How to form Genitive plural? – easy guide step by step

Cześć! Genitive plural is as important as Nominative plural in Polish or maybe even more! Have you faced some problems in forming it? If yes – this guide would make it clear for you.

Do you remember how to talk about age?

You probably remember we have to change form according to numerals we use.

All numbers ended in 2,3,4 except teens are followed by Nominative plural eg. 2 pomidory but numbers ended in more than 5 and teens are followed by Genitive plural. That’s why we say 5 pomidorów.

Ono ma 1 rok.

Ona ma 2, 3, 4….                   22,23,24             32, 33, 34(…)  lata.

On ma                   5,6,7(…).21              25(…)31    (…)     lat.

What are the endings in Genitive plural?

As you can see adjectives in Genitive plural are extremely easy so they don’t need extra explanation. Endings of masculine nouns also don’t cause more problems. You just need to remember that rz, ż and sz won’t be followed by ów but by y ( wąż – węży, lekarz – lekarzy) and soft consonants will be followed by i . However, endings of neuter and feminine aren’t always so easy.

Do you remember the rule that if the stem of a word end in two consonants it should be separated with e if it’s not followed by any ending? It happens also here.

Let’s take the word marchewka. We want to say a bundle of carrots so we need to use Genitive plural.

1.Marchewka is female so we need to remove a because this is the ending of Nominative singular.

2.Now we have marchewk. It can’t stay like that because we can’t have two consonants in the end. We have to separate them adding e in between them.

3.Now we achieved the finale form marchewek.

Pęczek marchewek, proszę! A bundle of carrots please – you can say to your vegetable vendor in a market.

Why do we say “Mam sześć córek” not “Mam sześć córk” if we say ” Mam sześć żon”?

Let’s take one step forward. Do you remember that letters k, g and n need support of i when they are followed by e or in the end of adjectives?  Surely you remember that we say japońskie kino not “japońske kino” and hiszpański samochód not “hiszpańsky samochód”.

Well, we have to remember about it also in Genitive plural.

If we want to make Genitive plural of word okno we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions:

1.What gender is it and why?

Neuter because it has an o. In Genitive plural we drop the ending so we get the form okn.

2.Is okn the correct form and why?

No, because we end up with a stem ended in a cluster of two consonants.

3.What do we have to add between two consonants in a cluster?

Vowel e.

4.All right. Now we have form oken. Is it correct?

No, because letter k before e needs support of i. We need to add i. Finally we achieved the correct form which is okien.

Ten pokój nie ma okien! – This room doesn’t have any windows!

Alternations of vowels

There happen that vowels o and ó alternate in stem when the noun change cases. You have to remember some examples.

Samochód in Genitive plural is samochodów

Woda in Genitive plural is wód

Not all the stems will have alternations. For example:

Góra (mountain) in Genitive plural is gór

You can download this article and print it out:

How to make forms of nouns and adjectives in Genitive plural

Time to practice: