To są trzej bracia. → Mam trzech braci. / Nie mam trzech braci.
– for all other nouns, biernik plural (accusative) is the same as mianownik (nominative) plural
e.g. Tu są trzy zeszyty i dwie książki. → Mam trzy zeszyty i dwie książki.
Download the handout and exercises here
Time to practice
If the exercise doesn’t work you may find it here.
More about numerals in Polish you may read here.
