Mieszam sałatę w dużej misce.

In Polish, the subject pronoun is often omitted because the verb ending already tells you who is doing the action.

• mieszam = I mix / I am mixing
• The ending -am shows first person singular, so ja is not necessary.

You could say Ja mieszam sałatę w dużej misce, but it usually sounds more emphatic, like I am mixing it.

Mieszam is the 1st person singular present tense form of the verb mieszać, meaning to mix.

So:

• mieszać = infinitive, to mix
• mieszam = I mix / I am mixing

This verb is imperfective, so it is used for:

• an action happening now
• a repeated action
• a general habit

Because it is the direct object of the verb, so it takes the accusative case.

Here, the thing being mixed is sałata, so the noun changes form:

• nominative: sałata
• accusative: sałatę

This is a very common pattern for feminine nouns ending in -a:

• książka → książkę
• kawa → kawę
• sałata → sałatę

Because after w meaning in for location, Polish uses the locative case.

So both words change:

• miska → misce
• duża → dużej

That is because the adjective must agree with the noun in:

• gender
• number
• case

So:

• nominative: duża miska
• locative: w dużej misce

Not always. W can take different cases depending on meaning.

Most commonly:

• w
  • locative = in, inside, at a place
    
    • w misce = in the bowl
• w
  • accusative can be used with movement into something
    
    • for example, wkładam to w miskę = I put it into the bowl

In your sentence, there is no movement into the bowl being described. It tells you where the mixing happens, so locative is used: w dużej misce.

It can mean both.

Polish present tense often covers both:

• I mix
• I am mixing

The exact English translation depends on context.

So Mieszam sałatę w dużej misce could be:

• I am mixing the salad in a large bowl
• I mix the salad in a large bowl

If you want to make it clearly habitual in English, context usually does that.

Yes. Polish word order is more flexible than English because the cases show the grammatical roles.

The neutral order here is:

• Mieszam sałatę w dużej misce.

But you could also say:

• Sałatę mieszam w dużej misce.
• W dużej misce mieszam sałatę.

These alternatives shift emphasis:

• Sałatę... emphasizes what is being mixed
• W dużej misce... emphasizes where it happens

English usually keeps a more fixed order, but Polish can move parts around for focus or style.

Yes. Mieszam comes from mieszać, which is imperfective.

That means it focuses on:

• the process
• an ongoing action
• repeated action

If you want to emphasize completing the mixing, Polish often uses a perfective verb such as wymieszać:

• mieszam = I am mixing / I mix
• wymieszam = I will mix completely / I will finish mixing

Polish perfective verbs do not normally have a true present meaning. A perfective present form usually refers to the future.

This is a useful vocabulary question, because Polish distinguishes a few related words.

• sałata often means lettuce
• sałatka often means a mixed salad / salad dish

So depending on context, many speakers might more naturally say sałatkę if they mean a prepared salad dish.

However, sałata can still appear in contexts involving leafy salad/greens, and the sentence is grammatically correct. The most natural choice depends on exactly what food you mean.

In Polish, adjectives must match the noun they describe.

Here the noun is miska, which is:

• feminine
• singular
• locative

So the adjective duży must also become feminine singular locative:

• basic form: duży
• feminine nominative: duża
• feminine singular locative: dużej

That is why you get:

• w dużej misce

not just the dictionary forms.

A few parts may be unfamiliar to an English speaker:

• sz in mieszam sounds roughly like English sh
• ż in dużej sounds like the s in measure
• ł in sałatę sounds like English w
• ę at the end of sałatę is a nasal vowel; in everyday speech before a pause it is often pronounced approximately like e with some nasal coloring

A rough pronunciation guide might be:

• Mieszam ≈ MYESH-am
• sałatę ≈ sa-WAH-te(n)
• w dużej misce ≈ v DOO-zhey MEES-tseh

This is only approximate, but it can help at the start.