Który dziś jest? (What’s the date today?) – the question seems fairly easy, however... Well, we all know that appearances can be deceiving. Then, how to answer that question correctly? Do we say: dziś jest piętnasty stycznia (15th January), or perhaps piętnastego stycznia? When do we say dwa tysiące piętnasty, and when dwa tysiące piętnastego?
Foreigners often ask those questions in Polish lessons when they learn how to read the dates correctly.
To make things harder, native speakers of Polish themselves make mistakes, too, which doesn’t help at all.
WHICH DAY OF THE MONTH IS IT?
So, how to say the dates in Polish correctly?
When asked: Który dziś jest? we should answer: Jest piętnasty stycznia dwa tysiące piętnastego roku (It’s 15th January 2015).
Forms such as piętnasty styczeń we should avoid like the plague, since they are not only wrong, but also simply absurd. If we make an effort to figure out their meaning, we should grab a calendar and check how many months of the year called styczeń there are. The form piętnasty styczeń means the fifteenth January (as if there were many months called January and we are referring to the fifteenth of them), not the fifteenth OF January. It’s the form we use when we say piętnaste piętro (the fifteenth floor), or drugi zawodnik (the second competitor). Therefore, when reading the date 15/01 we should put the name of the month in the genitive case and say piętnasty STYCZNIA. That means we have in mind piętnasty dzień stycznia (the fifteenth day of January), not the fifteenth month called styczeń. That is both gramatically and logically correct.
If someone asks us when we could meet, then we can answer: piętnastego stycznia dwa tysiące piętnastego roku (on 15th January 2015).
WHAT CAN WE SAY IN POLISH ONCE IN A THOUSAND YEARS?
And what if we want to say what year it is? Let’s simply not forget that the Polish language loves declension and use it. Say: jest rok dwa tysiące piętnasty (it’s the year 2015), but w roku dwa tysiące piętnastym rozpoczynają się nowe kursy języka polskiego w Po Polsku (in 2015 new Polish courses start at Po Polsku), in which case we have to use the locative.
We should also mention rok dwutysięczny (the year 2000). This form we can use once in a thousand years. There was rok tysięczny (the year 1000), there was rok dwutysięczny (2000) and there will be trzechtysięczny (3000). But NEVER EVER SAY dwutysięczny pierwszy. That’s a terrible mistake. Remember that the year 2001 one we read: dwa tysiące pierwszy (thousands and hundreds are used in the form of cardinal numbers and tens and units take the ordinal form).
We wish all our readers interesting Polish lessons (not only of Polish as a foreign language) w dwa tysiące piętnastym roku!
