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Questions & Answers about Mleko jest białe.
How do you know what gender mleko is?
You can usually figure out the gender of a Polish noun by looking at its last letter. Because mleko ends in the letter '-o', it is a neuter noun.
Why does the word for white (białe) end in '-e' instead of '-y'?
In Polish, adjectives change their endings to match the gender of the noun they describe. The base dictionary form for 'white' is the masculine biały, but since it describes the neuter noun mleko, it takes the neuter ending '-e' to become białe.
Why isn't there a word for 'the' before mleko?
Polish does not have articles like 'the', 'a', or 'an'. The single word mleko can mean 'milk', 'the milk', or 'some milk' depending on what makes sense in the conversation.
I learned that the verb jest makes the following word take the instrumental case. Why doesn't that happen here?
That rule only applies when the verb być (to be) connects a noun to another noun (like in the sentence 'He is a doctor'). When it connects a noun to an adjective (like 'Milk is white'), the adjective just stays in the basic dictionary form, which is the nominative case.