Learn Hardcore Polish: Jesienią liście spadają z drzew, a dni bywają smutne. - In autumn, leaves fall from the trees, and days can be sad.

Jesienią is the singular instrumental form of jesień (“autumn”). In Polish you often use the instrumental case to express “in [season]” or “during [season]” in a temporal sense. So jesienią means “in autumn.”

Why is liście in the plural, and what case is it?

Liście is the nominative plural of liść (“leaf”). It’s in the nominative because it’s the subject of the verb spadają (“they fall”).

Why does the verb take the ending -ją in spadają?

Spadają is the 3rd person plural form in the present tense of spadać (“to fall”). The ending -ją is standard for many verbs in that conjugation class: oni/one spadają.

Why is it z drzew, not z drzewu or ze drzew?

After the preposition z (“from”), Polish requires the genitive case. The genitive plural of drzewo (“tree”) is drzew, so you get z drzew. You could say ze drzew, but it’s more common to drop the extra vowel and say z drzew.

What does a mean in a dni bywają smutne?

Here a is a coordinating conjunction meaning “and” or “while.” It connects the two clauses: “Leaves fall… and days tend to be sad.”

What does bywają add to the meaning that są wouldn’t?

Bywają is the present tense of bywać, which conveys a sense of habitual or occasional quality (“tend to be,” “can be”). If you said dni są smutne, it’d sound like “days are sad” as a general fact. Bywają smutne implies “days can be sad” or “days tend to be sad” occasionally.

What case and number is dni, and why is smutne used instead of a different ending?

Dni is nominative plural of dzień (“day”). Since it’s the subject of bywają, you need nominative plural. Likewise, smutne is the nominative plural form of the adjective smutny (“sad”), agreeing in gender (masculine personal vs. non-personal)? Days are considered non-personal masculine, which take the same plural adjective ending as feminine/neutral nouns: smutne.

How do you pronounce the nasal -nią in jesienią?

The ending -nią is pronounced [ɲɔ̃] or roughly “nyaw” with a nasalized “aw.” The -ni produces a palatal nasal [ɲ], like the “ny” in English “canyon,” followed by a nasalized “o” or “aw” sound.

Could you reorder the sentence, for example putting dni bywają smutne jesienią?

You could say Jesienią dni bywają smutne, a liście spadają z drzew, but switching too much might sound less natural. Polish allows some word‐order flexibility, but the original emphasizes the season first, then the falling leaves, then the mood of days.

Why isn’t there a comma before a in Polish?

In Polish, you typically don’t put a comma before the coordinating conjunction a when it simply connects two clauses. Commas in Polish follow slightly different rules than in English; you’d insert one if there were extra parenthetical elements, but not here.