Questions & Answers about My jesteśmy stolarzami.
How is the word stolarz formed?
It derives from the noun stół (table). The suffix -arz is a very common ending used to create agentive nouns, which are words for professions or people who perform a specific action (similar to "-er" in English). Notice the vowel shift from ó to o in the root: stół becomes stolarz.
Why does this sentence use stolarzami instead of the Nominative plural stolarze?
Whenever you use the verb być (to be) to link a subject to a noun that describes their profession, nationality, or identity, that noun must be in the Instrumental case. The ending -ami is the standard Instrumental plural ending for Polish nouns.
If jesteśmy already means "we are," why is the pronoun My included in this sentence?
Polish usually drops subject pronouns because the verb ending (-śmy) already clearly indicates "we". Including My here adds emphasis or contrast. It implies something like "As for us, we are carpenters (unlike those other people over there)."
When deriving professions with the -arz suffix, how do we form their Nominative plural to use them as a subject?
The Nominative plural is stolarze. Masculine personal nouns ending in historically soft consonants like -rz (which includes almost all professions ending in -arz or -erz) take the -e ending for the plural, rather than the -i or -y endings you might expect for masculine people.
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