W piątek pójdę do kina.

I will go to the cinema on Friday.

Breakdown of W piątek pójdę do kina.

• ja: I
• do: to
• pójść: to go
• kino: the cinema
• w piątek: on Friday

Questions & Answers about W piątek pójdę do kina.

What preposition and case combination is w piątek using, and why is it used to say “on Friday”?

Polish marks a one-time event on a day of the week with w + accusative. Even though piątek (a masculine inanimate noun) looks the same in nominative and accusative, grammatically it’s accusative here. The preposition w signals “at/on” a specific time.

Why do we need w? Can we say na piątek or just piątek?

• na piątek means “for/by Friday” (e.g. rescheduling something to Friday).
• Dropping the preposition (piątek pójdę…) is ungrammatical for expressing “I’ll go on Friday.”
  To say “on Friday” you must use w piątek.

What does pójdę mean, and why is it used to express the future?

pójdę is the 1st person singular future form of the perfective verb pójść (“to go” with the focus on completing the action). Perfective verbs have no present tense; their “present” form actually refers to the future. So pójdę literally means “I will go” (and implies that the going is a single, completed event).

Why don’t we use idę (“I’m going”) or będę iść (“I will be going”) instead of pójdę?

• idę is the present tense of the imperfective iść (“to go” ongoing). You couldn’t use it to refer to a future trip without adding a future auxiliary (e.g. będę iść).
• To say “I will go,” you have two options:
  
  1. Use the perfective pójdę, which is shorter and more idiomatic for a single action.
  2. Use the imperfective future periphrastic: będę iść (less common here).

Why is there no subject pronoun ja (“I”) before pójdę?

In Polish, subject pronouns are optional because verb endings already indicate the person. pójdę uniquely shows 1st person singular, so ja is redundant unless used for emphasis: Ja pójdę do kina (“As for me, I will go to the cinema”).

Why do we say do kina, and what case is kina?

The preposition do (“to/into”) requires the genitive case. kino is a neuter noun, whose genitive singular form is kina. So do kina literally means “into the cinema.”

Could I say pójdę na kino or pójdę na film instead?

• pójdę na film is perfectly fine: na
  • accusative marks attending an event (you go “for a film”).
• pójdę na kino is not standard when referring to the place; cinemas are entered with do. You would only hear na kino in colloquial or dialectal Polish, and it usually means “for (the experience of) cinema,” not specifically “to the building.”

Is the word order fixed? Can I say Pójdę do kina w piątek?

Polish word order is fairly flexible. All these are grammatical, with slight shifts in emphasis:

• W piątek pójdę do kina. (neutral statement)
• Pójdę do kina w piątek. (focus on the going, then adds the time)
• Do kina pójdę w piątek. (emphasizes the destination)

How do you pronounce pójdę, and where is the stress?

• Pronunciation: [ˈpuɲ.dɛ] (the letter ó sounds like u).
• Polish stress is almost always on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable, so you say PÓJ-dę.

What’s the difference between ó and u in Polish spelling?

Phonetically, ó and u both represent the /u/ sound. The choice depends on historical and morphological rules (e.g. related forms of the word or origin). You learn them as you expand your vocabulary and study specific spelling patterns.