r/learnpolish Nov 15 '19

If you are new and looking for a good place to start

184 Upvotes

There are a lot of posts on this sub asking where to start learning and our community info tab has a good list of places to start. I am making this post to help people find this info more easily but if you have any further question or you are looking for additional resources feel free to ask.


r/learnpolish Dec 04 '24

Mod Post 📌 DUOLINGO MEGATHREAD - Confused about something on Duolingo? Post here!

55 Upvotes

There are so many Duolingo posts, so I've decided to create this thread to keep all the discussion in one place. Standalone Duolingo-related posts will be deleted from now on. Please just post your question here. In the meantime, I will try to create more pinned posts with grammar resources to be able to refer learners there.

For now, you can refer to this site: https://duonotes.fandom.com/wiki/Polish


r/learnpolish 12h ago

Mod Post 📌 Info about self-promotion (apps and websites)

5 Upvotes

Promoting your own app or website is allowed, as long as it's free to use or you're willing to grant some members of the subreddit free access to test your tool. Please contact the moderators before posting to make sure your post will be approved. Posts which haven't been agreed on with the mods beforehand can get deleted.

I have added a new flair for such posts, please make use of it.

This does not mean that you're allowed to spam about your app/website. Please don't post about it again if you have already done so in the past 6 months.


r/learnpolish 17h ago

W nocy z poniedziałku na wtor...

6 Upvotes

Which one is correct? "na wtorek"? "na wtorku"?

I noticed that weather forecasts tend to use the latter while general news uses the other.

So which one is the correct?


r/learnpolish 1d ago

Free resource 📚 I added a cleaned-up frequency list of Polish words to Wiktionary

9 Upvotes

The freely available frequency lists are usually not great. There were two lists already on Wiktionary, neither cleaned up (e.g. containing duplicates of words with different declined, conjugated forms).

I found some word frequency data here, with license (I believe) compatible with Wiktionary:

https://kwjp.pl/overview

Here is the result: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/Polish/KWJP

The researchers have already took care counting different declensions/conjugations of a word as one. There still some duplicates, in the sense that e.g. a noun and an adjective might have the same dictionary form, so I merged such examples (as they would link to the same Wiktionary page anyways). I manually removed a lot of proper names(names of cities, common Polish surnames), abbreviations, English words, stuff not interesting for learners. Of course there might still errors, or useless entries, but I think overall this is a pretty clean list, for being freely available.


r/learnpolish 1d ago

Help me fact checking my DeepL translations

4 Upvotes

Hello! I am writing a short film that will act as an educational course for local kids. I want to include some Polish dialogue and was hoping y'all could let me know the proper way to say these things below :) I will include the English line and what DeepL spit out for translation:

"God works in mysterious ways"
Bog dziata w tajemniczy spodob

"Take care of him" (like "handle" the situation)
zajmij siÄ™ nim

"Oh F$%k" (A Polish phrase that can be translated to when you make a mistake / forget something)
?

"Hello Darling" (meant to be more sinister / sarcastic, not romantic)
cześć, kochanie

THANK YOU for your help


r/learnpolish 17h ago

Help🧠 What do you recommend for Beginners on Vacation?

0 Upvotes

Hello!

As of today, I have decided to learn a extensively massive amount of A1 to C1 Polish via audio, I also have a custom excersize to use pictures, actions, words to help me learn. I also have a language learning app called Busuu which i highly recommend in general altho my first positive experience was Spanish in it ( it felt more inviting than duo lingo LMAO )

Basically my question is, if I want to conversate with a Polish Person and say I want to rent out your vacation home, what level do i need to be?

I can ask google all i want but I just love the comfort of hearing directly from a Polish Person!

I also want to walk into groccery stores, be able to speak on public transit, and have a basic conversation too

Maybe im throwing myself at a wall by going and learning A1 to C1 but Im going to do this for 30 days straight no breaks, even if I loose sleep while listening to this audio for 24 hours straight.

Some might call me crazy I say i welcome you because I laugh at the fact that I am not fluent now and I have this stupid fear of like not being ready when I get there even tho im sure i can pull by on i think b2 i have no idea dont kill me lmao

Anyways i love Fat Thursday :D

Edit: I forgot to include the fact that all the audio that I listen to will translate each polish word too so im not just training my brain and ears like a muscle but rather also keeping the full knowledge of every word I hear (hopefully)


r/learnpolish 1d ago

Help🧠 Cześć , szukam kogoś, z kim mogłabym rozmawiać i pisać online

1 Upvotes

Bardzo zależy mi na tym żeby kogoś znaleźć i po prostu z kimś pogadać o wszystkim i ulepszyć poziom językowy, ewentualnie można spotkać się na żywo, mieszkam w Lublinie.


r/learnpolish 1d ago

Advice on learning more

12 Upvotes

My wife is Polish. Only moved to the US when we got married at 35.

Our daughters are both now bilingual. My wife has done a great job speaking to them almost exclusively in Polish, they can also read and write Polish.

I on the other hand can’t seem to learn. I understand a good chunk of all the household talk from exposure at this point, but the grammar completely eludes me.

Anyone else ever been in this situation? I want to learn more. I’m a native English speaker and it’s the only language I know (besides programming languages which I can switch between at will easily enough).

Thanks in advance!


r/learnpolish 2d ago

Help🧠 How to develop my Polish

6 Upvotes

I’m half Polish and half English. I (18M) have grown up in England my whole life but would go to Poland every summer for at least 3 weeks, which is where I’ve learnt Polish. I can understand a lot but I find it hard to speak and definitely can’t read or write. It’s like my family can understand me but I don’t form proper sentences. I’m annoyed with my Mum for not taking me to Polish school when I was younger. I’ve tried Duolingo but found it quite useless. I’ve heard there’s some good AI tools to learn languages, so was wondering whether they’re worth the money? I plan on moving to Poland when I’m older as I love the country, so I want to get my Polish to a good standard. I’ll try speaking to my Mum in Polish everyday and she bought me some elementary Polish books to help learn years ago but I never used them.


r/learnpolish 3d ago

Does anyone know how to really learn polish

17 Upvotes

Polish is actually my mother tongue. I was fluent until about 5 years old because i live in the netherlands. My mother is fully polish and in fall break im going to poland to visit my family. I can understand what people say a bit i cant speak it myself. Yes i know i cant learn alot before that but i want to become fluent again and i want to atleast have simple conversations with my family.
(Sorry for my bad english lmao)


r/learnpolish 3d ago

Polish pronunciation be like:

44 Upvotes

(A better version of this old post on r/mathmemes, not mine)

I'm not actually learning Polish, I just thought this sub might appreciate it.


r/learnpolish 2d ago

Making a Polish friend

5 Upvotes

i really want to move to poland is my dream country if i can get any help to gwt know more people i woild like to chat


r/learnpolish 3d ago

Promoting own app/website 💻 Looking for Polish learner testers - free lifetime access!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

18 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm a software developer and I've been building a desktop app called SubSmith for people who learn languages through native videos and audio.

It can take a video/audio file, transcribe it locally, generate subtitles, let you look up words while watching, and export sentences + audio to Anki.

It supports Polish through Whisper, but I don't speak Polish myself, so I'm looking for some Polish learners/speakers who can actually put it through its paces and tell me how well it works with real Polish content.

I've attached a short screen recording of it transcribing a Polish YouTube video so you can see what it does.

From my short testing, the current dictionary struggles with Polish inflected forms, so the lemmatisation step definitely needs some language-specific handling.

In exchange for testing it and giving me some feedback, I'm happy to give 10 people from this community free lifetime access to the app.

If you're interested in testing it, leave a comment and I'll send you the details. Also happy to answer any questions about the app here!

Thanks!


r/learnpolish 3d ago

Help🧠 Plural-Only Nouns and how to change them

12 Upvotes

Can someone tell me if the following understanding is correct?

You cannot derive the gender of Plural-only nouns by converting them to singular, eg. Okulary, Spodenki, Wrota. So how do you decline them and change their endings in the different cases? Well in these scenarios, the plural-only nouns "mimic" the declension of regular nouns based on how their plural mianownik (nominative) form ends.

  • Okulary (ends in hard -y) mimics masculine inanimate nouns. In the Genitive/DopeÅ‚niacz plural, it takes the standard masculine ending: okularów.
  • Spodenki (ends in -ki) mimics feminine nouns ending in -ka. In the Genitive plural, it drops the -i and adds a movable 'e' to break the consonant cluster: spodenek.
  • Wrota (ends in -a) mimics neuter nouns like okna.(Note: In the singular, -a marks feminine nouns (kobieta, książka). However, in the plural, -a is the standard nominative ending for neuter nouns). In the Genitive plural, it takes the standard neuter zero-ending and shifts the stem vowel o to ó: wrót.

r/learnpolish 3d ago

Help🧠 Jest poprawny powidzieć "ja nie chcę mieć lekcię"?

0 Upvotes

r/learnpolish 3d ago

I'm A2 bordering B1, I bought wiedźmin when drunk, I know I'm not ready for it, in your opinion when will I be?

4 Upvotes

r/learnpolish 5d ago

Help🧠 Struggling with B1 Past Papers – Any advice from non-Slavic speakers?

7 Upvotes

Dear all,
I'm hoping to hear from non-Slavic speakers who have taken the Polish B1 exam. I apologize for sounding discouraged, but I am wondering if there is hope!
Despite taking three lessons a week and studying over two hours daily for a year, I’m still scoring around 40% on past papers, especially in reading and grammar.
I would be incredibly grateful for any study tips or advice you could share. Thank you so much for your support!


r/learnpolish 4d ago

Promoting own app/website 💻 I built an app to help me speak Polish better so I can converse with family

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

My wife is Polish and because of that I have a bunch of family in Poland (Szczecin) that I would like to be able to talk with. I can read and pronounce Polish very well because I've been reading baby/kid Polish books to my daughter for years.

But actual conversations are still a problem. So I built an app to practice conversations (listening + speaking).

I'm also a huge privacy nerd and am skeptical about how apps use your voice recordings and info you're sharing. That's why I made the app fully local so your voice and data never leave your device.

I'm sharing the app here because it's helped me a lot to speak more confidently. Also the subreddit rules state that free resources can be posted here.

Hope this helps! Here's the app. If you enter the code ChickensAreCool in the settings, the app is completely free. Dzięki!


r/learnpolish 5d ago

Polish terms for idiot and for asses used in 1934 Minneapolis

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0 Upvotes

I am writing a story about a woman I knew in Minneapolis. She was a third generation immigrant. And a salt of the earth woman, very down to earth.


r/learnpolish 6d ago

Teaching polish to foreigners

13 Upvotes

Hello guys,

So, I'm Polish and I have been teaching English professionally for a few years and hold a Master's degree in English Philology. Lately, I have been seriously considering expanding my teaching services to include Polish as a foreign language.

To do this properly, I would need to complete 1-year postgraduate program in teaching Polish to foreigners. It requires an investment of both money and time, so I want to make sure there is genuine demand before I commit.

My plan is to offer 1 on 1 lessons primarily online, so location would not be a barrier, although I am based in a mid-sized city (around 200k residents so in-person lessons are also an option).

For those of you living in Poland or currently learning the language, do you see many ppl in your circle who actively want to learn polish? Do you see a real demand for qualified private tutoring, or is the market already crowded with established teachers and online platforms?

I would really appreciate your thoughts on whether you think this is a path worth pursuing. Thank you 😊


r/learnpolish 6d ago

Help🧠 In daily convo, do y’all prefer to use Muslim and Christian or Chrzescijanin and muzulamin?

0 Upvotes

Cause to be honest, the word is a bit complicated and hard to spell, but also if I want to live in Poland I have to use these words on daily convo, so I won’t get anyone confused


r/learnpolish 6d ago

Choroba lokomocyjna

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1 Upvotes

r/learnpolish 7d ago

Any opinion about Polski Instytut językowy ?

2 Upvotes

Or any good polish language school in Warsaw? To get B1 level


r/learnpolish 7d ago

Recommend polish class/language school in warsaw

7 Upvotes

Hello! I would like to ask for some recommendation for polish class/language school. I am non-slav and starting from A0-A1(beginner). I saw alot recommended Polonicum. Also some recommended Szkoła Języka Polskiego Together. If someone have been in these classes, i would love to hear your experience 👀

If not, i would love to hear other recommendations too. Semi-intensive course would be nice!

Thank you in advance! 😊