wstawać / dostawać — receive and rise

This page is a complete reference for the aspect pair dostawać / dostać ("to get, to receive") together with its close cousin wstawać / wstać ("to get up, to rise") — two members of a productive verb family built on the root of dawać / dać ("to give"). The single most useful fact for an English speaker is that this whole family shares one present pattern (-aję, -ajesz … -ają) and one perfective future pattern (-anę, -aniesz … -aną). Learn the two paradigms once and you can conjugate at least five high-frequency verbs. dostać is the everyday way to say "I got" — Dostałem prezent ("I got a present") — and it takes a direct object in the accusative.

dostawać / dostać — the meaning and case

dostać means to get, to obtain, to receive something — a gift, a letter, a job, a fine, a cold. It is not the verb for getting up (that is wstać) or becoming (that is zostać); it is specifically coming into possession of something. The thing received goes in the accusative, and the giver, if mentioned, appears with od + genitive ("from").

The aspect contrast is the usual one. dostawać (imperfective) describes getting repeatedly or habitually; dostać (perfective) describes one completed act of receiving.

dostawać — imperfective conjugation

The imperfective dostawać conjugates exactly like dawać: the -wa- drops in the present and you get -aję, -ajesz …

Present tense

Past tense (by gender)

The masculine-personal plural is dostawali (men or mixed groups); the non-masculine-personal plural is dostawały (women, children, objects).

Imperative and participles

Because dostawać is imperfective, its future is compound: będę dostawać / będę dostawał(a) ("I will be getting").

dostać — perfective conjugation

The perfective dostać has a simple future built on the -anę stem — exactly like wstać (wstanę) and zostać (zostanę).

Simple future (perfective)

Because it is perfective, these forms are future, not present — dostanę means "I will get," never "I am getting."

Past tense (by gender)

Imperative

The perfective imperative dostań is rarer in practice (you don't usually command someone to receive), but it is fully regular. dostać has no everyday passive participle; to say "received," Polish prefers otrzymany (from the synonym otrzymać).

The cousin: wstawać / wstać — to get up

The title pairs dostawać with wstawać / wstać ("to rise, to get up") precisely because they share the paradigm. wstać has no object — it is intransitive (you don't get up something) — but its endings are identical to dostać.

Past: wstałem / wstałam, masculine-personal plural wstali, non-masculine-personal wstały. Imperative: wstań! / wstańmy / wstańcie.

Common Mistakes

dostaję (imperfective present) cannot mean a single future event. For "I will get [once]," use the perfective future dostanę.

The thing received (list, accusative) comes first; the source is od + genitive (od babci).

English "get up" is wstawać/wstać, not dostawać. Don't let the shared paradigm trick you into using the wrong verb.

Pick one form: dostanę is the perfective future ("I will get"). The stems dosta-ję and dosta-nę belong to different aspects and never combine.

Key Takeaways

• dostać = "get/receive" (+ accusative, source od + genitive); it is not "get up" (= wstać) or "become" (= zostać).
• Present dostaję … dostają (imperfective); future dostanę … dostaną (perfective). dostaję is present, dostanę is future.
• Past: dostałem/dostałam, masculine-personal plural dostali, otherwise dostały.
• The -aję present is shared across the whole dawać family (daję, dostaję, wstaję, zostaję, sprzedaję). The perfective future splits: -anę for the -stać verbs (dostanę, wstanę, zostanę) but the athematic -am of dać for the rest (dam, sprzedam, poznam).