Breakdown of Zapisałem się na intensywny kurs polskiego w naszej szkole językowej.
Questions & Answers about Zapisałem się na intensywny kurs polskiego w naszej szkole językowej.
In Polish, the past tense form of the verb changes depending on the gender of the speaker in the 1st person singular.
- zapisałem – “I signed up / enrolled” said by a man (masculine).
- zapisałam – the same, but said by a woman (feminine).
So:
- A man would say: Zapisałem się na intensywny kurs polskiego…
- A woman would say: Zapisałam się na intensywny kurs polskiego…
Everything else in the sentence stays the same; only the verb ending changes.
Się is a reflexive particle, but you usually don’t translate it literally as “myself”.
The verb zapisać się means “to sign up / to enroll (oneself)”. It’s a reflexive verb by nature, and it normally appears with się. Without się, zapisać usually means “to write down / to enter (something)”:
- zapisać numer telefonu – to write down a phone number
- zapisać się na kurs – to enroll in a course
So here:
- zapisałem się ≈ “I enrolled / I signed up”
- You must use się with this meaning; zapisałem na kurs is incorrect in standard Polish.
In Polish, się is a clitic: a short, unstressed word that has preferred positions in the sentence. In simple statements with one finite verb, się normally goes:
- right after the conjugated verb:
- Zapisałem się na kurs.
- Uczę się polskiego. – I’m learning Polish.
You cannot freely move się around like you can with English adverbs. For example, these are wrong:
- ✗ *Się zapisałem na kurs.
- ✗ *Zapisałem na kurs się.
There are some more complex patterns when there are auxiliaries or modal verbs, but for now you can remember: in a simple sentence, put się right after the main verb.
The preposition na can take either:
- Accusative (movement / goal) – answering “where to?”:
- na kurs – onto the course / to a course
- Locative (location / state) – answering “where?”:
- na kursie – on the course / during the course
Here the action is “signing up for a course”, which is conceptually about entering or joining the course, so na takes the accusative:
- na kurs (Accusative) – goal / destination
→ Zapisałem się na intensywny kurs. – I enrolled on/for an intensive course.
If you said:
- Jestem na intensywnym kursie polskiego. – I am on an intensive Polish course.
Here we describe where you are, not where you’re going, so na + locative (na intensywnym kursie).
The adjective has to agree with the noun’s gender, number and case.
- kurs is:
- masculine
- singular
- accusative here (because of na
- movement)
Masculine inanimate Accusative = same as Nominative:
- Nominative: intensywny kurs
- Accusative: intensywny kurs
So:
- intensywny kurs – correct (masculine singular acc.)
- intensywną kurs – wrong, -ą is feminine ending
- intensywny kursu – wrong here; kursu is genitive
In Polish, when you say “course of something”, that “something” is usually put in the genitive case.
- kurs polskiego – a course of Polish (language)
(polskiego is genitive of polski)
Saying kurs polski would sound like:
- either a “Polish course” in the sense “a course that is Polish (not German, not English)”
- or just incorrect/unnatural in this context
So the pattern is:
- kurs + [language in genitive]
- kurs polskiego
- kurs angielskiego
- kurs niemieckiego
The preposition w (“in”) usually takes the locative case when it means location.
- Base form: szkoła (school) – feminine singular nominative
- Locative singular of szkoła: w szkole – “in (the) school”
Now add the adjectives:
nasza szkoła – our school (nominative)
- locative: w naszej szkole
szkoła językowa – language school (nominative)
- locative: w szkole językowej
Combine both:
- w naszej szkole językowej – “in our language school”
Both adjectives (naszej, językowej) agree with szkole in:
- gender: feminine
- number: singular
- case: locative
Not with the same meaning.
- w naszej szkole językowej – locative: in our language school (location)
- w naszą szkołę językową – accusative: “into our language school” (movement into the building)
Examples:
- Pracuję w naszej szkole językowej. – I work in our language school.
- Wszedłem w naszą szkołę językową. – I walked into our language school. (possible but less common; usually you’d say do naszej szkoły językowej)
In your sentence, the idea is that the course is organized there, so you need location → w + locative → w naszej szkole językowej.
Polish is a pro-drop language: the subject pronoun is usually omitted because the verb ending already shows the person.
- zapisałem – must be 1st person singular (I), masculine
- zapisałam – 1st person singular, feminine
Therefore, ja is not needed:
- Zapisałem się na kurs… – perfectly normal and neutral.
You can say:
- Ja zapisałem się na kurs…
but this adds emphasis on ja (“I” as opposed to someone else), for example:
- Ja zapisałem się na kurs, a on nie. – I signed up for the course, but he didn’t.
This is the difference between perfective and imperfective aspect.
zapisałem się – perfective past
- Focus: completed action, result
- Translation: “I signed up / I enrolled (successfully, it’s done).”
zapisywałem się – imperfective past
- Focus: process, repeated or unfinished action
- Rough translations:
- “I was signing up…”
- “I used to sign up…”
- “I was in the process of signing up (but maybe didn’t finish).”
In your sentence, you want to say the action is done and successful, so perfective (zapisałem się) is correct.
Grammatically it’s understandable, but the natural word order is:
- na intensywny kurs polskiego
In Polish, adjectives that are simple and descriptive (like intensywny) typically stand before the noun they modify. Saying kurs intensywny is possible in some contexts for emphasis or a special stylistic effect, but in a neutral sentence about a course you’re taking, you’d normally say:
- intensywny kurs polskiego
The meaning is almost the same:
- kurs polskiego – Polish course / course of Polish
- kurs języka polskiego – course of the Polish language
kurs języka polskiego is a bit more explicit and slightly more formal or textbook-like, because it literally includes the word język (language).
In everyday speech, kurs polskiego is very common and fully natural. Both are correct; in your sentence, kurs polskiego is perfectly fine.