The Seven Polish Cases

September 30, 2005 · Posted in General · 1 Comment 

I was dared by Jo (who is Polish) and Stv (who is not Polish, is trying to learn Polish, and has declared that Polish is harder than Thai, citing frustration with declension and conjugation) to explain the Polish cases in terms which can be understood by an English-speaker who doesn't know any German. Honour is at stake!

This isn't meant to be an encyclopaedic reference for the way in which every possible different kind of word is declined in each of the cases, and I'm a computer programmer, not a linguist. It's meant to impart a general understanding of what the cases actually mean to someone whose language hasn't got much of an equivalent.

First, skim through this article about declension to get a vague idea of what we're talking about. This article about the sad, atrophied state of declension in the English language may be more helpful in putting you in the right frame of mind.

Now, these are the seven Polish cases:

Mianownik: Nominative case. This is the subject of a sentence – the person or thing who is doing something, or possibly is just there. This is the default case in which you will find a word presented if you look it up in the dictionary. If you stick a label on something and write down its name, this is the case you will use.

To jest kot. (This is a cat.)
Lampa stoi. (The lamp is standing.)
Idzie Anna. (Anna is coming.)

DopeÅ‚niacz: Genitive case. This case mainly shows possession. Wherever you would say “of “, or “'s” in English, you will probably use the genitive form of the noun in Polish. This also extends to measures of things. This case is also used to indicate the absence of things. Wherever you would say “there is no…”, use this case.

To jest miska kota. (This is the bowl of the cat. / This is the cat's bowl.)
Mam litr zupy. (I have a litre of soup.)
Mam garnek zupy. (I have a pot of soup.)
Nie mam zupy. (I have no soup.)
Nie ma łyżki. (There is no spoon.)
Nie ma Anny. (Anna isn't here.)
BUT: Mam dwa koty. (I have two cats. koty is in the Accusative case.)

Celownik: Dative case. This is the indirect object of the sentence – but not everything that is considered to be an indirect object in English fits into this case; see the second-last two cases for examples when this happens. This is the person/thing to whom/which something is given or done, broadly speaking.

Piotr dał Annie kota. (Piotr gave Anna a cat.)
Dałam kotu kiełbasę. (I gave the cat a sausage.)

Biernik: Accusative case. This is the direct object of the sentence. This is the person or thing that the subject sees, hits, gives, eats, etc. Some phrases which describe location use the Accusative case, if they describe a location to which something is (or was) actively being moved, and in the passive voice the thing by which something is being done uses the Accusative case.

WidzÄ™ lampÄ™. (I see the lamp.)
Piotr dał Annie kota. (Piotr gave Anna the cat.)
Dałam kotu kiełbasę. (I gave the cat the sausage.)
BUT: Dałam kotu wody. (I gave the cat [some] water. wody is in the Genitive case.)
KÅ‚adÄ™ okulary za lampÄ™. (I am placing my glasses behind the lamp.)
Kiełbasa została zjedzona przez kota. (The sausage was eaten by the cat.)

NarzÄ™dnik: Instrumental case. Some kinds of indirect objects in English are equivalent to this case. This case indicates an instrument or companion with which/whom something is done. Wherever you would say “with “, “using ” or “together with ” in English, you probably use this case in Polish. Also, unfortunately, certain phrases which indicate location take this case, and not the deceptively simple and unambigously-named Locative case below. This division depends entirely on the type of preposition.

Bawię się piłką. (I am playing with the ball.)
BawiÄ™ siÄ™ z kotem. (I am playing with the cat.)
JadÄ™ samochodem. (I am travelling by car.)
Jem zupę łyżką. (I am eating the soup with a spoon.)
StojÄ™ przed domem. (I am standing in front of the house.)
StojÄ™ pod lampÄ…. (I am standing under the lamp.)

Miejscownik: Locative case. This case indicates a location. But not all phrases which indicate location use this case, alas. Some use the Instrumental case above. Some use the Accusative case. If something is moving somewhere, accusative is your best bet. If it's already there, it's one of these two.

StojÄ™ przy lampie. (I am standing by the lamp.)
Siedzę na krześle. (I am sitting on the chair.)
Jestem w domu. (I am at home. [literally: in the house])

WoÅ‚acz: Vocative case. This is the case you will use if you are addressing a person or thing in the second person. This case is seldom applied to people's names in modern Polish – if you address someone by name, you are more likely to use the nominative case. Actually using the vocative sounds strange and archaic.

Chodź tu, kocie. (Come here, cat.)
Cześć, Anno. (Hello, Anna.)

The way in which a particular noun is declined in a particular case depends on whether it is singular or plural, and on its gender (and Polish has three masculine genders – personal, animate and inanimate). By and large, similar words are declined in similar ways. Some groups of words are declined in the same way across different cases, and some have a different declination for every one. That's the messy bit that you have to learn off by heart. :(

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L5R fanfic plug

September 26, 2005 · Posted in General, L5R, Reviews · 1 Comment 

Simon is starting an L5R campaign, and I was ramdomly wandering around on the internt re-acquainting myself with the setting when I found these lovely fanfiction writings by Daidoji Gisei.

Edit: it seems more of her fics are over here, and elsewhere on that site, which is unfortunately a nightmare to navigate. More reading for me!

Edit the second: more here, here and here.

Also, I just came back from Here Be Dragons (an SCA away event… we threw water balloons around with a sling staff; huzzah!), and voted in the Polish parliamentary elections (a tiny dissenting drop in an ocean currently enamoured with the right wing), and now I am totally going to restrain myself from writing any more and go to bed.

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Assorted recipes

September 16, 2005 · Posted in Recipes · 2 Comments 

Cabbage is an underappreciated salad vegetable. When I was small, and my mother and I briefly accompanied my father on a contract job in West Germany, one of my dad's colleagues introduced us to a cabbage salad which became my favourite salad for a very long time (and this was when I didn't like vegetables).

Cabbage & Garlic Salad

Ingredients:
Finely shredded cabbage
Garlic salt
Olive oil

Directions:
Toss the ingredients together. Duh.

For obvious reasons, this salad makes your breath really smelly. If you want to be more sociable, try the following variant, which is completely not Japanese at all. I just call it that because of the wasabi.

Japanese Cabbage Salad

Ingredients:
Finely shredded cabbage
Small blob of wasabi (from a tube, or reconstituted from powder)
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Soy sauce
Fresh, finely chopped dill

Directions:
Mix the wasabi with the olive oil to make it easier to distribute over the salad. Then toss the ingredients together.

And now for something completely different – my second favourite method of fish preparation. The story behind this isn't nearly as interesting – I had trout in a berry sauce at a restaurant once, and decided that fish and sweet fruity sauce really goes well together.

Grilled Fish in Chutney Marinade

Ingredients:

Fish (any fish you like, really. I've tried it successfully with hake, salmon, and some horrible bony fish whose name I can't remember. Fillets are recommended.)

Marinade (ingredients in decreasing order of importance):
Chutney
Soy sauce
Thyme
Garlic
Worcestershire sauce
Sweet Indonesian soy sauce

Directions:

Coat the fish (which shouldn't be frozen) in the marinade. You can let it stand for a bit if you like. Put the fish in an oven-proof container of some kind. If you can lay all the fish out in a single, thin layer, you can just grill it. If you have it layered in a deeper container, bake it for a bit at about 180°- 200°C before grilling to ensure that it is cooked all the way through. The cooking time should be about 10 – 15 minutes, but depends on your oven and the amount of fish.

In completely unrelated news, here's an old European favourite.

Schnitzels

Ingredients:
Flat pieces of filleted meat (chicken, turkey, beef, pork*, veal** and ostrich are all known to work)
* Filleted pork has been really hard to find since it stopped being a health fad. You can get pork chops and fillet them quite easily, though.
** Not that I'm condoning the torture of baby cows; it's just there for completeness.
Eggs (about one to two per standard packet of meat)
Flour
Breadcrumbs (you can make your own breadcrumbs by leaving stale rolls to dry and grating them on a cheesegrater )
Some kind of meat seasoning which involves salt (optional)
Variant B: Milk
Variant B: Clove of garlic, sliced
Variant B: Thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns (optional)

Directions:

Variant A:
Tenderise the meat with a meat tenderising hammer (this is not absolutely vital, but if you don't do it your schnitzels may end up tough and chewy, especially if the meat isn't wafer-thin). Season the meat on both sides.

Break the eggs into a bowl and whick them with a fork. Add about a spoonful of flour and mix until you have a very runny, sticky dough (if it's too thick, add a little water). Pour some of the breadcrumbs out onto a plate.

Coat the meat in the egg mixture first, and then in the breadcrumbs. Fry on both sides in a frying pan at a high temperature setting. If the pan doesn't have a very good non-stick surface, fry them for longer at a lower temperature – if the breadcrumbs stick to the pan more than to the meat, the batter will fall off.

Variant B:
Marinade the meat in milk and garlic (and possibly other spices) overnight. Then apply the batter and fry as in Variant A. If you do this you don't have to tenderise the meat, no matter how thick the pieces are. The application of the batter may work better inside out – the breadcrumbs first and then the egg mixture on the outside.

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