# Od paru dni



## jazyk

Dzień dobry,

w internecie jest wiele przykładów _od paru dni_. Ale nie jest dopełniacz słowa _para pary_ lub jest coś, czego nie rozumiem?


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## dn88

I don't know if I understood your question but "paru" comes from the word "parę", not "para" ("parę" = "kilka"). Hope that helps.


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## jazyk

Dowiedziałem się, że _parę_ się nie odmienia jak _para. Parę, paru, paroma. _Zawsze myślałem, że _parę_ to biernik słowa _para_.
Dziękuję za pomoc.


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## Ben Jamin

dn88 said:


> I don't know if I understood your question but "paru" comes from the word "parę", not "para" ("parę" = "kilka"). Hope that helps.


There is no noun in Polish with the nominative form *parę*. It is the accusative form of *para*. The reason of the form "od paru dni" is that there has happened a contamination from the expression "od kilku dni", with the plural ending -u. Grammatically correct would be "od pary dni", but nobody speaks so nowadays. "Od paru dni" is a colloquial expression, not to be used in formal written language. In this register "od kilku dni" is used.


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## dn88

Ben Jamin said:


> There is no noun in Polish with the nominative form *parę*. It is the accusative form of *para*. The reason of the form "od paru dni" is that there has happened a contamination from the expression "od kilku dni", with the plural ending -u. Grammatically correct would be "od pary dni", but nobody speaks so nowadays. "Od paru dni" is a colloquial expression, not to be used in formal written language. In this register "od kilku dni" is used.



I don't know the origin of the form "parę", all I can say is that it has a pretty informal feel to it. Formality aside, it means the exact same thing as "kilka" (which acts as a pronoun). My point is that "parę" can be taken as the basic form from which "paru" is derived. I probably should have worded my thoughts differently.


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## Ben Jamin

dn88 said:


> I don't know the origin of the form "parę", all I can say is that it has a pretty informal feel to it. Formality aside, it means the exact same thing as "kilka" (which acts as a pronoun). My point is that "parę" can be taken as the basic form from which "paru" is derived. I probably should have worded my thoughts differently.


 I understand how you feel about this, but parę is not the basic form, sorry. The basic (nominative) form "para dni", however, is not used at all, as the two words occur jointly only in idioms (fossilized expressions). Actually, the expression "od paru dni" uses a genetive form of a non existent adjective "par*" meaning "few".


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## kknd

Are you completely sure that "para dni" is nominative form? (By the way: where can one read about that?) It would probably mean that there exists also "kilk dni", wouldn't it? Isn't it that _kilka_/_parę_ and _od kilku_/_od paru_ are used in genitive in the same way we use _nie ma_ with genitive? Would you elaborate on this little bit more, please? It's seems to be quite an interesting topic to me, thanks in advance!


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## gegopo

Dlaczego piszecie po angielsku??


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## Ben Jamin

kknd said:


> Are you completely sure that "para dni" is nominative form? (By the way: where can one read about that?) It would probably mean that there exists also "kilk dni", wouldn't it? Isn't it that _kilka_/_parę_ and _od kilku_/_od paru_ are used in genitive in the same way we use _nie ma_ with genitive? Would you elaborate on this little bit more, please? It's seems to be quite an interesting topic to me, thanks in advance!


 Yes, I am sure. You can read about it in any good grammar book. The dictionaries always give you the nominative form.
There does not exist a word "kilk". The word kilka is an adjective of the same sort as "wiele". 
No, "od kilku dni" has nothing to do with negation. It is just so that the prepostion "od" requires the use of a noun in genitive, like "od domu do sklepu".


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## dn88

Ben Jamin said:


> Yes, I am sure. You can read about it in any good grammar book. The dictionaries always give you the nominative form.
> There does not exist a word "kilk". The word kilka is an adjective of the same sort as "wiele".
> No, "od kilku dni" has nothing to do with negation. It is just so that the prepostion "od" requires the use of a noun in genitive, like "od domu do sklepu".



The reason why it seems strange to me is that "para" is used in reference only to two things or items. And "parę", as well as "kilku", can refer to three, four, five or even more - up to ten.


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## Ben Jamin

gegopo said:


> Dlaczego piszecie po angielsku??


 Ponieważ wątek został zapoczątkowany zapytaniem po angielsku.


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## Ben Jamin

dn88 said:


> The reason why it seems strange to me is that "para" is used in reference only to two things or items. And "parę", as well as "kilku", can refer to three, four, five or even more - up to ten.


 
This is an example of "semantic gliding", that is the original word gets the meaning extended to mean also something else than the original meaning of the word. It is correctly observed that "para" means a couple (two items), but in idioms like "parę dni" the meaning is made more vague and extended to mean "a few". The same happended to the English expression "a couple of days" and Norwegian "et par dager", and perhaps also in other languages. But it is important to mark that this shift of meaning only concerns the whole idiom "parę dni" (in accusative), not the word used in other contexts. As said before, there is no idiom "para dni" with the word in nominative (minęła para dni). The idiom "parę dni" can also function as a false nominative "minęło parę dni", but this is only one of the inconsistencies of the language. And the expression is strongly informal, not to be used in formal writing.


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## BezierCurve

> Ponieważ wątek został zapoczątkowany zapytaniem po angielsku.


 
Jazyk jest jedną z kilku (paru) osób, które starają się wykorzystywać każdą okazję do nauki języka, również pisanie wypowiedzi na forum.


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