Learn Hardcore Polish: Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer po parku. - Today we will take a shorter walk in the park.

dzisiaj – slightly more neutral and a bit more common in everyday speech.
dziś – a bit shorter and can feel slightly more stylistic or literary, but is still very normal in spoken Polish.

In practice, you can treat them as synonyms here.

Why does Polish say zrobimy spacer (literally “we will make a walk”) instead of something like “we will walk”?

Polish often uses a verb meaning “do/make” with certain activities, where English uses “take” or just a bare verb. So:

zrobić spacer ≈ to take a walk
zrobić przerwę ≈ to take a break
zrobić zdjęcie ≈ to take a photo

In this sentence:

zrobimy = we will do / we will make (future, perfective)
spacer = a walk

So zrobimy spacer is an idiomatic way to say “we’ll take a walk”.
It doesn’t sound strange to a Polish speaker the way “make a walk” would in English.

Another very common way to say this is:

Pójdziemy na spacer. – We’ll go for a walk.

What does the form zrobimy tell us about tense and aspect?

Zrobimy is:

the first person plural (we)
future tense
of the perfective verb zrobić (to do / to make, completed action)

Aspect:

zrobić (perfective) focuses on the completion of the action: we will have done / taken a walk (as a whole event).
The imperfective partner is robić:
będziemy robić spacer – we will be taking a walk / we’ll be walking (focus on the process, not on completion).

So:

Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer. – Today we’ll take a shorter walk (and finish it).
Dziś będziemy robić spacer. – grammatically possible, but sounds awkward; people normally wouldn’t say it this way about a walk.

For “a walk” specifically, the imperfective is more often expressed with a different verb, e.g.:

Dziś będziemy spacerować po parku. – Today we’ll be walking around the park.

Why is it krótszy spacer and not krócej spacer?

Because krótszy is an adjective and it has to agree with the noun spacer, while krócej is an adverb and cannot modify a noun.

krótki – short (adjective)
krótszy – shorter (comparative adjective)
krótko – shortly / briefly (adverb)
krócej – more briefly / for a shorter time (comparative adverb)

We have:

spacer (jaki?) krótszy – a (what kind of) walk? a shorter walk → adjective needed
iść (jak?) krócej – to walk (how?) for a shorter time → adverb

So:

krótszy spacer – correct (a shorter walk)
krócej spacer – incorrect (wrong word type)

If you wanted to use the adverb, you’d change the structure, e.g.:

Dziś pospacerujemy trochę krócej. – Today we’ll walk a bit shorter / for a shorter time.

Does krótszy mean “shorter” compared to something, or can it also just mean “a short walk”?

Literally, krótszy is the comparative form of krótki:

krótki – short
krótszy – shorter

So krótszy spacer normally implies some comparison:

Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer (niż zwykle).
Today we’ll take a shorter walk (than usual).

However, native speakers often leave the comparison implied, especially with routines like walks. Context usually tells you:

shorter than yesterday
shorter than we first planned
shorter than we normally do, etc.

If you clearly just want “a short walk”, you’d say:

Dziś zrobimy krótki spacer. – Today we’ll take a short walk.

Why is it krótszy spacer, not spacer krótszy?

In Polish, adjectives almost always come before the noun in neutral sentences:

krótszy spacer – natural
spacer krótszy – possible, but only in special contexts (e.g. poetic, strongly contrastive, or after a pause).

Spacer krótszy might appear in something like:

Spacer krótszy niż wczoraj też będzie w porządku.
A walk shorter than yesterday’s will also be fine.

But as a simple statement, krótszy spacer is the standard, neutral word order.

What case is spacer in, and how do we know?

Here spacer is in the accusative singular.

Why?

The verb zrobić (to do/make) takes a direct object in the accusative:
- zrobić co? – to do what?

Answering that question:

zrobimy (co?) krótszy spacer – we will take (what?) a shorter walk → accusative.

For masculine inanimate nouns like spacer, the nominative and accusative forms are identical:

nominative: spacer (subject) – Spacer był krótki.
accusative: spacer (object) – Zrobiliśmy spacer.

The adjective krótszy also shows the accusative masculine inanimate form, which happens to look like the nominative as well.

Why do we say po parku and not w parku here?

Both po and w can be used with places, but they express different ideas.

po parku (with locative) – suggests movement around / over the area, visiting different parts of the park.
- spacerować po parku – to walk around the park
- chodzić po mieście – to walk around the city
w parku (with locative) – literally in the park, more static or just locating something inside the space.
- Jesteśmy w parku. – We are in the park.
- Dzieci bawią się w parku. – The children are playing in the park.

In this sentence, spacer po parku is a standard collocation that emphasizes walking around inside the park area, not just being located there.

You could say:

Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer w parku.

It’s not wrong, but spacer po parku sounds more idiomatic when you want to stress movement through the park.

What case is parku, and why does it look like that?

Parku is the locative singular of park.

The preposition po (in the sense of moving around an area) requires the locative:

po (czym?) parku – around (what?) the park → locative

Declension of park (masculine inanimate):

nominative: park – Park jest duży.
genitive: parku – Nie ma parku.
locative: parku – w parku, po parku

The locative of many masculine nouns ends in -u, and it often looks the same as the genitive. The preposition is what tells you which case is actually meant. Here po clearly signals the locative.

Could I move dziś to another position, like Zrobimy dziś krótszy spacer po parku? Does the meaning change?

Yes, you can move dziś around quite flexibly without changing the basic meaning:

Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer po parku.
Zrobimy dziś krótszy spacer po parku.
Zrobimy krótszy spacer po parku dziś. (less common, but possible)

They all mean essentially the same thing: “Today we’ll take a shorter walk in the park.”

Subtle nuances:

Dziś at the beginning: slightly more emphasis on today as the topic of the sentence.
dziś in the middle: feels very neutral and conversational.
dziś at the end: can give dziś a bit of extra emphasis in speech (like “…today, not another day”), but it’s less typical than the first two positions.

All are grammatically correct.

Why is there no word for “a” or “the” before spacer? How do articles work in Polish?

Polish simply does not have articles like a/an or the.

So spacer in this sentence can correspond to English:

a walk
the walk
sometimes even our walk (if context is clear)

Context tells you whether it feels more like “a” or “the” in English translation. Here, both are fine:

Today we’ll take *a shorter walk in the park.*
Today we’ll take *the shorter walk in the park.* (if you already know which one)

If you really need to emphasize something like “this particular walk”, Polish uses demonstratives:

ten spacer – this/that walk
nasz spacer – our walk

But in most everyday sentences, no article is used at all.

Could I instead say Dziś pójdziemy na krótszy spacer do parku? How would that differ from po parku?

Yes, you can say:

Dziś pójdziemy na krótszy spacer do parku.

This is correct and natural, but the prepositions change the picture slightly:

iść na spacer – go for a walk (general phrase)
do parku – to the park (destination)
→ pójdziemy na spacer do parku = we will go for a walk to the park (the park is where we’re going)
spacer po parku – a walk around/in the park, emphasizing walking inside and around that area.

So:

Dziś zrobimy krótszy spacer po parku.
Focus: the walk happening inside and around the park.
Dziś pójdziemy na krótszy spacer do parku.
Focus: you go to the park to have the walk (though in practice you’ll also walk inside it).

Both are fine; the original just emphasizes the movement around the park itself more directly.