Polish Grammar - Pronouns

Pronouns

The personal pronouns of Polish (nominative forms) are ja ("I"), ty ("you", singular, familiar), on ("he", or "it" corresponding to masculine nouns), ona ("she", or "it" corresponding to feminine nouns), ono ("it" corresponding to neuter nouns), my ("we"), wy ("you", plural, familiar), oni ("they", corresponding to a masculine personal group – see Noun syntax above), one ("they" in other cases).

The polite second-person pronouns are the same as the nouns pan ("gentleman, Mr"), pani ("lady, Mrs") and their plurals panowie, panie. The mixed-sex plural is państwo. All second-person pronouns are often capitalized for politeness, in letters etc.

For the full declension of these pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology. Subject pronouns can be dropped if the meaning is clear and they are not emphasized. Sometimes there are alternative forms available for a given personal pronoun in a given case:

• there may be a form beginning with n-, used after prepositions (for example, the accusative of ona is nią after a preposition rather than ją);
• there may be a clitic form, used when unstressed, but not after prepositions (such as mi as the dative of ja, an alternative to mnie).

The reflexive pronoun for all persons and numbers is się.

The possessive adjectives (also used as possessive pronouns) derived from the personal pronouns are mój, twój, jego (m., n.)/jej (f.); nasz, wasz, ich. There is also a reflexive possessive swój. The polite second-person pronouns have possessives identical to the genitives of the corresponding nouns, although there is a possessive adjective pański corresponding to pan.

The demonstrative pronoun, also used as a demonstrative adjective, is ten (feminine ta, neuter to, masculine personal plural ci, other plural te). The prefix tam- can be added to emphasize a more distant referent ("that" as opposed to "this").

Interrogative pronouns are kto ("who") and co ("what"); these also provide the pronouns ktoś/coś ("someone/something"), ktokolwiek/cokolwiek ("anyone/anything"), nikt/nic ("no one/nothing").

The usual relative pronoun is który (declined like an adjective). However, when the antecedent is also a pronoun, the relative pronoun used is kto or co (as in ten kto "he who" and to co "that which"). The word który also means "which" as an interrogative pronoun and adjective.

The pronoun and adjective wszystek means "all". It is used most commonly in the plural (wszyscy means "everyone"), and in the neuter singular (wszystko) to mean "everything". The pronoun and adjective każdy means "each, every", while żaden means "no, none".

For full information on the declension of the above pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology.

When the referent of a pronoun is a person of unspecified sex, the masculine form of the pronoun is generally used. When the referent is a thing or idea that does not correspond to any specific noun, it is treated as neuter.