Breakdown of Ten musical dostał Oscara w zeszłym roku.
ten
this (m)
w
in / on (a day)
rok
year
dostać
to get
zeszły
last, previous (as in "last week")
Oscar
the Oscar
musical
the musical
Questions & Answers about Ten musical dostał Oscara w zeszłym roku.
Why does Oscara have an -a ending here if an Oscar is an inanimate object?
Although an Oscar is an inanimate object, it belongs to a category of masculine nouns in Polish that take the animate accusative ending -a. This is very common for names of prizes, car brands, dances, and certain technologies (like SMS-a or smartfona). Therefore, the accusative form is Oscara instead of Oscar.
Since Oscar is a foreign proper noun, why isn't there an apostrophe before the -a ending?
When declining foreign names or nouns, Polish only uses an apostrophe if the word ends in a silent letter in its original pronunciation (for example, Mike becomes Mike'a). Since the final consonant in Oscar is pronounced, the Polish suffix is attached directly to the word.
The word musical is a loanword from English. How is it treated in Polish grammar?
It is treated as a regular masculine inanimate noun. Even though it is a foreign word, it ends in a pronounced consonant, so it takes standard Polish declension endings directly without an apostrophe. For example, the genitive is musicalu, and the plural nominative is musicale.
Why do we use w zeszłym roku instead of just using a bare case for time?
To express something happening in a specific year, Polish requires the preposition w followed by the locative case. The adjective zeszły (last) becomes zeszłym, and the noun rok (year) takes its irregular locative form roku.
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