Breakdown of Moja narzeczona mieszka ze swoją krewną.
mieszkać
to live
mój
my
z
with
swój
one's own
narzeczona
fiancée
krewna
relative (f)
Questions & Answers about Moja narzeczona mieszka ze swoją krewną.
Why do words like narzeczona and krewną behave like adjectives if they are nouns representing people?
These words are "substantivized adjectives"—adjectives that have evolved to act entirely as nouns. Even though narzeczona (fiancée) and krewna (relative) function as the subject and object here, they still decline using standard adjective endings rather than noun endings.
How do we know what ending to put on krewna after the preposition ze?
The preposition z / ze (meaning "with") always requires the Instrumental case. Because krewna declines like an adjective, we use the feminine Instrumental adjective ending -ą, giving us krewną. Notice how the pronoun before it, swoją, takes the exact same ending.
Could I use jej instead of swoją since the English translation says "her relative"?
You could, but it would completely change the meaning! Polish uses the reflexive possessive pronoun swój (and its forms like swoją) to mean "one's own" when the owner is the subject of the sentence. If you said z jej krewną, it would mean the fiancée lives with some other woman's relative.
Why is the word for "with" spelled ze here instead of just z?
The preposition z adds an -e to make pronunciation easier when the following word starts with certain tricky consonant clusters. Since swoją starts with s followed by another consonant (w), we must use ze to prevent it from becoming a tongue twister.
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