Word
Ona mieszka w dużym mieście.
Meaning
She lives in a large city.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Ona mieszka w dużym mieście.
Why is the adjective dużym instead of its dictionary form duży or duże?
The preposition w (in) requires the Locative case to describe a location. Since the noun miasto (city) is neuter, the adjective takes the neuter Locative ending -ym.
The word for city is miasto. Why does it change so drastically to mieście here?
The Locative case is notorious for causing spelling changes (mutations) inside the noun's root, not just at the end. For nouns ending in -sto, the ending softens to -ście. Additionally, the vowel a in the middle of miasto shifts to an e, giving us mieście.
The adjective ends in -ym (dużym) but the noun ends in -ie (mieście). Don't they need to match?
They do match grammatically (both are neuter, singular, and in the Locative case), but adjectives and nouns belong to different categories and use completely different sets of endings. Neuter adjectives in the Locative take -ym or -im, while neuter nouns take endings like -e or -u. They agree, even if they don't rhyme!
Why use mieszka for "lives" instead of żyje?