Breakdown of Kupiłam koszulę z bawełny.
koszula
shirt
kupić
to buy (perfective)
z
from (+ Genitive)
bawełna
cotton
Questions & Answers about Kupiłam koszulę z bawełny.
How do we know the speaker is a woman, and why use kupiłam instead of kupowałam?
The -am ending on kupiłam tells us the speaker is female. We use the perfective verb kupiłam because buying the shirt was a single, completed action. If you used the imperfective kupowałam, it would mean you were in the middle of buying it or bought it repeatedly.
Why does the word for shirt (koszula) end in -ę in this sentence?
The shirt is the direct object being bought, so it takes the accusative case. Feminine nouns that end in -a in their basic dictionary form change that -a to an -ę in the accusative case.
The English translation says "cotton shirt," so why does Polish use z bawełny (out of cotton)?
When talking about materials, Polish frequently uses the preposition z (out of) plus the noun for the material, rather than using an adjective. You can say bawełniana koszula (cotton shirt), but koszula z bawełny (shirt out of cotton) is extremely common and natural.
Why does bawełna (cotton) change to bawełny after the preposition z?
When the preposition z means "made of" or "out of," it must be followed by the genitive case. For feminine nouns like bawełna, the genitive ending is -y, making it z bawełny.
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