Breakdown of W nocy przyszła burza i wiatr uderzał w dach naszego domu.
Questions & Answers about W nocy przyszła burza i wiatr uderzał w dach naszego domu.
The preposition w can take two different cases:
- w + locative → “in/at” (static location or time)
- w + accusative → “into” (movement into something, sometimes a specific single time)
In the sentence W nocy przyszła burza…, we are saying “at night / during the night”, so Polish uses:
- w + locative → w nocy
W noc (with accusative) is possible only in more specific or stylistic contexts, like:
- W noc sylwestrową… – On New Year’s Eve night… (one particular night, often with some dramatic/stylistic flavor)
For a general “at night”, the natural expression is w nocy.
Nocy is in the locative case.
The noun noc (night) declines like this (singular):
- Nominative: noc – (this) night
- Genitive: nocy
- Dative: nocy
- Accusative: noc
- Instrumental: nocą
- Locative: nocy
- Vocative: nocy
With time expressions, w + locative often means “at [that time]”:
- w dzień – in/at the daytime (here accusative is used; this is a bit irregular/idiomatic)
- w południe – at noon
- w nocy – at night
So w nocy = w + locative, meaning “at night / during the night”.
In Polish, past tense verbs agree with the gender and number of the subject.
- Subject: burza (a storm) – this is feminine singular
- Verb: przyjść (to come, to arrive)
Past tense forms of przyjść (3rd person singular):
- masculine: przyszedł
- feminine: przyszła
- neuter: przyszło
Because burza is feminine, we must use przyszła:
- W nocy przyszła burza. – At night a storm came.
If the subject were masculine, it would change, for example:
- W nocy przyszedł wiatr. – At night the wind came.
Yes, both are grammatically correct:
- W nocy przyszła burza.
- Burza przyszła w nocy.
Polish word order is relatively flexible. The differences are mostly about emphasis and what is already known vs. new information:
- W nocy przyszła burza.
– Slight emphasis on “at night”; “at night” is the starting point. - Burza przyszła w nocy.
– Slight emphasis on “a storm” as the topic; then we add when it came.
In everyday speech, both versions sound natural.
Both are possible, but they say slightly different things.
W nocy przyszła burza.
– Focus on the moment the storm arrived / started.
– Implies: it was calm, and then at night, the storm came.W nocy była burza.
– Focus on the fact that there was a storm during the night.
– Neutral about exactly when it started.
So the original sentence paints a more dynamic picture: first the storm comes, then the wind keeps hitting the roof.
This is about aspect in Polish:
- uderzać – imperfective (ongoing, repeated, descriptive)
- uderzyć – perfective (single, completed action)
Past tense:
- wiatr uderzał – the wind was hitting / kept hitting
- wiatr uderzył – the wind hit (once)
In the sentence:
…i wiatr uderzał w dach naszego domu.
we want to show that the wind was continuously or repeatedly striking the roof during the storm. That’s why the imperfective form uderzał is used.
If you said:
…i wiatr uderzył w dach naszego domu.
it would sound like one single strong blow to the roof, not ongoing stormy wind.
The verb uderzać (imperfective) / uderzyć (perfective) means to hit / to strike / to bump.
The usual construction is:
- uderzać / uderzyć w + accusative
Examples:
- uderzać w dach – to hit / strike the roof
- uderzyć w ścianę – to hit / crash into the wall
- uderzać w okno – to hit the window
So in uderzał w dach, dach is in the accusative case, governed by w with the meaning “into/against”.
Both w and na can be used with a roof, but they express different ideas:
w dach (w + accusative) – focuses on impact into/against the surface.
- wiatr uderzał w dach – the wind was hitting / pounding against the roof.
na dach (na + accusative) – focuses on movement onto the top/surface or location on the roof.
- Weszli na dach. – They went onto the roof.
- Śnieg spadł na dach. – Snow fell onto the roof.
Here we care about the force of the wind against the roof, so w dach is the natural choice.
Naszego domu is in the genitive singular.
- dom (house) – masculine, nominative singular
- domu – masculine, genitive singular
- nasz (our) – possessive pronoun
- naszego – masculine/neuter, genitive singular form of nasz
We use the genitive to express “of something / someone”. In Polish, a roof is literally:
- dach czego? – roof of what?
→ dach naszego domu – the roof of our house
So naszego domu is genitive, dependent on the noun dach.
Because in Polish, when one noun belongs to another (like “roof of a house”), the owned thing goes into the genitive case.
Pattern:
- [Noun A] [genitive of Noun B] = A of B
- dach domu – roof of the house
- drzwi samochodu – the car’s door(s)
- okno pokoju – the room’s window
So:
- ❌ dach nasz dom – incorrect
- ✅ dach naszego domu – correct (roof of our house)
The possessive pronoun nasz must also match the case and gender of dom:
- nominative: nasz dom
- genitive: naszego domu
- dative: naszemu domowi, etc.
Here we need the genitive, so: naszego domu.
This combination is very typical in Polish storytelling:
- perfective verb → a completed event, a clear “point” in time
- imperfective verb → background, ongoing, repeated activity
In the sentence:
W nocy przyszła burza i wiatr uderzał w dach naszego domu.
we have:
- przyszła burza – perfective: the storm came / arrived (a completed change of situation).
- wiatr uderzał w dach – imperfective: the wind was hitting / kept hitting the roof (ongoing action during the storm).
So the structure is:
- First, something happens once (perfective: przyszła).
- At the same time / afterwards, something goes on for a while (imperfective: uderzał).
In English we often express this with:
- simple past for the event: a storm came
- past continuous for the background: the wind was hitting the roof