Breakdown of Mały balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny niż duży pusty taras.
Questions & Answers about Mały balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny niż duży pusty taras.
Mały balkon is the subject of the sentence, so it stands in the nominative case (the “dictionary form”).
- mały balkon – nominative, masculine singular
- małego balkonu – genitive, masculine singular
You would use małego balkonu in contexts like:
- Nie mam małego balkonu. – I don’t have a small balcony.
(The object after nie mam must be genitive.)
But here we are saying:
- Mały balkon z roślinami (subject) wydaje się...
So it must be mały balkon, nominative, because it’s the thing “doing” the verb wydaje się (“seems”).
z roślinami is instrumental plural.
The preposition z (meaning “with” in this sentence) normally takes the instrumental case when it means “together with / accompanied by”:
- z kim? z czym? – with whom? with what? (instrumental questions)
The noun:
- singular: roślina – a plant
- plural nominative: rośliny – plants
- plural instrumental: z roślinami – with plants
So z roślinami literally means “with plants” (in accompaniment), not “from plants” here.
z has several meanings depending on context and case; two common ones are:
“with”
- instrumental
- z roślinami – with plants
- z przyjacielem – with a friend
“from / out of / off (of)”
- genitive
- ze szkoły – from (the) school
- z domu – from (the) house / from home
In your sentence, z roślinami uses the instrumental, so it clearly has the “with” meaning: “a small balcony with plants”.
It’s a standard Polish comparative structure:
- bardziej + adjective = “more + adjective”
- niż = “than” (in comparisons)
So:
- przytulny – cozy
- bardziej przytulny – more cozy / cozier
- bardziej przytulny niż duży pusty taras – cozier than a big empty terrace
Some notes:
For many short, common adjectives, Polish has a single-word comparative, e.g.
- duży → większy (bigger)
- mały → mniejszy (smaller)
For most longer adjectives (often ending in -ny, -owy, -alny, etc.), we normally use bardziej:
- interesujący → bardziej interesujący (more interesting)
- przytulny → bardziej przytulny (cozier)
niż is used for explicit comparison with bardziej. You’ll also see od + genitive in comparisons, e.g.:
- Mały balkon jest przytulniejszy od dużego tarasu. – A small balcony is cozier than a big terrace.
Literally, wydaje się comes from wydawać się – “to seem / to appear”.
- wydaje się – (it) seems / appears
- jest – (it) is
Nuance:
Mały balkon z roślinami jest przytulny.
– A small balcony with plants is cozy.
(The speaker states it as a fact.)Mały balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny...
– A small balcony with plants seems cozier...
(The speaker is describing an impression or appearance, not necessarily an objective fact.)
So wydaje się softens the statement and makes it more subjective.
się is the Polish reflexive particle, but in many verbs (including wydawać się) it no longer has a clear “himself / herself” meaning; it’s just part of the verb’s normal form.
- wydawać – to issue / to spend / to publish (non‑reflexive meanings)
- wydawać się – to seem / to appear
You cannot normally drop się here:
- ✔ To wydaje się dziwne. – That seems strange.
- ✘ To wydaje dziwne. – incorrect
So in this sentence, treat wydaje się as one unit: “seems”. Don’t try to translate się separately.
All the nouns here (balkon, taras) are:
- masculine inanimate, singular
- in the nominative case (subjects / predicates)
Adjectives must agree with the noun in:
- gender
- number
- case
So we get:
mały balkon
- mały – masculine singular nominative
- balkon – masculine singular nominative
duży pusty taras
- duży, pusty – masculine singular nominative
- taras – masculine singular nominative
bardziej przytulny (niż...)
- przytulny – masculine singular nominative (agreeing with balkon)
- bardziej – just an adverb; it doesn’t change its form
The pattern for masculine singular nominative adjectives is often -y or -i after a consonant: mały, duży, pusty, przytulny.
Polish word order is flexible, but not everything sounds equally natural.
These are natural:
- Mały balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny niż duży pusty taras.
- Balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny niż duży pusty taras.
(Just omits mały; grammar is fine and word order is natural.)
This sounds odd:
- Mały balkon wydaje się z roślinami bardziej przytulny...
The phrase z roślinami naturally sticks to balkon, because it describes the balcony, not the verb:
- better: Mały balkon z roślinami wydaje się bardziej przytulny...
- or: Z roślinami mały balkon wydaje się bardziej przytulny... (possible, but marked / stylized word order)
General rule: keep adjectives and prepositional phrases close to the noun they describe.
Roughly the same difference as in English between balcony and terrace:
- balkon – a projecting platform attached to the side of a building, usually higher up, with a railing; often relatively small.
- taras – a terrace; usually on the ground floor or roof level, larger, more open, sometimes like a big flat outdoor area.
Poles will also sometimes use taras for a big deck or patio attached to a house, especially at ground level, while balkon is the typical small balcony in an apartment building.
In normal Polish, descriptive adjectives usually come before the noun:
- mały balkon – a small balcony
- duży pusty taras – a big empty terrace
Putting the adjective after the noun is:
- possible in some fixed expressions, poetic, or very stylized language,
- but not standard everyday speech.
So:
- ✔ mały balkon
- ✘ balkon mały – sounds poetic / archaic / emphatic, not neutral
In a sentence like Balkon jest mały, the adjective is of course after the verb jest, but that’s a different structure (it’s a predicate adjective, not a noun phrase).
Approximate pronunciation (in English-like spelling):
wydaje się → “vih‑DAH‑ye sh’ye”
- wy – like short “vi” but with Polish y (between i and u)
- da – like “da” in “data” (short)
- je – “ye”
- się – “sh’ye” (the ę here is often very weak, almost like e in casual speech)
roślinami → “rosh‑lee‑NAH‑mee”
- ro – like “ro” in “robot”
- ś – soft “sh”; put your tongue a bit more forward than in English “sh”
- li – “lee” (again with softer l)
- na – “nah”
- mi – “mee”
Tricky bits for English speakers:
- Polish ś is a soft “sh”, not as “hard” as English sh.
- Polish się is one syllable: się (sh’ye), not “see‑ye” or “sye”.
- The vowel y (in wy‑) doesn’t exist in English exactly; it’s a central vowel between i and u.
Polish has no articles (a, an, the). Mały balkon can mean:
- “a small balcony”
- “the small balcony”
Which one is meant depends entirely on context, not on word form.
If you really need to emphasize this specific balcony, you can add demonstratives:
- ten mały balkon – this small balcony / that small balcony (depending on context)
But in most cases, Poles just say mały balkon, and context tells you whether it’s specific or not.