Questions & Answers about Nie chce mi się gotować.
Why does this sentence use mi instead of ja?
This sentence uses a special Polish structure: chce mi się, which translates to 'I feel like' or 'I have the desire to'. Literally, it means 'It wants itself to me'. Because this feeling of wanting is happening to you, you use the dative (indirect object) pronoun mi instead of the subject pronoun ja.
Why is the verb chce in the 'it' form instead of the 'I' form (chcę)?
In this phrase, the verb chcieć (to want) acts like an impersonal force rather than an action you are actively doing. So it takes the third-person singular 'it' form (chce). If you said nie chcę gotować, it would simply mean 'I do not want to cook', which is a direct statement rather than expressing a lack of energy or mood.
What role does się play here?
The word się is a reflexive pronoun, but here it is used to make the verb impersonal. Together with chce, the phrase chce się expresses that a general desire exists. It is a fixed grammatical structure, so you cannot remove się without breaking the sentence.
Can I use this exact structure to say that someone else doesn't feel like cooking?
Yes! You just change the dative pronoun to match the person experiencing the feeling. The core phrase nie chce ... się gotować stays exactly the same. For example, to say 'he doesn't feel like cooking' you would use mu (to him) and say nie chce mu się gotować. For 'we don't feel like cooking', you would use nam (to us) and say nie chce nam się gotować.
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