# grudzień-grudniu



## gvergara

Hi,

I am starting to learn the dates in Polish, and it surprised me to realize that the locative case of _grudzień _"loses" its already soft consontant when you say in December (= _w grudniu_). In this excellent online grammar reference/course they talk about some "common irregularities" that Polish names undergo when declined, one of which is the elimination of ie, which in this case would result in grudzu . Is there an explanation for this? Do particular letter combinations bahave differently when ie is removoed?, Or is this just an exception?

Thanks in advance,

G.


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## zaffy

gvergara said:


> in grudzu


You say "grudniu"


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## anthox

"Grudzu" doesn't arise here, because you have to think of "dzi" as one 'unit' which might also be written dź in other contexts (compare ludzie/ludzi -> ludźmi). Since this is effectively a 'softened' (palatalized) 'd' sound, when the 'e' is dropped, we are left with a 'hard' d sound. The palatal ń gets moved forward, and is written "ni" due to orthographic convention since it's before a vowel ("ń" and "ni" are effectively the same sound in most instances, except perhaps word-finally), then the locative ending -_u_ is appended. Hence, _grudniu_. 

This same process can be seen in _dzień _(day) the locative singular being_ dniu. _An even stranger case is _tydzień_ (week), which dictionaries say derives somehow from _"ten dzień_", but at some point a _-go- _infix crept in among the other case forms, so we have _tygodniu _as the locative singular form, instead of _*tydniu_.

This sound shift is pretty common, affecting quite a few words ending in_-ień_: _pień -> pniu, sierpień -> sierpniu, stopień -> stopniu. _We might say then that this reflects a pattern and not an exception. However, there _are_ quite a few words ending in -_ień_ that don't follow this pattern: _cień -> cieniu _(not_ *tniu, '_hardened'_ ci- _producing _'t-'_)_, strumień -> strumieniu _(not *_strumniu_), _kamień_ -> _kamieniu_, and even some that don't take -u in locative, such as _jesień -> jesieni._

Due to all of this, as a longtime learner, I've come to stop really worrying about what's irregular vs. what's part of a rule, and mainly end up internalizing the forms on a word-for-word basis. It's nice when you look up a word and can say, "Ah, I know that pattern, it's predictable enough", but so many paradigms and exceptions seem to exist that it can feel overwhelming to always try to fit a given word into one.


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## gvergara

Hi,

Thanks for the kind answer.



anthox said:


> when the 'e' is dropped, we are left with a 'hard' d sound.


I still fail to see what hard sound is gotten after the _e_ in _grudzień _has been dropped  _dzi _and its "equvalent" sound _dź _are soft sounds...



anthox said:


> I've come to stop really worrying about what's irregular vs. what's part of a rule


Sure, and I am quite sure that at some point I will stop caring about (at least some of) these things, but since I am a beginner learner, I am still trying to figure out how things work in the Polish language, until one day I hope I have developed my own criteria to decide when I should really worry about specific things, and what things I can dismiss.


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## Ben Jamin

Grudzień can't  become grudzu because it can't lose the en ending. The original form of the word was gruden, grudenia, grudeniu. The three syllable forms lost the penultimate e and got the form grudnia, grudniu. The nominative form consististing of only two syllables couldnt lose the e because it would result in an uneuphonic cluster dn at the end of the word. Gruden then became grudień in the first palatalization step, and later the d' was subject to a second palatalization step becoming dź. The other forms avoided palatalization because of the lack of e.
Tydzień is another example of phonem elision, and there is nothing strange in it. Its quite regular. The original form was ten den, tego dena, tym denem, and so on. The different declension forms underwent separate and different processes of palatalization vowel change, and elision, and got the forms ty'dzień, tygodnia. Tygodniem should actually become tymdniem, but at some point the root of the word was mistakenly changed to tyg-. A little complicated, but quite understandable.


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## Panceltic

To add to what others have said, if you go back to Proto-Slavic, it all becomes very apparent. Let’s look at the nominative and genitive for example:

Nominative: *grudьńь*, Genitive: *grudьńa*

ь (and ъ) were ultra-short vowels which disappeared during the formation of Slavic languages from Proto-Slavic, but left traces on surrounding sounds like palatalisation, or sometimes they developed into full vowels if there was nothing else around. Generally, an ultra-short vowel at the end of the word just vanished, so we get this: *grudьń*, *grudьńa*.

Next, ь also disappears where it is not absolutely needed for an easy pronunciation, so genitive becomes *grudńa*.

In the nominative, however, ь develops into e (because »_grudń_« would be hard to pronounce [_keep in mind that we are talking about the situation 1000 years ago here, this doesn’t mean that nowadays this word technically couldn’t exist_]). This sound (being a front vowel) also causes palatalisation of the preceding d into dź. So we get *grudźeń*.

It is then a matter of Polish orthography to spell these two words as _grudzień_ and _grudnia_.

The same thing with _dzień - dnia_, _kwiecień - kwietnia_, _lipiec - lipca_ (a bit less apparent here because a palatalised _p_ didn’t become a different sound like for example t > ć in _kwiecień_).


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## anthox

> I still fail to see what hard sound is gotten after the _e_ in _grudzień _has been dropped  _dzi _and its "equvalent" sound _dź _are soft sounds...


I said it right there, a hard 'd' sound - _gru*dzi*eń -> gru*d*niu. _Posts five and six give some good historical background as to why this is. For whatever reason, palatalized 'd' in Polish becomes _dź/dzi _instead of _die- _or _dj-. _You can observe this in the locative singular of feminine nouns ending in -_da_, for example _bryga*d*a _becomes _bryga_*dzi*_e. _



> Sure, and I am quite sure that at some point I will stop caring about (at least some of) these things, but since I am a beginner learner, I am still trying to figure out how things work in the Polish language, until one day I hope I have developed my own criteria to decide when I should really worry about specific things, and what things I can dismiss.


Right, you do not need to justify yourself. I'm not telling you what to do. It's certainly useful, even necessary, to get a grasp of the basic declension patterns as a beginner. I'm just sharing a perspective I've arrived at after many years of study.


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## wyrzyk

Morphologically *grudźniu would be logical, but the problem is that Polish phonology simply does not allow some consonant clusters like ć/dź/rz + n/ń/ł/l/r/rz, so we get 

kwiecień-kwietniu instead of *kwiećniu, 
grudzień-grudniu instead of *grudźniu, 
dzień-dni instead of *dźni, 
godzien-godny instead of *godźny, 
kocioł-kotły instead of *koćły, 
okrucieństwo-okrutny instead *okrućny, 
wycinam-wytnę instead of *wyćnę, 
wycieram-wytrę instead of *wyćrę, 
wydzieram-wydrę instead of *wydźrę, 
orzeł-orły instead of *orzły… 

Although „rzn” does exist in place names like Jaworzno, but not in ordinary words as in wierny instead of *wierzny, this is one thing I’ve been wondering about.


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## jasio

anthox said:


> The palatal ń gets moved forward, and is written "ni" due to orthographic convention since it's before a vowel ("ń" and "ni" are effectively the same sound in most instances, except perhaps word-finally)


The letter "I" serves three purposes in the polish language:

A vowel similar to "ee" as in "deed" in English
Marks softeness (palatalisation) of a preceding consonant before a vowel - like in "konia" (palatalisation of a consonant before another consonant is marked with an 'accent' mark over the consonant - koński
Both of the above before a consonant or at the word-end position (koni). This works even if the next word begins with a vowel - so in "koni albo słoni" the i sound is clearly audible - and it does NOT sound like "konia", where there is NO iotation whatsoever (pronounced like [końa])
In some cases you may disregard the palatalisation. If the consonant does not have its soft variant marked in writing (b, p, m, k g, t, d, f, h/ch, l, r, w), post poles are even unaware that they pronunce them differently before i/ie and before other vowels.

Also by convention "z" serves different purposes. Most of the cases it denotes a voiced version of "s", but after certain consonant letters (d, s, c, r - from the top of my head) it changes the consonant value instead, and is not pronounced separately. The same applies for ż and ź - albeit only after d if I remember well.


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## jasio

Panceltic said:


> Nominative: *grudьńь*, Genitive: *grudьńa*
> 
> ь (and ъ) were ultra-short vowels which disappeared during the formation of Slavic languages from Proto-Slavic, but left traces on surrounding sounds like palatalisation, or sometimes they developed into full vowels if there was nothing else around. Generally, an ultra-short vowel at the end of the word just vanished, so we get this: *grudьń*, *grudьńa*.
> 
> Next, ь also disappears where it is not absolutely needed for an easy pronunciation, so genitive becomes *grudńa*.


Actually, if we go as far as proto Slavic, there was no "next". 
The rhythm of the language is pretty conservative, so if the yer (semivowel) disappeared (such as from the word end), the preceding yer was prolonged to maintain the rhythm, and thus was converted to a full vowel. This process underwent gradually, but in one phase - and is responsible for quite a number of features of the modern polish, including disappearing vowels, switching between ą and ę, and more. 

Never the less, i think that from a language learner perspective it's a fun fact - I'm not sure if it can help memorize the correct forms.


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> In some cases you may disregard the palatalisation. If the consonant does not have its soft variant marked in writing (b, p, m, k g, t, d, f, h/ch, l, r, w), post poles are even unaware that they pronunce them differently before i/ie and before other vowels.


I don't quite grasp the meaning of this paragraph. Could you give some examples?


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> Both of the above before a consonant or at the word-end position (koni). This works even if the next word begins with a vowel - so in "koni albo słoni" the i sound is clearly audible - and it does NOT sound like "konia", where there is NO iotation whatsoever (pronounced like [końa])


For some more information to our non native Polish speakers: The combination of letters n + i+(vowel optionally) has two different ways of pronunciation, depending on the origin of the word:
Group 1, consisting of inherited Slavic words, or old loans from other languages:
The pronunciation follows the rules in #9
Group 2, consisting of newer loans form non Slavic languages has following pronunciation:
mania *kinds of insanity)- mańja (j has here the Polish phonetic value) 
also Hiszpania, Dania follow this phonetical pattern.


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