Breakdown of W czwartek o drugiej zwykle czytam książkę.
książka
book
czytać
to read
w
in / on (a day)
zwykle
usually
czwartek
Thursday
o
at (time)
drugi
second / the other (in 'one another')
Questions & Answers about W czwartek o drugiej zwykle czytam książkę.
Why do we use w for 'on Thursday' but o for 'at two'?
In English, we say 'on a day' and 'at a time.' Polish has its own set of rules for this. To say 'on a day of the week', you use the preposition w (which usually means 'in') followed by the Accusative case. For clock times, you use the preposition o followed by the Locative case.
Since days of the week take the Accusative case after w, why doesn't czwartek change its spelling here?
It actually is in the Accusative case! However, czwartek is a masculine inanimate noun (meaning it is not a living person or animal). For these types of masculine nouns, the Accusative form looks exactly the same as the basic dictionary form.
Why is the word for 'two' here drugiej instead of the normal number dwa?
When telling time, Polish uses ordinal numbers (first, second, third) instead of basic numbers (one, two, three). So 'at two o'clock' is literally 'at the second (hour)'. The word for hour (godzina) is feminine, so we use the feminine word for 'second' (druga). Because it comes after the preposition o, it changes to the Locative case, becoming drugiej. We usually just leave out the word for 'hour' completely!
Why does the word for book end with -ę in książkę?
The book is the direct object of the sentence—it is the thing being read. This means it has to be in the Accusative case. The basic dictionary word is książka, and for feminine nouns ending in -a, the Accusative ending changes the last letter to -ę.
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