Polish Past Tense

To form the Polish past tense, drop the -ć from the infinitive, add -ł, -ła, -ło, -li or -ły for gender and number, then add a short person ending: byłem, byłaś, byliśmy. There is only one past tense, and aspect shows whether an action was finished.

One past tense for everything

Polish has a single past tense. The same form can mean “I did”, “I was doing”, “I have done” or “I used to do”. Verb aspect (imperfective or perfective) and the context do the work that English does with different tenses.

Unlike the present tense, the past tense shows gender. A man says byłem (I was), a woman says byłam. When you speak to someone, the ty form matches their gender: byłeś to a man, byłaś to a woman.

• Byłem wczoraj w kinie.
  I was at the cinema yesterday. (a man speaking)
• Byłam wczoraj w kinie.
  I was at the cinema yesterday. (a woman speaking)
• Widziałeś ten film?
  Have you seen this film? (to a man)
• Gdzie pani pracowała?
  Where did you work? (formal, to a woman)

How to build it

Almost every verb builds its past tense from the infinitive in four steps.

1. Take the infinitive: robić (to do).
2. Drop the -ć: robi-.
3. Add -ł (masculine), -ła (feminine), -ło (neuter), -li (plural with a man) or -ły (other plural).
4. Add the person ending: -m or -em for “I”, -ś or -eś for “you”, -śmy for “we”, -ście for “you all”, and nothing for “he, she, it, they”.

Put together, every regular verb gets these endings:

The letter ł sounds like English “w”, so robił sounds like RO-beew and robiła like ro-BEE-wah. The l in -li is a normal “l”.

Full tables: robić, być, mieć

robić (to do, to make)

być (to be)

być is irregular in the present (jestem), but its past tense is perfectly regular.

mieć (to have)

Look at mieli: the a turns into e in the forms with -li. The same happens in most verbs ending in -eć.

• Nie miałem czasu.
  I didn’t have time.
• Musieliśmy wcześnie wstać.
  We had to get up early.
• Chciałam ci to powiedzieć.
  I wanted to tell you that. (a woman speaking)

Virile and non-virile plural

Polish has two forms for “they” in the past. The virile form (-li, pronoun oni) is used for any group with at least one man in it: men only, or men and women together. The non-virile form (-ły, pronoun one) is for everything else: groups of women, children, animals and things.

• Marek i Anna byli w Gdańsku.
  Marek and Anna were in Gdańsk.
• Anna i Ewa były w Gdańsku.
  Anna and Ewa were in Gdańsk.
• Dzieci spały.
  The children were asleep.
• Psy szczekały całą noc.
  The dogs barked all night.
• Książki leżały na stole.
  The books were on the table.

The same rule applies to my and wy. A group of women says byłyśmy (we were). As soon as one man is in the group, it becomes byliśmy. Reflexive verbs work the same way, with się added: Spotkaliśmy się w parku. (We met in the park.)

Common irregular past forms

Most verbs follow the four steps above. The irregular ones usually have an infinitive ending in -ść, -źć, -c or -ąć. The most important one is iść (to go on foot):

jeść (to eat) gives jadłem, jadła, but jedli in the virile plural. móc (can) gives mógł with ó only in the bare “he” form; everywhere else it is o: mogłem, mogła, mogli. By contrast, jechać is regular: jechałem, jechała.

Aspect in the past

Most Polish verbs come in pairs: an imperfective verb for a process or a habit, and a perfective verb for a finished action with a result. In the past tense this choice replaces the English difference between “was doing” and “did” or “have done”.

• Imperfective past: an action in progress, a background, a repeated action or a habit. “I was reading”, “I used to read”, “I read every day”.
• Perfective past: one complete action, usually with a result. “I read it (to the end)”, “I have finished it”.

• Wczoraj czytałem książkę.
  Yesterday I was reading a book. (we don’t know if I finished it)
• Wczoraj przeczytałem całą książkę.
  Yesterday I read the whole book.
• Kiedy jadłam obiad, zadzwonił telefon.
  While I was having lunch, the phone rang.
• Codziennie chodziliśmy na plażę.
  We went to the beach every day.
• Zrobiłeś już zakupy?
  Have you done the shopping yet?

The moving ending in casual speech

The person endings -m, -ś, -śmy and -ście can leave the verb and attach to an earlier word, usually a question word or a pronoun. This is common in casual spoken Polish:

• Coś ty zrobił?
  What have you done? (= Co ty zrobiłeś?)
• Gdzieście byli?
  Where were you? (= Gdzie byliście?)
• Myśmy nic nie wiedzieli.
  We didn’t know anything. (= My nic nie wiedzieliśmy.)

You only need to recognise this. Use the standard forms yourself, with the ending on the verb. Be careful with coś, which also means “something”, so context tells you which one you are hearing.

The same past form is also the base for the polite “would”. Add -bym to the “he” or “she” form: chciałbym (I would like, a man speaking), chciałabym (a woman speaking). Chciałbym kawę. means “I’d like a coffee.”