Level: Beginners (A1/A2)
Category: Numbers and Dates • Grammar Rules
How to say dates (years, months, 'on this day') in Polish! Table of contents
- Polish dates - introduction
- A note on how Polish People write dates (and months) with roman numerals
- Polish Months in Nominative and Genitive
Polish dates - introduction
Saying the date (or related sentences like 'today is...', 'on...') is quite straightforward if you remember some simple rules. You have to know your Genitive case (and maybe Locative case, as well as Nominative case)
Ktory - Dzisaj Jest ... - Today is...
Dzisaj jest... means 'today is...'.
The correct format for saying this is:
| 1st | January | 1993 |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative (ordinal) | Genitive | NominativeGenitive |
| pierwszy | stycznia | NominativeGenitive |
Ok, so now for an actual explanation.
The day - this is in Nominative, ordinal number. For example 'first' (pierwszy)
The month this is in Genitive. Genitive form for janurary in Polish is stycznia
The year the first half of the year is in Nominative and the second half is in Genitive. See the section below on how to generate the year...
Kiedy - Full date (e.g. 1st Jan 1991)
| 1st Jan | 1992 |
|---|---|
| Genitive | NominativeGenitive |
The day - Genitive ordinal number. This ends with -ego for example szesnastego (16th)
The month also in Genitive, for example marca. See the table at the bottom of this page for a list of months + genitive version of them.
The year this is in the usual Nominative for first half of the year (20xx or 19xx) and Genitive for the second half (e.g. xx91, xx18). See the section on years below for an explaination.
W... ( 'in' - such as 'in Jan 1991' or 'in 2018' )
"In [month] [year]"
| w | Jan | 2018 |
|---|---|---|
| Locative | NominativeGenitive |
Month: Locative - unlike the other examples (which use Genitive for the mont) this uses the locative case for the months.
Year: please see the section below on how to generate the year - it uses a mix of Nominative and Genitive.
"In [year]"
Please remember that this is not the same as the year format from above!
| w | 2018 |
|---|---|
| NominativeLocative |
Jak Długo? Od... Do... (how long? from... to)
To say how long you have two ways of doing it:
Full date - from...to... (from 1st Jan 2000 until 10th Feb 2010)
| od | 1st April | 2017 | do | 30th May | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genitive | NominativeGenitive | Genitive | NominativeGenitive |
Day - genitive ordinal
Month - genitive (see bottom of this page for a table with month names in genitive case)
Year - see section below on how to generate the year
Just the year (from 1999 to 2009)
| od | 2017 | do | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NominativeGenitive | NominativeGenitive |
A note on how Polish People write dates (and months) with roman numerals
It is very common in Poland to see dates written like "11 XI 1918" (11th November 1918). They use roman numerals for months.
Sometimes you may see br. which means the current year.
bm. stands for the current month
Polish Months in Nominative and Genitive
| English | Nominative | Genitive |
|---|---|---|
| January | Styczeń | Stycznia |
| February | Luty | Lutego |
| March | Marzec | Marca |
| April | Kwiecień | Kwietnia |
| May | Maj | Maja |
| June | Czerwiec | Czerwca |
| July | Lipiec | Lipca |
| August | Sierpień | Sierpnia |
| September | Wrzesień | Września |
| October | Październik | Października |
| November | Listopad | Listopada |
| December | Grudzień | Grudnia |