Breakdown of Czytam wiersz, który dla mnie napisał.
ja
I
czytać
to read
napisać
to write (perfective)
który
which, who (relative)
dla
for
wiersz
poem
Questions & Answers about Czytam wiersz, który dla mnie napisał.
Why is który in this specific form here?
który means 'which' or 'that'. It refers back to wiersz (poem), which is a masculine inanimate noun. In the second part of the sentence ('he wrote [the poem]'), the poem is the direct object being acted upon, so który must be in the accusative case. For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative form looks exactly the same as the basic dictionary form.
In English we can say 'the poem he wrote' without using the word 'that'. Can I drop który in Polish?
No, you can never drop the relative pronoun in Polish. You must always include który (or its matching form for other genders), and you must always put a comma directly before it to separate the two parts of the sentence.
Why do we use mnie here instead of mi for 'me'?
The preposition dla (for) always forces the following word into the genitive case. The genitive form of 'I' is mnie. Even if you have learned mi to mean 'to me' in other sentences, that is the dative case. After dla, you must always use mnie.
How do we know it was a 'he' who wrote the poem if the word 'he' (on) isn't there?
Polish past tense verbs change their endings based on the gender of the person doing the action. The -ł ending on napisał specifically tells us a masculine 'he' did it. If a woman had written it, the verb would be napisała. Because the verb ending makes the gender clear, the pronoun on is naturally dropped.
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