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Lesson Transcript

Cześć! Jestem Joanna. Hi! I’m Joanna.
Welcome to PolishPod101.com’s “Polski w 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Polish.
This is the second part of our lesson on the verb być, which is "to be".
This verb is also used to talk about location, to say things like "I am in the street" or "He is in the room", so it's very useful!
When you want to know where something or someone is, you use the verb być in Polish.
For example, when someone asks you on the phone Gdzie jesteś? That means "Where are you?"
Let's break it down.
gdzie means "where"
jesteś is "are.” This is być conjugated for “you”. But of course, as you already know, we skip the pronoun “you”.
All together it’s Gdzie jesteś?
[slowly] Gdzie jesteś ?
Answering this question is very easy! You just say Jestem followed by the name of the place.
So for example, you can say Jestem w sklepie. which is "I am in a shop"
[slowly] Jestem w sklepie.
Now let’s see a few other possible answers with I:
"I am at the office" would be Jestem w biurze.
"I am in the park" would be Jestem w parku.
"I am on the bus" would be Jestem w autobusie.
The verb być changes a lot depending on the pronoun it’s pointing to and its tense. Let’s do a review for the present tense.
I am - ja jestem
you are -ty jesteś
he is - on jest
she is - ona jest
it is - to / ono jest
we are - my jesteśmy
you are - wy jesteście
they are - oni są
In examples I just told you, the first word is a pronoun. Please remember that in Polish we usually skip the pronoun.
Now it’s time for Joanna’s insights.
Let’s review what we learned today.
To ask “where are you” in Polish, you would say Gdzie jesteś?. To answer this question we say Jestem w.. and then the name of the place you’re currently in.
There are a few special locations which require the word na instead of w.
For example:
Jestem na poczcie - I’m at the post office
Jestem na targu - I’m at the market
Jestem na wycieczce - I’m on the trip
Jestem na wsi - I’m in the country
Jestem na zajęciach - I’m in the class
Jestem na uczelni - I’m at the university
In this lesson we learned how to talk about your location thanks to verb być. Next time we’ll learn how to talk about ages using the verb mieć, which is "to have" in Polish. So do you want to know how to ask somebody’s age? Let’s learn this together in next Polski w 3 minuty lesson. Do zobaczenia!

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