Word
Na obiad mamy kurczaka.
Meaning
For lunch we are having chicken.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Na obiad mamy kurczaka.
mieć
to have
obiad
dinner / lunch (midday meal)
na
on, at / to (motion toward) / for (a meal) / for (waiting for)
kurczak
chicken (food)
Questions & Answers about Na obiad mamy kurczaka.
Why do we use na for 'for lunch' instead of dla?
In Polish, when you talk about having food for a specific meal, you always use the preposition na followed by the meal. So 'for lunch' is na obiad, 'for breakfast' is na śniadanie, and 'for dinner' is na kolację.
If obiad is the object of the preposition na, why doesn't its ending change?
The preposition na takes the accusative case here. Because obiad is a masculine inanimate noun (a non-living thing), its accusative form looks exactly the same as its basic dictionary form.
Why is the word for chicken kurczaka instead of just kurczak?
It is in the accusative case because it is the direct object of the verb mamy (we have). Even though the chicken is food here, Polish grammar treats kurczak as a masculine animate noun (like a living animal), which means it takes an -a ending in the accusative case.
The English translation says 'we are having', but doesn't mamy just mean 'we have'?
Yes, mamy literally means 'we have'. Polish uses the verb to have (mieć) to talk about what is planned for a meal, similar to English. Since Polish doesn't have a separate continuous tense, mamy covers both 'we have' and 'we are having'.