Jak nazywamy ten bank?

With nazywać when you are asking for the name of something, Polish normally uses jak.

So:

• Jak nazywamy ten bank? = What do we call this bank?
• more literally, it is built with jak, even though natural English usually uses what here

So jak is not really asking about the manner of calling; it is the normal Polish pattern for asking for a name.

Nazywamy is the 1st person plural present tense form of nazywać.

That means:

• nazywać = to call / to name
• nazywamy = we call / we name

The ending -my shows we.

It is also an imperfective verb form. That matters because in Polish only imperfective verbs have a normal present tense. The perfective partner is nazwać, and nazwiemy would mean we will name / we will call, not we call.

Because Polish usually leaves subject pronouns out when the verb already makes the subject clear.

Here, nazywamy already tells you the subject is we, so my is not necessary.

You could add my for emphasis:

• My nazywamy ten bank... = We call this bank...

That would sound like contrast, for example: We call it this, but other people call it something else.

Ten bank is in the accusative, because it is the direct object of nazywamy.

However, bank is a masculine inanimate noun, and in the singular, masculine inanimate nouns usually have the same form in the nominative and accusative.

So:

• nominative: ten bank
• accusative: ten bank

That is why nothing seems to change.

This is different from masculine animate nouns, which often do change in the accusative, for example:

• nominative: ten pies
• accusative: tego psa

No. Ten means this, not the.

Polish does not have articles like a/an/the. So:

• ten bank = this bank
• bank by itself could mean a bank or the bank, depending on context

So ten is a demonstrative word, not an article.

Not completely. Polish word order is fairly flexible because grammatical endings show what each word is doing.

The most neutral order here is:

• Jak nazywamy ten bank?

But you may also hear:

• Jak ten bank nazywamy?

That can put a bit more focus on ten bank.

A version like Ten bank jak nazywamy? is possible in speech, but it sounds more marked and less neutral.

These two sentences are close, but they are not exactly the same.

• Jak nazywamy ten bank? = What do we call this bank?
• Jak nazywa się ten bank? = What is this bank called? / What is the name of this bank?

The nazywa się version is often the more natural everyday way to ask for the name of something.

The nazywamy version feels a bit more like you are focusing on the name that we / people use for it.

A simple approximation is:

yak na-zih-VA-mih ten bank

A few useful pronunciation points:

• j in jak sounds like English y
• w in nazywamy sounds like English v
• y in nazywamy is not the same as English ee; it is a short Polish vowel
• Polish stress usually falls on the second-to-last syllable, so here the stress is on -wa-: nazyWAMY

So the whole sentence is pronounced roughly:

yak na-zih-VA-mih ten bank