Breakdown of Lata po wojnie były bardzo dobre.
być
to be
bardzo
very
dobry
good
rok
year
po
after; for (to fetch)
wojna
the war
Questions & Answers about Lata po wojnie były bardzo dobre.
Wait, doesn't lata mean "summers"? Why does it translate to "years" here?
It can mean both! The Polish word for "year" is rok, but its plural is highly irregular: lata (years). It just happens to look and sound exactly like the plural of lato (summer). You have to tell them apart by context, and here "years after the war" makes much more sense than "summers".
Why is it po wojnie instead of po wojna?
The preposition po, when used to mean "after" an event in time, requires the noun to be in the Locative case. The feminine noun wojna (war) changes its ending to -ie in the Locative, becoming wojnie.
Why do we use były instead of byli for "were"?
In Polish, plural past tense verbs change depending on whether the subject includes men (masculine personal) or not. Lata (years) is a non-masculine-personal noun, so it takes the verb ending -ły, making it były. If the subject were ludzie (people), which is masculine personal, you would use byli.
Why does the adjective end in "-e" (dobre)?
Just like the verb, the adjective has to match the noun lata. For plural nouns that aren't groups of men (non-masculine-personal), adjectives take the -e ending. If it were a singular masculine noun, it would be dobry, and for a group of men, it would be dobrzy.
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