The Past Tense in Polish (Czas Przeszły)
Published: 2024-11-02 Updated: 2024-11-26
This is a chapter from the grammar book available within the LanGam game. I repost it here so that you can read it on its own and quickly resolve your questions.
If you want to learn Polish grammar from scratch, I do recommend you play the game to “learn by example” and see how the grammar is used in context.
In Polish, the past tense is relatively straightforward, as it follows clear patterns for verbs based on person, gender, and number. This chapter will break down how to form the past tense, including conjugations and examples.
1. Forming the Past Tense
Remove the infinitive ending -ć or -ść from the verb and add the appropriate ending. Don't be overwhelmed by the table. Let's dissect it and come up with some memory aid: The ending of the ending looks similar to the present ending for each person. Before that, we push in a ł/l, followed by e/- for masculine, a for feminine, o for neuter and y/i for plural. These are the most common last letters of nouns for each gender (with the exception of e).
Singular
| Person | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st (I) | -łem | -łam | — |
| 2nd (You) | -łeś | -łaś | — |
| 3rd (He/She/It) | -ł | -ła | -ło |
Plural
| Person | Masculine | Feminine / Mixed |
|---|---|---|
| 1st (We) | -liśmy | -łyśmy |
| 2nd (You) | -liście | -łyście |
| 3rd (They) | -li | -ły |
Note: Masculine plural forms refer to groups that include at least one male. Otherwise the feminine plural is used.
2. Examples of Past Tense Conjugations
robić (to do)
Singular
- I did: robiłem (masc.), robiłam (fem.)
- You did: robiłeś (masc.), robiłaś (fem.)
- He/She/It did: robił (masc.), robiła (fem.), robiło (neut.)
Plural
- We did: robiliśmy (masc. personal), robiłyśmy (non-masc.)
- You did: robiliście (masc. personal), robiłyście (non-masc.)
- They did: robili (masc. personal), robiły (non-masc.)
3. Special Cases
Some verbs have irregular past stems. Here are a few common irregular verbs. With the exception of iść, most of them use the irregular stem in all but the male plural forms. The male plural forms on the other hand are closer to what you would expect from a regular verb.
mieć (to have) -> miałem... (but mieliśmy)
iść (to go) -> szedłem...(but szłam, szliśmy, szli...)
jeśź (to eat) -> jadłem... (but jedliśmy...)
- nieść (to carry) -> niosłem... (but nieśliśmy...)
Now give yourself some time to spot the patterns in real texts (e.g. using LanGam, where verbs in the past tense are highlighted in the third chapter) and make struggling to form the past tense a thing of the past!
Got the gist of it? Let’s continue with the Locative case!
The Locative Case (Miejscownik) in Polish
Learn how to say where things are happening or talk about topics in Polish in this chapter of my grammar guide for Polish.