Learn Hardcore Polish: Czy twój telefon działa?

Czy is a yes/no question particle. It doesn’t translate directly into English but signals that the sentence is interrogative. Without Czy, you’d rely on rising intonation alone (e.g. Telefon działa?) to ask “Does the phone work?”

Why is twój used here, and why does it look the way it does?

Twój means “your” (second-person singular). Polish possessive pronouns agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they modify. Since telefon is masculine, singular, and in the nominative case (it’s the subject), the correct form is twój.

Why is telefon in the nominative case?

Because it’s the subject of the sentence. In Polish, subjects take the nominative case. Here telefon (the thing doing the “working”) remains in nominative.

What does działa mean, and which form of the verb is it?

Działa is the third-person singular present tense of działać (“to work” or “to function”). Conjugation in the present tense:

ja działam
ty działasz
on/ona/ono działa

Could I drop Czy and still ask the same question?

Yes. In informal speech you can say Twój telefon działa? with a rising intonation. Omitting Czy makes the question more colloquial.

Can I rearrange the words, for example Czy działa twój telefon?

Absolutely. Polish has relatively free word order. Czy działa twój telefon? is perfectly correct and still means “Does your phone work?”

How do I pronounce działa correctly?

Phonetically it’s [ˈd͡ʑawa], roughly “DZYAH-wa.” Key points:

dz is like “ds” in “ads,” but palatalized.
ł is pronounced like English w.
Polish stress is nearly always on the penultimate syllable, so you stress DZYAH-wa.

Is działać imperfective or perfective, and does that matter here?

Działać is imperfective, which describes an ongoing or habitual action (“to be in working order”). It’s the appropriate form when asking if something generally works. The perfective counterpart is zadziałać, meaning “to start working” or “to work once” (e.g. “It will work that time”).

Could I use a different verb like funkcjonować instead of działać?

Yes, funkcjonować also means “to function,” but it’s more formal/abstract (e.g. “This system functions smoothly”). For everyday devices like phones, działać is more idiomatic: Czy twój telefon działa? feels natural in spoken Polish.