All About Me (AQA GCSE Polish): Revision Note

All about me

• For the topic of all about me, you need to be able to give basic details about yourself

• This includes your name, age, nationality and what you look like, including negatives

• You will learn about essential grammar points like cases (especially nominative and genitive), gender, plural nouns and adjective agreements

• Hello! My name is Tomasz and I am 15. I am Polish. I have blue eyes and short, brown hair. I am quite tall - I am not short.

All about me: vocabulary

Some useful words and phrases you'll need for the topic of "All about me" are:

• O mnie - All about me

• Nazywam się - I am called / my name is

• Mam ... lat - I am ... years old

• Urodziłem/ urodziłam się … I was born …

• Mieszkam w…- I live in

• Pochodzę z …..- I come from

• Mam - I have

• Jestem - I am

• Nie jestem - I am not

• Mam ... oczy - I have ... eyes

• Mam ... włosy - I have ... hair

• In Polish, all nationality nouns—such as “Polak”, “Polka”, “Niemiec”, “Francuzka”—are written with a capital letter because they refer to specific people belonging to a nation

  • When the word is an adjective describing something related to a country (for example: language, food, culture), it is written with a lowercase letter

• "Polak” (male) and “Polka” (female) are Polish nationality nouns that change form depending on gender, unlike English, which uses one form (“English”) for everyone

• In Polish, adjectives change their form depending on the grammatical gender of the noun

• Polish has three genders:

  • masculine (for male people and many things e.g. brat)

  • feminine (for female people and many things e.g. siostra)

  • neuter (for some things, like “child”)

• The adjective must match the noun

• Easy rule to remember:

  • masculine → -y / -i → wysoki

  • feminine → -a → wysoka

  • neuter → -e → wysokie

Higher tier only

• In Polish, nationality nouns change their form depending on gender and number, and all of them are written with a capital letter. Here is how the forms differ:

  • Amerykanin – a male American (singular, masculine)

  • Amerykanka – a female American (singular, feminine)

  • Amerykanie – a mixed group or a group of men (plural, masculine personal)

  • Amerykanki – a group of women (plural, feminine)

• The spelling changes because Polish grammar requires nationality words to show:

  • gender (masculine vs. feminine)

  • number (singular vs. plural)

  • type of group (mixed/men vs. only women)