Questions & Answers about Moja siostra pracuje z matką.
Why does the word for mother change from matka to matką here?
The preposition z (when it means "with") requires the noun following it to take the Instrumental case. For feminine nouns ending in -a, like matka, you simply change the last letter to an -ą (an 'a' with a little tail).
The English translation says "with my mother," but there is no word for "my" before matką. Why?
In Polish, if it is obvious from the context whose family member or item it is, you can just drop the possessive pronoun. Saying z moją matką is grammatically correct, but just z matką sounds more natural because we already established we are talking about "my" family at the start of the sentence.
If I did want to include the word "my" before mother, how would I spell it?
Because matką is in the Instrumental case, the word describing it must match its case. The feminine Instrumental form of moja is moją. You would say z moją matką. Notice how both words get that exact same -ą ending!
The dictionary form of the verb "to work" is pracować. Why does it look so different as pracuje?
Verbs ending in -ować belong to a special group that can be tricky for beginners. When you conjugate them in the present tense, the -owa- part drops out and is replaced by -uj- before you add the ending. Since "my sister" is a "she", we add the regular third-person ending -e, giving us pracuje.
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