Ona chce adoptować kota z schroniska.

the cat

Breakdown of Ona chce adoptować kota z schroniska.

• ona: she
• chcieć: to want
• z: from

Questions & Answers about Ona chce adoptować kota z schroniska.

What does chce mean, and why is it not chcę or chcą?

• chce is the 3rd-person singular present tense of chcieć (“to want”).
• chcę is 1st-person singular (“I want”), chcą isn’t used (they say chcą for 3rd-person plural, but that comes from another verb form).
• Because the subject is ona (“she”), we use chce (“she wants”).

Why is adoptować in the infinitive form and not conjugated?

• In Polish, after verbs like chcieć (“to want”), you follow with the infinitive of the next verb.
• So chce adoptować literally means “wants to adopt.”
• The infinitive adoptować never changes its ending for person or number.

What case is kota, and why isn’t it kot?

• kot (“cat”) is a masculine animate noun.
• As the direct object of adoptować, it must be in the accusative case.
• For masculine animate nouns, the accusative singular is formed by adding -a, yielding kota.

Why do we say z schroniska, and what case is schroniska? When would it be ze instead of z?