Formal anaphoric demonstratives (ów, owa, owe)

"The Aforementioned"

When telling a story or writing formally, you often need to refer back to a person or object you just mentioned. Instead of the standard ten, ta, or to, literary Polish uses the formal demonstrative pronouns ów (masculine), owa (feminine), and owe (neuter and plural). They translate to "that aforementioned" or "that very."

Notice how ów connects the second sentence back to the wanderer introduced in the first:

Recounting the Past

These formal pronouns pair perfectly with words like wówczas (back then) and rzekomy (alleged) when recounting historical anecdotes or legends.

To use them in full sentences, you will need to decline them. These demonstratives decline very similarly to standard adjectives. Here are the singular forms you will encounter in this lesson:

Here is the feminine nominative form owa used as the subject of a sentence:

When using prepositions that take the accusative (such as believing in something with the preposition w), the feminine form becomes ową:

Finally, when discussing stories, you will frequently use the locative case with the preposition o (about). The masculine locative is owym, and the feminine is owej: