"I miss you" is one of the first things a learner wants to say in Polish — and it comes out backwards from every angle. Polish has no transitive verb "to miss." Instead it uses brakować ("to be lacking, be missing"), an impersonal verb with no grammatical subject, a dative experiencer, and a genitive of whatever is short: Brakuje mi ciebie — literally "to-me is-lacking of-you." Both the person who feels the lack and the thing lacked are oblique; the verb just sits in the bare third person. This single construction also covers "I'm short of money" (brakuje mi pieniędzy), "we're running out of time" (brakuje nam czasu), and "something's missing" (czegoś brakuje). This page covers brakować (imperfective) and its perfective partner zabraknąć, their impersonal conjugation, and the dative + genitive frame that inverts English entirely.
An impersonal verb: only the third person
Brakować is a defective, impersonal verb in this meaning: it occurs only in the third-person singular (and, occasionally, agreeing with a plural genitive in older or careful usage, though brakuje is standard with any complement). There is no *brakuję "I lack" — you never lack as a subject; rather, something is lacking to you. The only form you need in the present is brakuje.
| Tense / form | brakować (impf.) | English |
|---|---|---|
| present (3sg, only form) | brakuje | is lacking / is missing |
| past (neuter, default) | brakowało | was lacking |
| future (compound) | będzie brakować / brakowało | will be lacking |
| conditional | brakowałoby | would be lacking |
The past is neuter singular brakowało by default, because there is no subject to agree with — the verb falls back to the neutral -o form used across Polish impersonals. Brakować is built on the -ować → -uje stem (compare pracować → pracuje), which is why the present is brakuje and not *braka. Mind the ó in brakować — it is the o-kreskowane (sounds like u), obligatory in the spelling.
Brakuje mi czasu, żeby to wszystko ogarnąć.
I don't have enough time to handle all this. (brakuje + dative mi + genitive czasu)
W tym przepisie czegoś brakuje — chyba soli.
Something's missing from this recipe — salt, probably. (czegoś = genitive, no subject)
Zawsze brakowało im cierpliwości do dzieci.
They always lacked patience with children. (past brakowało + dative im + genitive cierpliwości)
The perfective partner: zabraknąć
The perfective zabraknąć ("to run out, to give out") marks the moment the supply hits zero — the point of running out, not the ongoing state of shortage. It belongs to the -nąć class. As a perfective, its non-past form is future, and its past is the punctual zabrakło:
| Tense / form | zabraknąć (pf.) | English |
|---|---|---|
| future (3sg) | zabraknie | will run out |
| past (neuter, default) | zabrakło | ran out / there wasn't enough |
| conditional | zabrakłoby | would run out |
The past zabrakło has an irregular, much-loved shape: the -ną- of the infinitive drops out, giving zabrak-ł-o (not *zabraknęło in the impersonal). It is one of the highest-frequency "ran out" verbs in the language.
Na stacji zabrakło benzyny, więc musieliśmy zawrócić.
The station had run out of petrol, so we had to turn back. (past zabrakło + genitive benzyny)
Boję się, że zabraknie nam pieniędzy przed końcem miesiąca.
I'm afraid we'll run out of money before the end of the month. (future zabraknie + dative nam + genitive pieniędzy)
Zabrakło mi słów.
I was lost for words. (lit. 'words ran out to me' — a fixed expression)
Government: dative experiencer + genitive of what's lacking
This is the structural heart of the page. Brakować takes no subject at all. Its frame is two oblique slots around an impersonal verb:
[DATIVE experiencer] + brakuje + [thing lacking in the GENITIVE]
So "I lack time" is, slot by slot, "to-me is-lacking of-time": Brakuje mi czasu. The experiencer (the one who feels the shortage) is dative; the missing thing is genitive. Neither is the nominative subject English would use.
| Slot | Case | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| who feels the lack | dative | mi, ci, mu, jej, nam, wam, im, dzieciom |
| what is lacking | genitive | czasu, pieniędzy, słów, ciebie, doświadczenia, dwóch złotych |
Why the genitive of the missing thing? Because Polish marks absence with the genitive everywhere — the same genitive-of-absence that drives nie ma ("there isn't": nie ma chleba "there's no bread"). A thing that is lacking is a thing that is not present, and not-being-present is genitive in Polish. The dative experiencer, meanwhile, is the person the lack happens to — the same dative-experiencer role you meet in podoba mi się and wydaje mi się. For the cases, see the genitive of absence and nie ma, the dative subject and feelings, and the broader impersonal sentences and verb government.
Brakuje mi pieniędzy na bilet.
I'm short of money for a ticket. (dative mi + genitive pieniędzy)
Brakuje mu doświadczenia, ale bardzo się stara.
He lacks experience, but he's trying hard. (dative mu + genitive doświadczenia)
Do kompletu brakuje dwóch elementów.
Two pieces are missing from the set. (no experiencer; dwóch elementów = genitive)
"I miss you" — the construction that inverts English
Here is the payoff that surprises every learner. To say "I miss you," Polish uses the same impersonal frame: the person you miss is the genitive thing-that-is-lacking, and you, the one who feels the absence, are the dative experiencer:
Brakuje mi ciebie. — literally "to-me is-lacking of-you" = "I miss you."
English makes "I" the subject and "you" the object of an active verb miss. Polish does the reverse: you (genitive) are what's absent, and I (dative) am merely the address the absence is felt at. Nothing is the subject. Internalising this inversion is the whole game.
| English | Polish | Word-for-word |
|---|---|---|
| I miss you. | Brakuje mi ciebie. | is-lacking to-me of-you |
| I miss him. | Brakuje mi go. | is-lacking to-me of-him |
| Do you miss me? | Brakuje ci mnie? | is-lacking to-you of-me? |
| We miss them. | Brakuje nam ich. | is-lacking to-us of-them |
Bardzo mi ciebie brakuje, wracaj szybko.
I miss you so much, come back soon. (brakuje + dative mi + genitive ciebie)
Brakowało nam ciebie na wczorajszej imprezie.
We missed you at the party yesterday. (past brakowało + dative nam + genitive ciebie)
Related uses: falling short by a quantity
Brakować also expresses "to be short by (a number)" — how much is missing to reach a total. The shortfall stands in the genitive (often a number + genitive), and the goal takes do + genitive:
Brakuje mi dwóch złotych do dziesięciu.
I'm two złoty short of ten. (dwóch złotych = genitive of the shortfall)
Niewiele brakowało, a spóźnilibyśmy się na pociąg.
We very nearly missed the train. (niewiele brakowało = 'it nearly came to that' — a fixed idiom)
The idiom tylko tego brakowało! ("that's all I needed! / just what I needed!", sarcastic) is worth knowing as a ready-made exclamation.
Korek na obwodnicy? Tylko tego brakowało!
A jam on the ring road? Just what I needed! (sarcastic fixed expression)
Common Mistakes
❌ Brakuję cię.
Incorrect — brakować is impersonal: there's no 'I' subject, and the person missed is genitive. Use brakuje mi ciebie.
✅ Brakuje mi ciebie.
I miss you.
❌ Brakuje mi czas.
Incorrect — the thing lacking takes the genitive czasu, not the nominative czas.
✅ Brakuje mi czasu.
I don't have enough time.
❌ Brakuje mnie pieniędzy.
Incorrect — the experiencer is the dative clitic mi, not the accusative/genitive mnie.
✅ Brakuje mi pieniędzy.
I'm short of money.
❌ Brakowali nam goście. — meaning 'we missed the guests'
Incorrect — the verb stays impersonal neuter (brakowało), not agreeing as if the guests were the subject.
✅ Brakowało nam gości.
We missed the guests. (brakowało + dative nam + genitive gości)
❌ Brakowało mi autobus.
Incorrect — to miss a bus is spóźnić się na / nie zdążyć na, not brakować, and the noun isn't accusative here anyway.
✅ Spóźniłem się na autobus.
I missed the bus.
Key Takeaways
- Impersonal — only 3sg: present brakuje, past neuter brakowało, future będzie brakować/brakowało. There is no *brakuję.
- Frame: DATIVE experiencer (mi/ci/nam) + brakuje + GENITIVE of what's lacking — Brakuje mi czasu; the experiencer is optional (czegoś brakuje "something's missing").
- The genitive is the genitive of absence, the same one behind nie ma; the dative is the dative experiencer, the same one behind podoba mi się / wydaje mi się.
- Perfective zabraknąć = the moment of running out: future zabraknie, irregular past zabrakło (zabrakło benzyny).
- "I miss you" = Brakuje mi ciebie — English's subject/object map onto Polish dative/genitive, with nothing as subject. Or use tęsknić za + instrumental.
- Don't use brakować for missing a bus/train — that's spóźnić się na / nie zdążyć na. Mind the ó in brakować.
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Start learning Polish→Related Topics
- Dative Subject: Feelings and StatesB1 — The pervasive Polish construction where the experiencer of a feeling stands in the dative and the predicate is impersonal — zimno mi, smutno mi, podoba mi się, nudzi mi się, chce mi się, udało mi się — with no nominative subject at all.
- Genitive of Absence: nie ma, brak, nie byłoA2 — How Polish says 'there is no X' — the frozen nie ma / nie było / nie będzie plus the genitive, and the brakować construction.
- Impersonal and Subjectless SentencesB1 — A survey of the many Polish sentences that have no grammatical subject — the się-impersonal, the -no/-to past, trzeba/można/wolno, weather verbs, and dative-experiencer states like zimno mi.
- Expressing Feelings and OpinionsB1 — How to say how you feel and what you think in Polish — the dative-experiencer for emotions and the register-graded ways to state an opinion.
- Verb Government: Cases and PrepositionsB1 — Every Polish verb comes with a 'government' — the case (and sometimes preposition) it forces on its object — and that frame rarely matches English; learn the case with the verb, like vocabulary.
- podobać się — to like, appeal toA2 — Full conjugation of podobać się / spodobać się, the verb that inverts English: the thing you like is the nominative subject, you are the dative experiencer, and the verb agrees with the liked thing.