Sprzedawca przecenił lampę.

Because some Polish masculine nouns, especially words for people, end in -a. Sprzedawca is one of them. Even though it looks a bit like a feminine noun, it is grammatically masculine.

You can see that from the verb: przecenił is the masculine singular past form. If the subject were feminine, it would be przeceniła.

Because lampę is the accusative singular form of lampa.

• lampa = nominative, the dictionary form
• lampę = accusative, used here because it is the direct object of the verb

So:

• Lampa jest nowa. = The lamp is new.
• Sprzedawca przecenił lampę. = The seller discounted the lamp.

It is in the nominative singular, because it is the subject of the sentence: the person doing the action.

So the structure is:

• Sprzedawca = subject, nominative
• przecenił = verb
• lampę = direct object, accusative

Here przecenił means reduced the price of, marked down, or discounted.

This verb can be tricky because przecenić can also mean to overestimate in other contexts. But with sprzedawca and lampę, the natural meaning is clearly discounted the lamp.

In the Polish past tense, verbs often include endings that show gender and number.

Here:

• przecenił = masculine singular past
• przeceniła = feminine singular past
• przeceniło = neuter singular past
• przecenili / przeceniły = plural

Since sprzedawca is masculine singular, the verb is przecenił.

Przecenił comes from the perfective verb przecenić.

That means the sentence presents the action as completed: the seller finished discounting the lamp.

The imperfective partner is przeceniać. Compare:

• Sprzedawca przecenił lampę. = He discounted the lamp. Completed action.
• Sprzedawca przeceniał lampę. = He was discounting the lamp / He used to discount the lamp. Ongoing, repeated, or background action.

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

The neutral order here is:

• Sprzedawca przecenił lampę.

But you could also hear:

• Lampę przecenił sprzedawca.
• Przecenił lampę sprzedawca.

These versions change the emphasis, not the basic meaning. English usually relies much more on word order, but Polish can move words around more freely.

Polish does not have articles like English the and a/an.

So sprzedawca can mean the seller or a seller, and lampę can mean the lamp or a lamp. Context tells you which meaning is intended.

That is why one Polish sentence can match more than one English translation.

Then both the noun and the past-tense verb would usually change:

• Sprzedawczyni przeceniła lampę.

Here:

• sprzedawczyni = female seller
• przeceniła = feminine singular past

So Polish past tense agrees with the gender of the subject.

A rough guide is pshe-TSEH-nyiw, but English spelling cannot show it perfectly.

A few useful points:

• prz sounds like a Polish consonant cluster, roughly like psh
• c sounds like ts
• ni before a vowel gives a soft ny sound
• final ł sounds like English w

So the ending -nił sounds roughly like -nyiw.

ę is a nasal vowel in Polish. At the end of a word, many speakers pronounce it less strongly than learners expect.

So lampę is often pronounced approximately like LAM-pe with some nasal quality, rather than a fully separate en sound.

For learners, the important thing is first to recognize that -ę marks the accusative singular here. Perfect pronunciation can come later.

Sometimes, yes. Polish often drops subject pronouns, but not usually important subject nouns unless the context already makes them clear.

So:

• Przecenił lampę. = He discounted the lamp.

This works if everyone already knows who he is. But if you want to say specifically that it was the seller, then sprzedawca is kept.

The dictionary form is przecenić.

In dictionaries, Polish verbs are normally listed in the infinitive, often ending in -ć. So you would look up:

• przecenić = to discount / to mark down; in other contexts, to overestimate

The sentence form przecenił is the masculine singular past tense form built from that infinitive.