Czasowniki · twelve chapters, one site
Czasowniki
the Polish verb
Aspect, conjugation, tense, mood, voice, the reflexive się, the prefix families and every irregular verb worth knowing — each with its full reference, the traps that catch learners, and drills that explain every answer. Written in English, because that is how you get there fastest, and built on the same paper and the same type as the seven cases.
How this site is built
The cases site taught you to ask what job a word is doing. A verb rewards the same question, answered in three steps. Every chapter on this site follows them, so you always know where you are.
| Ask | What it decides | Example: napisać |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Is it finished? | Aspect — the pair of the verb, imperfective or perfective. | pisać → napisać: a process, then the finished result |
| 2. Who is doing it? | The person ending, and the past tense's gender. | napisałem / napisałam — a man wrote, a woman wrote |
| 3. What does it take? | Its case, its preposition, its reflexive się. | napisać list (accusative) — to write a letter |
Polish verbs come in pairs, and the difference between the two halves is not tense but completion. Get that idea and the rest of the system stops being a pile of endings: it becomes two clear sets of forms. Chapter 2 is nothing else.
The twelve chapters
Work them in this order. Chapters 1 to 4 are the ground floor: what a verb is, aspect, the present, the past. Chapters 5 to 7 are the ones you will use in every sentence. Chapters 8 to 12 go further, and each one can be taken on its own once the ground floor is solid.
The dictionary form, the five decisions every verb makes, and how to read the two headwords in a pair.
Imperfective and perfective: the one distinction that shapes the whole verb. Learn to see both halves of a pair.
Six endings, four families, and the only present tense that a perfective verb does not have.
The -ł- stem, gender that tells you who spoke, and the endings -em, -eś, -śmy, -ście.
Two futures for imperfective verbs, one for perfective. Why będę pisać and napiszę are not the same promise.
Commands, requests, niech, and why Polish says proszę more often than it gives orders.
bym, byś, by — politeness, hypotheses, and the conditional that polite Polish runs on.
The dozen verbs that break the patterns, taught as patterns of their own — including być, iść, jeść and wziąć.
Which case a verb takes, which preposition comes with it, and the verbs that take a case no English verb would suggest.
The reflexive that changes meaning, the impersonal się, and the pronouns that ride along with a verb.
How pisac becomes napisać, przepisać, podpisać, wypisać: one root, a family of aspects and meanings.
The forms that turn a verb into an adjective, and where the verb sits in a Polish sentence.
Where you stand
Where the grammar comes from
Polish grammar is well described, and it is worth saying exactly which description this site follows, so you can check it.
Every verb's card in the verb finder links to its Wiktionary entry, so you can compare the table here with the source in one click.