The Polish word for “student” is student. If only the rest were that simple. As I noted in an earlier post, Polish is a heavily inflected language, which means that nouns take different endings depending on how they are used in a sentence, that is, according to their case. In the nominative case, let’s say, as the subject of a sentence, “That student seems a little bit old to be taking a first semester language class,” we’d use the Polish form student. When we wish to indicate possession, ownership, “The utter confusion of that student,” we’d use the genitive case, here the Polish form studenta. The dative case, indicating the recipient of an action (a.k.a. the indirect object), would appear in a Polish sentence as follows: “The generous instructor gave studentowi the benefit of the doubt.” In the accusative, where the noun serves as the direct object (the complement of a transitive verb), we find “the generous instructor passing the old studenta, though with some reservation.” (An observant reader will note that the genitive and the accusative forms of this word are the same. Hmm.) These four cases are generally recognized in English grammar, but only the genitive has a different form: student, student’s, student, student.
In Polish, there are three more cases: instrumental, locative, and vocative. The instrumental shows means or agency. That is, if a seasoned instructor corrected an older student’s (studenta) error by means of a younger student, that younger student, if male, would be referred to as studentem. (I have no idea whether such a sentence would be in any way idiomatic in Polish. Hard to make it so in English—this is purely hypothetical.) Then there’s the locative, which appears after prepositions of location: “in” the student, “on” the student, “about” the student, “next to” the student, and “after” the student would all render the student, in Polish, studentcie. Finally, if one were to invoke a student, in joy or despair, one would cry out, “Oh, studentcie!”
Thus, seven case forms to remember for any noun. Oh, and the case forms are different for feminine nouns: studentka, studentki, studentce, studentke, studentka, studentce, and studentko. And for plurals: studenci, studentow, studentom, studentow, studentami, studentach. Much to remember then, and quickly please, including grammar terms (transitive/intransitive) which an old English major has long since forgotten, along with many umbrellas, keys, anniversaries, birthdates, and the names of any number of schoolmates. [I do recall my children’s names: "Hey, Stefan (Stefanie), Hey, Zoe (Zosiu)! Love you."] Why must language be so complicated? Because life, which language reflects, tries to capture, is complicated, and if you think about it, even more so than language. Which is why we also have silence—baffled, stunned, complete silence—a reverent WTF! a kind of non-utterance, the perfect uneffing of the ineffable.
