Breakdown of Wczorajszy obiad był dobry.
być
to be
obiad
the dinner (main meal)
dobry
good
wczorajszy
yesterday’s
Questions & Answers about Wczorajszy obiad był dobry.
Why is it wczorajszy obiad and not wczoraj obiad?
Wczorajszy is an adjective meaning yesterday’s, built from wczoraj (yesterday).
- wczorajszy obiad = yesterday’s dinner / the dinner from yesterday
- wczoraj obiad by itself is ungrammatical; you’d need a verb:
- Wczoraj obiad był dobry. = Yesterday, the dinner was good.
So:
- Wczorajszy obiad był dobry. focuses on the meal itself as “yesterday’s dinner”.
- Wczoraj obiad był dobry. focuses more on the time (yesterday) when the dinner was good.
Both are correct, but they’re structured differently: adjective + noun vs. adverb of time + noun.
What is the grammatical gender of obiad, and how does it affect the rest of the sentence?