Breakdown of Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser.
Questions & Answers about Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser.
Polish marks grammatical gender on many nouns, including professions and roles.
- klient = (usually) a male client, or sometimes a client of unspecified gender in very general speech or writing
- klientka = specifically a female client
Because the sentence talks about a woman, it uses the feminine form klientka.
If you were talking about a man, you would say:
Klient lubi zupę oraz deser.
Both zupę and deser are in the accusative case.
The verb lubi (lubić – to like) takes a direct object in the accusative. Here, the things being liked are soup and dessert, so both nouns must be accusative:
- zupa → zupę (feminine, nominative → accusative)
- deser → deser (masculine inanimate; nominative and accusative look the same)
So the pattern is:
[subject in nominative] + lubi + [object in accusative].
This difference comes from gender and declension patterns:
zupa is feminine. In the singular, most feminine nouns ending in -a change that -a to -ę in the accusative:
- zupa → zupę
- kawa → kawę
- herbata → herbatę
deser is masculine inanimate. For this group of nouns, the nominative and accusative singular forms are usually identical:
- deser → deser
- chleb → chleb
- makaron → makaron
So they are both accusative, but they look different because they follow different gender patterns.
Yes, you can absolutely say:
Klientka lubi zupę i deser.
In everyday speech, i and oraz both mean and, and in this simple sentence they are interchangeable.
The nuance is mostly stylistic:
- i – the most common, neutral word for and, used everywhere.
- oraz – also means and, but often feels a bit more formal or bookish, and is common in written texts, lists, and official documents.
In your sentence, using oraz just sounds slightly more formal or careful, but the meaning is the same.
Polish does not use articles (no equivalents of English a / an / the).
Whether English would use a or the has to be understood from context, not from any specific word in Polish.
So zupę might correspond to:
- soup,
- a soup,
- the soup,
depending on the situation. The same for deser: dessert / a dessert / the dessert. The Polish forms themselves don’t mark this difference.
Lubi is the 3rd person singular form of the verb lubić (to like) in the present tense.
Present tense forms of lubić are:
- (ja) lubię – I like
- (ty) lubisz – you like (singular, informal)
- (on / ona / ono) lubi – he / she / it likes
- (my) lubimy – we like
- (wy) lubicie – you like (plural)
- (oni / one) lubią – they like
The subject here is klientka (she), so we use lubi.
Yes. Polish often drops the subject if it is clear from context, because the verb ending usually shows who is doing the action.
- Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser. – full sentence with the subject stated
- Lubi zupę oraz deser. – She likes soup and dessert (who “she” is must be clear from previous context)
This is very natural in Polish conversations.
Yes, Polish word order is more flexible than English. All these are grammatically correct:
- Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser. (neutral, most typical)
- Klientka lubi deser oraz zupę. (emphasizes dessert a bit more)
- Zupę oraz deser lubi klientka. (unusual in isolation; would typically be used for contrast, e.g. It’s the client (not the waiter) who likes soup and dessert.)
The case endings (like -ę in zupę) tell you who is the subject and what is the object, so word order can shift for emphasis or style without breaking the grammar.
In standard modern Polish, ę at the end of a word (like in zupę) is only lightly nasal and is often pronounced almost like plain e:
- zupę is commonly pronounced close to zu-pe (with a very slight nasal coloring, depending on the speaker and style).
In the middle of a word (e.g. będę, język), ę is more clearly nasal, often similar to en / em plus e, depending on the following consonant.
So you don’t need to force a very strong French-style nasal at the end of zupę.
In Polish, when you join two words or phrases with i or oraz, you normally do not put a comma between them if they belong to the same part of the sentence.
Here, zupę oraz deser is a single object phrase (two objects joined into one group), so no comma is used:
- zupę oraz deser – correct
- zupę, oraz deser – incorrect in this context
Lubi expresses a general liking / preference:
- Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser. – She (generally) likes soup and dessert.
To say would like (for ordering in a restaurant), Polish usually uses other verbs, for example:
- Klientka chciałaby zupę i deser. – The client would like soup and dessert.
- Klientka poprosi zupę i deser. – The client will have soup and dessert (literally: will ask for).
So lubi is about taste and preference, not about placing an order right now.
The infinitive is lubić (to like). It is an imperfective verb, describing a state or repeated/habitual action.
There is also a perfective partner: polubić, which means to come to like / to start liking:
- Lubi zupę. – She likes soup. (general state)
- Polubiła zupę. – She came to like soup / She grew to like soup. (change of state at some point in time)
In your sentence, the habitual/generic sense makes lubi the correct choice.
For plural female clients, you change both the subject and the verb:
- Singular: Klientka lubi zupę oraz deser. – The (female) client likes soup and dessert.
- Plural: Klientki lubią zupę oraz deser. – The (female) clients like soup and dessert.
Notice:
- klientka → klientki (feminine plural, nominative)
- lubi → lubią (3rd person plural form of lubić)
The objects zupę and deser stay the same because the verb’s subject number does not affect their case.