Word
Biedne dzieci umarły podczas wojny.
Meaning
Poor children died during the war.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Biedne dzieci umarły podczas wojny.
The singular word for child is dziecko. Why is the plural dzieci?
The word dziecko (child) has a highly irregular plural form. Instead of following the normal rules for neuter nouns, it changes its stem entirely to dzieci. This is a special exception you simply have to memorize.
What gender category does dzieci belong to for verb and adjective endings?
Even though dziecko is neuter in the singular, the plural dzieci belongs to the non-masculine-personal category. This group includes women, animals, objects, and children. That is why it takes the non-masculine adjective biedne and the verb umarły.
Why does the verb umarły end in -ły instead of -li?
In the plural past tense, Polish verbs use -li for groups containing at least one man, and -ły for everything else. Since dzieci (children) falls into the everything else category, we use the -ły ending.
Why is the word for war spelled wojny here instead of its dictionary form wojna?
The preposition podczas (during) always forces the noun that follows it into the Genitive case. For feminine nouns ending in -a, the Genitive ending is usually -y, which changes wojna into wojny.