Animate nouns

There is one more set of nouns we need to know about when it comes to Accusative and Genetive cases - Animate nouns.

We can imagine these as:

Things which move around on their own!

Think of physical movement and this includes animals and people.

Think of visual movement (say on a screen) and this includes 'Facebook' and 'laptop'.

In the Accusative and Genetive we add an 'a' to the end of these nouns:

• Kot - Cat
• Mam kota - I have a cat
• Nie mam kota - I don't have a cat

• Brat - Brother
• Mam brata - I have a brother
• Nie mam brata - I don't have a brother

• Laptop - Laptop
• Mam laptopa - I have a laptop
• Nie mam laptopa - I don't have a laptop

These 'a' endings only apply to masculine nouns - nouns that don't end in 'a', 'o' or 'e' - and only if they are considered 'animate' - they move around.

We can now update our table to fill in those strange gaps!

See this table in Google Sheets

Continue