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Gender in Polish: masculine, feminine, neuter
Every Polish noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, and almost every other word in the sentence has to agree with it. The good news is that you can usually see which one it is without knowing what the word means — the ending tells you.
The rule, in one table
Look at the last letter of the noun in its dictionary form. A consonant means masculine, -a means feminine, -o or -e means neuter. That single check is right for the large majority of nouns you will meet in your first months.
| Gender | Ends in | Example | 'this' |
|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | a consonant | dom, kot, stół | ten |
| feminine | -a | kobieta, szkoła, woda | ta |
| neuter | -o, -e | okno, morze, dziecko | to |
Everything else follows the noun
Gender is not decoration. It decides the form of the adjective, of 'this', of 'my', and of the past tense verb. Get the noun's gender right and the rest of the sentence falls into place; get it wrong and every agreeing word is wrong with it.
ten duży dom
this big house — masculine throughout
ta duża szkoła
this big school — feminine throughout
to duże okno
this big window — neuter throughout
The exceptions worth knowing now
Two groups break the ending rule, and both are common enough to meet in week one. Men whose job or role ends in -a are still masculine — mężczyzna, kolega, dentysta — because what they mean outranks how they end. And a handful of everyday words simply have to be learned: noc and sól end in a consonant but are feminine.
If your first language is Ukrainian or Russian, resist the urge to copy the gender across. It matches often, and then it does not: Polish 'ten pies' is masculine like Ukrainian «пес», but Polish 'ta pomarańcza' is feminine where the Russian «апельсин» is masculine.
ten mężczyzna
this man — ends in -a, still masculine
ta noc
this night — ends in a consonant, still feminine
Mistakes people make
ten kobieta → ta kobieta
Kobieta ends in -a, so it is feminine and takes ta. The ending is the signal — read it before choosing ten/ta/to.
ta mężczyzna → ten mężczyzna
The -a is misleading here. A word that means a man is masculine whatever it ends in.
Check yourself
ten, ta or to — ___ okno?
Okno ends in -o: neuter.
ten, ta or to — ___ szkoła?
Szkoła ends in -a: feminine.
ten, ta or to — ___ kolega?
A trap: kolega means a male friend, so it is masculine despite the -a.
Turn this into something you can actually say.
Practise this in FreeTalk →Free to start. No card needed.
Questions people ask
Does Polish have the same genders as Russian and Ukrainian?
The three genders are the same idea, and individual words agree surprisingly often — but often enough is not always, and Polish adds a further split in the plural between 'men' and 'everything else'. Learn the gender with the word rather than translating it across.
Do I have to learn the gender of every noun?
No. Learn the ending rule, and then learn the gender only of the words that break it — there are not many, and they are common, so you meet them early and remember them by use.