# Warszawa, w okolicach Warszawy, okolice Warszawy



## delicja

Help me!! Are there any rules as to declination of cities so far it seriousely looks to me as there arent but I really hope there are as it will save me hours of work!!!

So for example

Warszawa, okolice Warszaw-y
Bedzin, okolice Bedzin-a
Katowice, okolice Katowic
Krakow, okolice Krakow-a
Sosnowiec, okolice Sosnowc-a

I dont see any patterns you cant say that if city ends with n it always will be adding an "a", or if it ends in "e" the e will be removed... 

Does anyone has any ideas if there are any rules?


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## robin74

It's the same as with any other noun. It depends on the grammatical gender of a word.


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## delicja

can you give me some more examples


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## robin74

I'm not sure what it is you're asking for.

Female nouns - Warszawa, Częstochowa, Dąbrowa, Rawa, Ostrołęka - they decline like female nouns, with a genitive ending in -y (Warszawy, Dąbrowy, Rawy) or -i (Ostrołęki)
Male nouns - Olsztyn, Szczecin, Gdańsk, Słupsk, Chełm, Lublin, Rzeszów, Gorzów, Stok, - decline like male nouns, with genitive ending in -a (Olsztyna, Szczecina, Gdańska) or -u (Stoku)
Neuter nouns - Krosno, Sławno, Opole, Obrzycko - genitive ending in -a (Krosna, Opola)
Some names are adjectival and decline like adjectives (Biała, Czarna)
Some are in a plural form (Kielce, Katowice) and so decline like plural nouns.


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## BezierCurve

I'm only guessing, but if you're looking for a way to display those genitive forms automatically on that website, then I'm afraid it'd take a lot of effort and you'd practically have to implement a database of towns with appropriate endings to make sure it's always 100% correct. The easiest way around it would be something like:

"Warszawa i okolice" (including the city)
 or
"Warszawa - okolice" / "Okolice miasta Warszawa" (if you want to emphasize it's more about the area around it than about the city itself. No need to change a thing).


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## delicja

I see how it declinates by gender but if you have a report with 500 locations and you want to set up a some sort of rule for example "every city that ends with " a" if associated with okolice then the "a" is dropped and replaced by "y". I cant go by gender b/c the people that will work on it will not be able to tell(since they dont speak polish) if warszawa is female or not but they will be able to see if it ends with an "a" etc. Do you think there is a work around it like that?


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## NotNow

delicja said:


> I see how it declinates by gender but if you have a report with 500 locations and you want to set up a some sort of rule for example "every city that ends with " a" if associated with okolice then the "a" is dropped and replaced by "y". I cant go by gender b/c the people that will work on it will not be able to tell(since they dont speak polish) if warszawa is female or not but they will be able to see if it ends with an "a" etc. Do you think there is a work around it like that?


 
No, because place names that end with an "a" can be singular, like Warszawa, or plural, like Gumniska.

There's no way to decline a place name without a fairly good command of the language.


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## robin74

delicja said:


> I cant go by gender b/c the people that will work on it will not be able to tell(since they dont speak polish) if warszawa is female or not but they will be able to see if it ends with an "a" etc. Do you think there is a work around it like that?


A fail-proof way? Certainly not. There are some places which can be either male or female (Ostrów - Ostrowa or Ostrów - Ostrowi). There are compound nouns which decline like normal expressions (Białystok - Białegostoku). Some names ending in a soft consonant are female (Bydgoszcz) and some are male (Pruszcz). Some names ending in -e are neuter and some are plural. Most names ending in -a are female, but some decline like nouns and take -y or -i ending and some like adjectives and take -ej ending.
People who work on this must have enough expertise in language to be able to recognize the gender of a name. Other than that the only way is to consult a dictionary for a genitive form.


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## Ben Jamin

This is Polish forum, not English, but one should use correct English terms.
In English there is 'masculine gender' and 'femine gender" of nouns, not 'male' and 'female' nouns.


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## Rusak963

Ben Jamin said:


> This is *a *Polish forum, not English, but one should use correct English terms.
> In English there is 'masculine gender' and 'femi*ni*ne gender" of nouns, not 'male' and 'female' nouns.


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## Ben Jamin

Rusak963 said:


>


 Thank you for correction, I did not proofread the post well enough.


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