Polish Language Resources

How you learn is a personal thing and what might be right for me might not be right for you. Here I'll run down how I am learning Polish and the resources I use.

Online Translators

I find online translators aren't that reliable, especially with longer sentences or in spotting genders. As such I have a whole bank of them to compare and contrast.

• Google Translate - Quite reliable and don't forget you can click the speaker icon below the translation to hear the translation spoken.
• ReversoContext - Not sure if Google got it right? Try searching the phrase here and see if this search engine shows you the phrase in use.
• Google Poland - Want to see if a phrase is really correct. Search the phrase in quotes to see if it appears on any websites. e.g. "Dobry wieczór" (quotes included).
• Glosbe - Another useful translator when you are seeking a second opinion on Google's efforts!
• Systran - Yet another useful translator, you really can't get enough of them when you want to double and triple check!

Anki

Anki flash cards are a great way to brainwash language into you through sheer repetition over time. I started by using the Polish-English deck and filtering out the d2, d3 and d4 cards as explained on the linked page.

I'm going to make my own Anki deck for this course soon ... watch this space!

Duolingo

I'm going to mention it but not fully recommend it. The person or team who created the course on DuoLingo were grammar geeks. If you love grammar and learning how a language works before you learn the language then it may be for you. It wasn't for me!

However what it does have is a very good forum where you can go for advice or clarity.

Tokfm

You can find this talk radio station online at Tok FM. Its one of those radio stations where people call in because they think they know how to put right all the wrongs.

As a beginner it will be too hard but when you start getting more comfortable with the language give it a go. Even if you start by trying to pick out occassional phrases because they are repeated (like "Good evening", "thank you for your call", etc.) this all helps embed the vocabularly in your head and train your ear to the way words are pronounced!

You'll also find the advertisements easier to understand because they are usually simple messages about discounts, sales, promotions, etc.

Radio Eska

This radio station (is popular with teens and in rural areas which means they use very simple language, especially in the adverts. The only question is can you make it through the boppy music in order to get to the ads!

Grammar

Love it or hate it you'll need to get your head around some grammar. I never even studied English grammar so this was a major barrier in my mind but far less so in reality when I put my mind to it.

The following two pages will prove very useful after about Lesson 15 on this course - in other words when you are starting to get used to 'cases

• Course of Polish - This summarises verb endings in 6 really handy tables so when you spot a verb with a strange ending you can just come here to look up the case and then ponder ... Why!
• Clozemaster Blog - You'll need to scroll, scroll, scroll but right down at the bottom there is a really useful table on how to end adjectives depending on the case being used.

Expectations

You have to provide this one. Expect it to take you at least a couple of years to start understanding Polish in its written form. Yes you can be more hard core if you have the time and shorten that period but I just kind of accepted I needed to plod along and do a little every day. Always Anki Cards, occassionally Duolingo but mostly flipping back what I learnt into this course!