Breakdown of Wzięto kredyt w obcej walucie.
w
in / on (a day)
wziąć
to take (perf.)
obcy
stranger / foreign
waluta
currency
Questions & Answers about Wzięto kredyt w obcej walucie.
Why does the verb wziąć (to take) end in -to here (wzięto) instead of a normal past tense ending?
This is the impersonal past tense, which your current lesson is focusing on! It's used to say that an action happened without specifying who did it. While many verbs use the -no ending (like zbudowano), verbs whose past participle ends in -ty (like wzięty - taken) use the -to suffix instead. The result is wzięto.
Because the English translation is passive ("A loan was taken"), is kredyt the subject of the sentence in the nominative case?
No, and this is a very common trap! The Polish -no / -to form is impersonal, not a true passive voice. Think of it literally as "An unspecified 'they' took out a loan." Because of this, the verb still acts on an object. Therefore, kredyt is actually the direct object in the accusative case (which just happens to look identical to the nominative case for inanimate masculine nouns).
Why does waluta (currency) change to walucie here?
The preposition w (in) requires the locative case when describing a state or position rather than motion. When putting feminine nouns ending in -ta into the locative case, the t softens to a c. Therefore, the dictionary form waluta becomes walucie.
Why is the adjective obca (foreign) written as obcej?