dzwonić / zadzwonić — to call, phone, ring

This is the verb you reach for every time you phone someone, and it hides a trap that catches almost every English speaker: in Polish you do not "call someone," you "ring to someone." That single preposition — do + genitive — is the whole personality of this verb, so we will give it the attention it deserves alongside the full paradigm of both aspect partners.

dzwonić (imperfective) and zadzwonić (perfective) form a textbook prefix pair: the perfective is built simply by adding the prefix za-. The imperfective covers the ongoing, repeated, or habitual act of phoning and the literal ringing of bells and phones; the perfective names one single completed call. Both belong to the -ę / -isz conjugation (the e-isz class), with the soft stem dzwoni-.

Present tense (dzwonić, imperfective)

The perfective zadzwonić has no present tense — like every Polish perfective, its present-tense forms point to the future instead (shown in the next section).

Note the nasal vowels at the edges of the paradigm: the 1sg ends in -ię (dzwonię) and the 3pl in -ią (dzwonią). Forgetting the ogonek here is a real spelling error, not a cosmetic one.

Future tense

Because the two aspects build the future differently, this is where the pair really splits apart.

Perfective zadzwonić — simple (one-word) future, identical in endings to a present-tense paradigm:

Imperfective dzwonić — compound future with być + the infinitive (or the -ł participle). The participle version agrees in gender and number:

Past tense

The Polish past is gendered. The stem is dzwoni- / zadzwoni- plus the -ł suffix and the personal endings. Watch the masculine-personal vs. other plural split in the 3rd person (dzwonili for groups including at least one man, dzwoniły otherwise).

The perfective past works identically — just prefix za-: zadzwoniłem / zadzwoniłam, zadzwonił / zadzwoniła, zadzwonili / zadzwoniły. Use the imperfective for repeated or background calling (I was calling all day) and the perfective for a single completed call (I called and told her).

Imperative

The stem-final ń carries the kreska throughout (dzwoń, zadzwoń) — a bare n would be wrong. In the imperative the aspect choice is meaningful: Zadzwoń do mnie! ("Call me!" — a single requested action) versus Dzwoń, kiedy chcesz ("Call me whenever you like" — open, repeatable).

Conditional

Built on the past-tense stem plus the conditional particle by and the floating personal endings. It is gendered:

Participles and verbal adverb

dzwonić is intransitive in its core "phone someone" sense (the person is in do + genitive, not a direct object), so there is no passive participle in everyday use. The contemporary adverbial participle (verbal adverb) is dzwoniąc ("while phoning / ringing"):

Perfectives never form a contemporary adverb, so there is no *zadzwoniąc — the anterior adverb would be zadzwoniwszy ("having called"), but this form is bookish and rare.

Government: the do + genitive trap

This is the heart of the page. To phone a person, Polish uses dzwonić / zadzwonić do + genitive. There is no direct object for the person.

So do takes the genitive throughout: do mamy, do brata, do lekarza, do mnie, do ciebie, do niej, do nich. To say what device/number you call, use na + accusative: dzwonić na komórkę ("call the mobile"), dzwonić na policję ("call the police"). The literal "ring" of bells and phones is intransitive with a nominative subject: Dzwoni telefon ("The phone is ringing"), Dzwonią dzwony ("The bells are ringing").

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Aspect pair: dzwonić (impf, ongoing/repeated) — zadzwonić (pf, one completed call), built with the prefix za-.
• Government: phone a person with do
  • genitive
  (zadzwoń do mnie), a number/service with na
  • accusative (dzwonić na policję); the bare verb means "ring" with a nominative subject.
• Spelling: nasal dzwonię / dzwonią, and the kreska on dzwoń / zadzwoń are obligatory.
• Perfective zadzwonić has no present and no compound future — its one-word forms are already future.