The 7 Polish cases

Polish nouns, adjectives and pronouns change their endings depending on their role in the sentence. There are seven cases — here they all are in one place.

A case is a grammatical form that shows what a word does in a sentence: who acts, whom the action affects, whose something is, and so on. Each case answers its own question.

The cases and their questions

Case · question · role
Case	Question	Typical role
Nominative	kto? co?	the subject
Genitive	kogo? czego?	possession, negation
Dative	komu? czemu?	the recipient
Accusative	kogo? co?	the direct object
Instrumental	kim? czym?	means, company
Locative	o kim? o czym?	location, topic (after prepositions)
Vocative	o!	addressing someone

Example: declension of „kot” (cat)

kot — masculine noun
Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	kot	koty
Genitive	kota	kotów
Dative	kotu	kotom
Accusative	kota	koty
Instrumental	kotem	kotami
Locative	kocie	kotach
Vocative	kocie	koty

⚠ Note

Tip: the case is usually forced by the verb or a preposition. Learn frequent verbs and prepositions together with the case they require.