When recounting a story—like discovering a dark, secret diary in the attic—you need to anchor your events in time. To set the scene with phrases like "one day" or "that night", Polish uses a special time construction.
The Bare Genitive of Narrative Time
To express a specific point in time in a story, Polish uses the bare Genitive case without prepositions like "in" or "on". Simply put the pronoun and the time noun directly into the Genitive.
To say "one..." or "a certain...", use the word pewien.
| a certain, one | pewien |
For masculine nouns like dzień (day), wieczór (evening), or ranek (morning), pewien becomes pewnego, and tamten (that) becomes tamtego.
- pewien dzień → pewnego dnia (one day)
- pewien wieczór → pewnego wieczoru (one evening)
- tamten ranek → tamtego ranka (that morning)
| One day I was trying to decipher this faded handwriting, when I heard some rustle. | Pewnego dnia próbowałem rozszyfrować to wyblakłe pismo, kiedy usłyszałem jakiś szelest. |
| One evening I found a dark diary in the attic, where someone was hiding a secret. | Pewnego wieczoru znalazłem mroczny dziennik na strychu, gdzie ktoś ukrywał sekret. |
| That morning I felt a shiver when I was turning the pages of the dark diary. | Tamtego ranka czułem dreszcz, kiedy przewracałem strony mrocznego dziennika. |
Feminine Narrative Time
For feminine time words like noc (night) or zima (winter), the pronouns change to their feminine Genitive forms: pewnej and tamtej.
- pewna noc → pewnej nocy (one night)
- tamta noc → tamtej nocy (that night)
- pewna zima → pewnej zimy (one winter)
| That night I read the first entry. | Tamtej nocy przeczytałem pierwszy wpis. |
| One winter someone wrote this entry with blue ink. | Pewnej zimy ktoś napisał ten wpis niebieskim atramentem. |
Neuter Narrative Time
Neuter nouns like popołudnie (afternoon) share the same Genitive pronouns as masculine nouns (pewnego or tamtego), and take their standard Genitive ending (usually -a).
- pewne popołudnie → pewnego popołudnia (one afternoon)
| One afternoon she lit a candle, because the faded ink was invisible. | Pewnego popołudnia zapaliła świecę, ponieważ wyblakły atrament był niewidoczny. |