Breakdown of Gdzie ci wolontariusze kierują turystów?
gdzie
where
turysta
tourist
ci
these (masculine personal plural)
wolontariusz
volunteer
Questions & Answers about Gdzie ci wolontariusze kierują turystów?
Why do we use ci instead of te for "these"?
In Polish, plural nouns are split into two groups: masculine personal (groups with at least one man) and non-masculine personal (everything else). Because wolontariusze (volunteers) is a masculine personal noun, it takes the pronoun ci. If it were a group of only female volunteers (wolontariuszki), you would use te.
Why do wolontariusze and turystów have completely different endings if they are both plural groups of people?
They have different roles in the sentence. wolontariusze is the subject (the ones doing the action), so it stays in the Nominative case. turystów is the object (the ones receiving the action), so it changes to the Accusative case.
Why does turystów end in -ów if it is the direct object?
Because turystów is the object being directed, it is in the Accusative case. For masculine personal nouns in the plural, the Accusative form looks exactly like the Genitive form. For most of these nouns, including the base word turysta (tourist), the plural Genitive/Accusative ending is -ów.
The verb kierują means "are directing." Why does it have a -uj- in the middle?