Hi,
I hate to post such a basic question, but seeing as I am having a much better time with the much dreaded declensions than Polish verbs (thanks to my experience with German), I think it's time to look for help. I have to be honest, I don't get the aspectual pairs or how to determine which verb is a pair to which other verb. As I understand it, Polish has three tenses: Present, Past and Future. There is also the Imperative. Polish doesn't have compound tenses like English. There are various classes of conjugation only for the present tense. I think the past tense is broken into three sets of conjugation based on gender, likewise Future. I get the infinitives. That's all I know. I don't know about participles, gerunds etc. I think having a big picture view of the entire verb system will help me a lot. As mentioned earlier, verb aspect is something I don't get. What would the composite verb mean? I have some verbs I am looking at from Duolingo which do not turn up anywhere. Here are a few examples:
cieszyć się (to enjoy)
bawić się (to play/toy)
dziać się (to happen)
śpieszyć się (to hurry)
zaczynać się (to start/begin)
When I look up the first word in the listed verb I get a different meaning. For instance, cieszyć means 'to rejoice'. Why is się there in all of these verbs? Is this to do with aspect?
Again, I appreciate that these are exceedingly basic questions. Certain things are clicking quicker than others, and when they don't I find myself completely bamboozled. Polish is certainly a lot of work, one that I do enjoy. Any help greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.
do widzenia