nie ma

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See also: niema, and niemą

Polish

Alternative forms

Etymology

Clipping of nie masz.[1] First attested in the first half of the 20th century. Displaced Old Polish nietu.

Pronunciation

Phrase

nie ma (past nie było, future nie będzie)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see nie,‎ ma.
    On nie ma czasu.He doesn't have time.
  2. (idiomatic) to be gone, to not be present, to not exist, there is no
    Nie ma chleba.There is no bread.
    Nie ma mowy!No way! (literally, “There is no speech!”)
    Nigdy nikogo nie ma w domu.Never is there anyone home.

Usage notes

(1): is entirely regular.

(2): is only irregular in the present tense, all other forms are a combination of nie and być (appropriately conjugated), as follows: there wasn't → nie było; there won't be → nie będzie; there wouldn't be → nie byłoby.

Derived terms

phrases

Trivia

According to Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej (1990), nie ma is one of the most used words in Polish, appearing 33 times in scientific texts, 4 times in news, 35 times in essays, 80 times in fiction, and 152 times in plays, each out of a corpus of 100,000 words, totaling 304 times, making it the 166th most common word in a corpus of 500,000 words.[2]

References

  1. ^ Bańkowski, Andrzej (2000) “nie ma”, in Etymologiczny słownik języka polskiego (in Polish)
  2. ^ Ida Kurcz (1990) “nie ma”, in Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej (in Polish), volume 1, Kraków, Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Języka Polskiego, page 280

Further reading

  • nie ma in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
  • nie ma in Polish dictionaries at PWN