The po + Adverb Construction: po polsku | Polish Grammar

There is one little construction every learner of Polish meets in the first week and then quietly gets wrong for months: how to say "in Polish", "in English", "the French way". The answer is a frozen adverbial — po polsku, po angielsku, po francusku — built from the preposition po plus a special ending -u. It is not the adjective (polski) and not the noun for the language (język polski). This page explains what the form is, why it has that strange -u ending, and how the same pattern gives you "in one's own way" (po swojemu) and "the old way" (po staremu).

The core form: po + -u for languages

To say you speak, read, write, understand or say something in a language, Polish uses:

po + [language stem] + -u

Language	Adjective	"in [language]"
Polish	polski	po polsku
English	angielski	po angielsku
German	niemiecki	po niemiecku
French	francuski	po francusku
Russian	rosyjski	po rosyjsku
Spanish	hiszpański	po hiszpańsku
Italian	włoski	po włosku
Czech	czeski	po czesku

This is the form you use with verbs of speaking, understanding and communicating:

Mówisz po polsku?

Do you speak Polish?

Czytam po angielsku, ale słabo rozumiem ze słuchu.

I read in English, but I understand spoken English poorly.

Jak to powiedzieć po niemiecku?

How do you say that in German?

Tu wszyscy rozmawiają po hiszpańsku.

Everyone here is talking in Spanish.

Why the strange ending? A fossilised old dative

The -u ending is a fossil. In older Polish the construction was po + the dative of the adjective, and the masculine dative adjective ending was -u (compare the modern dative pronoun jemu 'to him'). The phrase "po polsku" literally meant something like "according to the Polish [way]". Over time it froze into a fixed adverb: it no longer declines, no longer agrees with anything, and exists only in this manner sense.

That history is why the form looks the way it does and why you cannot derive it from the modern adjective endings you know. Polski (adjective) → polsk- + -u → po polsku. The -ski/-cki adjectives drop -ki and add -u: angielski → po angielsku, niemiecki → po niemiecku.

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The whole phrase is invariable. It never changes for the gender, number or case of the subject: On mówi po polsku, Ona mówi po polsku, Oni mówią po polsku — po polsku stays identical. Treat it as a single unchangeable adverb, like English "fluently".

The crucial distinction English speakers miss

English uses "Polish" for three different jobs that Polish keeps strictly apart:

"in Polish" (manner of communicating) → po polsku — the frozen adverb. Mówię po polsku ("I speak Polish").
"the Polish language" (a thing) → język polski or just polski used as a noun. Uczę się polskiego ("I'm learning Polish [the language]").
"Polish" as a normal adjective describing a noun → polski (agreeing). polska książka ("a Polish book"), polski film ("a Polish film").

The trap is using the bare adjective with a verb of speaking. Mówię polski is wrong — you need the adverbial po polsku. Compare:

Mówię po polsku.

I speak Polish. (manner — the adverbial form)

Uczę się polskiego.

I'm learning Polish. (the language as object — genitive of the noun-adjective)

To moja ulubiona polska książka.

This is my favourite Polish book. (ordinary adjective, agreeing)

So the same English word "Polish" maps to three different Polish forms depending on the job. The verb of speaking / understanding / writing selects the po polsku adverbial; the verb of learning / knowing selects the language-noun polskiego; describing a noun selects the agreeing adjective polski / polska / polskie.

On mówi po polsku, ale nie umie pisać po polsku.

He speaks Polish, but he can't write in Polish.

Znasz polski? — Trochę, ale wolę rozmawiać po angielsku.

Do you know Polish? — A little, but I prefer to talk in English.

Beyond languages: po + -u/-emu for 'in the manner of'

The same construction is productive for manner in general — "in the way of X", "X-style". Two endings appear here: the -u type (as above) and an -emu type from pronoun/adjective stems.

The pronoun-based manner adverbs are very common in speech:

po mojemu — "my way, the way I see it"
po twojemu — "your way"
po swojemu — "in one's own way" (with the reflexive swój)
po naszemu — "our way / in our dialect"

Zrób to po swojemu, nie słuchaj nikogo.

Do it your own way, don't listen to anyone.

Po mojemu to zły pomysł, ale rób, jak chcesz.

The way I see it, it's a bad idea, but do as you like.

U nas w domu zawsze gotowało się po naszemu, po góralsku.

At home we always cooked our way, the highlander way.

And there is a set of fixed manner expressions, several quite idiomatic:

po staremu — "the old way, as before, same as ever"
po nowemu — "the new way"
po męsku — "in a manly way, man-to-man"
po dziecięcemu — "childishly, in a childlike way"
po królewsku — "royally, like a king"
po ludzku — "humanely, like a decent person"

— Jak leci? — Po staremu, nic nowego.

— How's it going? — Same as ever, nothing new.

Porozmawiajmy po męsku, bez owijania w bawełnę.

Let's talk man-to-man, no beating around the bush.

Uśmiechnęła się po dziecięcemu, szczerze i bez powodu.

She smiled childishly, sincerely and for no reason.

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This is also how Polish expresses cuisine "-style": kurczak po chińsku ("Chinese-style chicken"), flaki po warszawsku ("tripe Warsaw-style"), jajka po wiedeńsku ("eggs Viennese-style", i.e. soft-boiled in a glass). On menus, po + the place-adverbial is the standard "à la / -style" formula.

A note on po with other meanings

Don't confuse this po with the preposition po meaning "after" (+ locative) or "for / to fetch" (+ accusative). Those are entirely separate uses of the same little word; they take real case endings on the following noun. The manner po here is followed only by the frozen -u/-emu adverbial and never by an ordinary declined noun. See The Preposition po for the case-governing uses.

Po obiedzie porozmawiamy po angielsku.

After lunch we'll talk in English.

(Here po obiedzie is "after lunch" — po + locative — while po angielsku is the manner adverbial. Same word po, two completely different constructions, side by side.)

Common Mistakes

❌ Mówię polski.

Incorrect — speaking 'in Polish' needs the adverbial po polsku, not the bare adjective.

✅ Mówię po polsku.

I speak Polish.

(This is the number-one error, by direct transfer from English "I speak Polish". The verb mówić requires the manner adverbial po polsku.)

❌ Czy mówisz po polski?

Incorrect — the ending is -u, not the adjective: po polsku.

✅ Czy mówisz po polsku?

Do you speak Polish?

(Learners reach for the adjective polski after po. The frozen form ends in -u: po polsku, po angielsku.)

❌ Uczę się po polsku.

Incorrect — 'learn a language' takes the noun in the genitive, not the manner adverbial.

✅ Uczę się polskiego.

I'm learning Polish.

(Reserve po polsku for speaking / writing / reading / understanding — the manner of communicating. To learn / know a language, use the language-noun: uczę się polskiego, znam polski.)

❌ To jest po polski książka.

Incorrect — to describe a noun, use the agreeing adjective polska.

✅ To jest polska książka.

This is a Polish book.

(Describing a noun is the adjective's job: polska książka, polski film. The po polsku adverbial cannot modify a noun.)

❌ Zrób to po swój sposób.

Incorrect — 'your own way' is the frozen po swojemu.

✅ Zrób to po swojemu.

Do it your own way.

Key Takeaways

po
- -u (from -ski/-cki adjectives → -sku/-cku) is the frozen adverbial for "in a language / in a manner": po polsku, po angielsku, po niemiecku.
It descends from an old dative and is invariable — it never agrees with the subject.
Keep three "Polish" jobs apart: po polsku (manner of speaking), polski / polskiego (the language as a noun), polski/polska/polskie (agreeing adjective for things).
The pattern extends to manner generally: po swojemu ("one's own way"), po staremu ("as before"), po dziecięcemu ("childishly"), and cuisine po chińsku ("Chinese-style").

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