mieć — to have | Polish Grammar

Mieć ("to have") is the second verb you cannot live without, right after być. On the surface it marks possession, but its real importance is that it anchors a whole family of everyday constructions — your age, whether you are right, whether you feel like something — that English hands to the verb be or to other verbs entirely. Learning mieć is therefore learning a small grammar of its own. It is imperfective only (there is no perfective partner *zmieć), so its tense system is simple; the difficulty lives in the cases it governs and in the idioms.

Present tense

The infinitive mieć loses its -ie- completely. The endings rhyme with the easy -am/-asz class, so once you accept that the stem is ma-/maj-, nothing has to be mutated.

Person	Form	Meaning
ja	mam	I have
ty	masz	you have (sg, informal)
on / ona / ono	ma	he / she / it has
my	mamy	we have
wy	macie	you have (pl, informal)
oni / one	mają	they have

The only diacritic in the present is the nasal ą in mają. Writing maja is a spelling error, not a typo.

Mam dwóch braci i jedną siostrę.

I have two brothers and one sister.

Masz może ładowarkę do telefonu?

Do you happen to have a phone charger?

Past tense

The past is built on the stem mia- plus the gendered -ł- suffix and the floating personal endings. Everything is regular for an -eć verb, with one slip to watch: the masculine-personal plural is mieli — the a of the singular gives way to e before the soft -li.

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
ja	miałem	miałam	—
ty	miałeś	miałaś	—
on / ona / ono	miał	miała	miało
plural
my	mieliśmy (masc-pers.)	miałyśmy (other)
wy	mieliście (masc-pers.)	miałyście (other)
oni / one	mieli (masc-pers.)	miały (other)

So "we had" is mieliśmy when the my includes at least one male person, but miałyśmy for an all-female or non-masculine group. The vowel difference (mie- vs mia-) is the whole trap.

Kiedyś mieliśmy mały ogród za domem.

We used to have a small garden behind the house.

Miałam wczoraj okropny dzień w pracy.

I had an awful day at work yesterday.

Future tense

Because mieć is imperfective, its future is the compound future: być in the future plus either the infinitive mieć or — more commonly — the past participle (the -ł form agreeing in gender). Both are correct and interchangeable.

Person	With infinitive	With participle (masc / fem)
ja	będę mieć	będę miał / miała
ty	będziesz mieć	będziesz miał / miała
on / ona / ono	będzie mieć	będzie miał / miała / miało
my	będziemy mieć	będziemy mieli / miały
wy	będziecie mieć	będziecie mieli / miały
oni / one	będą mieć	będą mieli / miały

W przyszłym roku będziemy mieli własne mieszkanie.

Next year we'll have our own apartment.

Nie martw się, będziesz miała mnóstwo czasu.

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time.

Imperative

The imperative is rare with mieć (you don't usually command someone to have something), but it exists and surfaces in fixed wishes such as Miej się! ("Take care!", literally "have yourself").

Person	Form	Meaning
ty	miej	have!
my	miejmy	let's have
wy	miejcie	have! (pl)
3rd	niech ma / niech mają	let him/them have

Miej trochę cierpliwości — zaraz kończymy.

Have a bit of patience — we're nearly done.

Conditional

The conditional adds the particle by plus the past-tense personal endings to the -ł form. It means "would have."

Person	Masculine	Feminine
ja	miałbym	miałabym
ty	miałbyś	miałabyś
on / ona	miałby	miałaby
my	mielibyśmy	miałybyśmy
wy	mielibyście	miałybyście
oni / one	mieliby	miałyby

Gdybym miał więcej pieniędzy, kupiłbym ten dom.

If I had more money, I'd buy that house.

The contemporary adverbial participle is mając ("having"), used in clauses like Mając wolny dzień, poszliśmy nad jezioro ("Having a free day, we went to the lake").

Government and the negation trap

In the affirmative, the possessed thing is the direct object and takes the accusative: Mam psa (animate masculine → psa), Mam siostrę (feminine → siostrę). For most masculine-inanimate and neuter nouns the accusative looks like the dictionary form, so it is invisible at first.

Under negation everything changes: negated mieć forces the genitive. Mam czas → Nie mam czasu. This is the single most common beginner error, because English keeps the object identical ("I have time / I don't have time").

Nie mam dziś czasu, może jutro?

I don't have time today, maybe tomorrow?

Niestety nie mamy już wolnych miejsc.

Unfortunately we don't have any free seats left.

The full rule is on the genitive of negation page.

The idiom family — this is why mieć matters

A huge share of mieć's frequency comes from fixed constructions where English uses be or another verb. Learn these as whole units.

Polish	Literal	English meaning
mam dwadzieścia lat	I have twenty years	I'm twenty (age)
masz rację	you have rightness	you're right
mam ochotę na…	I have appetite for…	I feel like… / I'm up for…
mieć na imię	to have for a name	to be named (first name)
co masz na myśli?	what do you have on mind?	what do you mean?
mam nadzieję	I have hope	I hope

The age construction is the one you relearn constantly: Polish says "I have twenty years," and the word for "year" follows number grammar — lata after 2/3/4, lat (genitive plural) after 5 and up and after the teens. So Mam dwadzieścia lat but Mam dwa lata.

Ile masz lat? — Mam trzydzieści jeden lat.

How old are you? — I'm thirty-one. (lit. 'How many years do you have?')

Mam ochotę na kawę, idziesz ze mną?

I feel like a coffee, are you coming with me?

Mam na imię Kasia, a ty?

My name's Kasia, and yours?

Mam nadzieję, że wszystko będzie dobrze.

I hope everything will be okay.

A second productive pattern is mieć + infinitive for soft obligation ("to be supposed to"): Mam oddać raport do piątku ("I'm supposed to hand in the report by Friday"). It is weaker than musieć ("must") and implies a plan or instruction rather than hard necessity.

💡

Whenever you'd reach for English be + an adjective or noun (be right, be twenty, be named), check first whether Polish uses mieć instead. Far more often than you'd expect, it does.

Common mistakes

❌ Jestem dwadzieścia lat.

Incorrect — Polish doesn't use być for age.

✅ Mam dwadzieścia lat.

I'm twenty. (lit. 'I have twenty years')

❌ Nie mam czas.

Incorrect — negated mieć needs the genitive, not the accusative.

✅ Nie mam czasu.

I don't have time.

❌ My miałyśmy psa. (said by a mixed group)

Incorrect — a group including a man takes the masculine-personal form.

✅ My mieliśmy psa.

We had a dog.

❌ Jestem prawo / Jestem racja.

Incorrect — 'to be right' is mieć rację, not być.

✅ Masz rację.

You're right.

❌ Jak się nazywasz na imię?

Incorrect — the first-name construction is mieć na imię.

✅ Jak masz na imię?

What's your (first) name?

💡

The two diacritics that learners drop most in mieć are the ą of mają (3rd plural present) and the ę of rację, ochotę, nadzieję (accusative of feminine idiom nouns). Missing either is a spelling mistake, not a stylistic choice.

Key takeaways

Mieć is imperfective only — no perfective partner — so its tense system is the simple one.
Present: mam, masz, ma, mamy, macie, mają; future is compound (będę mieć or będę miał).
Past masculine-personal plural is mieli (with e), not *miali.
Affirmative object → accusative; negated → genitive (nie mam czasu).
Its real weight is the idiom family: age, mieć rację, mieć ochotę, mieć na imię, mam nadzieję — learn each as a fixed unit.

Now practice Polish

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Polish→