I've been studying Polish seriously for about 6 months or so since I can take it as part of my course at college (along with Russian and other stuff). Although I already knew some basic phrases and slang from the months I spent in Wroclaw, it was more recently that I actually learned the grammar, cases etc. From the books that I use, I estimate my Polish to be at about high A1 level/low A2 (see CEFRL chart) and although I'm making decent progress, I find that my Polish is really lagging behind my Russian. I attribute this mainly to the easiness of finding useful material in Russian and the good quality of the textbook we use in class (this one - it's really good, check it out if you're a beginner of Russian). Anyways, I believe there's other forum members who have an interest in the language. Obviously, as opposed to Russia or Ukraine you can easily get along in Poland speaking only in English but even then, the experience of living in a country changes a lot when you actually understand what's being said around you.
Without further ado, here are the books/resources that I use to learn the language:
Hurra Po Polsku 1: (textbook+Workbook)
![[Image: attachment.jpg25867]](https://rooshvforum.network/attachments/attachment.jpg25867)
Although this is widely thought as THE book for learning Polish from scratch, there's quite a few things I don't like about it. First of all, it tends to introduce a lot of new vocab at once without going over it at all in the subsequent chapters (following the spiral learning approach, which is better for long term memory). In addition, I find the order at which it teaches the cases to be quite confusing and weird. If you follow the book chronologically, you don't learn the Nominative plural until you've already studied the instrumental, accusative and genitive which I found a bit annoying since you can't form plurals until you're halfway into the textbook (I found the approach I learned in Russian to be much more logical, where you learn the nom. plural at the beginning). In addition, the book is completely in Polish, meaning that you won't find any explanations or anything in English so either you understand things intuitively from context or you'll have to use google translate for certain parts. Other than that, this book is just ok. The chapters and vocab are very generic for a beginner's textbook (hobbies, going on holidays, professions etc) and it more or less does the job. The exercise book is quite good as you will need to practice certain things over and over again until they stick (more on that later).
Gramatyka Dlaczego nie? (grammar exercise book)
![[Image: attachment.jpg25869]](https://rooshvforum.network/attachments/attachment.jpg25869)
Now this one I can definitely recommend. It's a lot thicker than the other books (250 pgs) and it focuses mainly on grammar. The reason why I like it is because it's very comprehensive and I like the way the different sections are divided into (one chapter for nouns, adj and pronouns in a variety of cases, another one just for pronouns, prepositions etc). It's hard to explain but the exercises seem to follow a logical repetition pattern and at the end of each chapter you apply at random all of what you've learned and it helps a lot with the case endings (repetition is really important). The only downside again, is that it's completely in Polish although it has a preface in several languages.
Polish Grammar in a Nutshell:
You can find this pdf all over the internet. It's supposed to cover all of the grammar but mostly I only use it for reference when I can't remember something very specific. Today for example I forgot that the verb słuchać is always followed by the genitive (unlike in Russian), so I quickly looked up the genitive in the pdf and read a brief list of the main verbs that happen to be followed by it for no apparent reason.
Other resources:
List of almost 500 conjugated verbs
Wikitionary- occasionally if I run into a new verb that doesn't happen to be in the above list, I'll look it up in here, it's pretty good.
Polish movies and music:
As always, it's very useful and painless to listen some music or watch a film in the target language (even if you don't understand everything)
A few Polish songs that I like:
Songs are specially useful since they usually repeat many words. You can look up the lyrics by googling the name of the song and "tekst" or just through this site: http://www.tekstowo.pl/
You can also find many full Polish films on Youtube although they usually don't have subtitles or the video quality is very poor. Search "Cały film" on youtube (full film) and you'll get many results there. This one is called "Galerianki" ("Mall girls"), which fellow RVF member Magicone shared on the Poland thread a while ago. It details the lives of several teenage girls that go to shopping malls in search of older men to sponsor them and get them out of poverty (Greek Kamakki's wet dream![[Image: tard.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/tard.gif)
)
If you are curious, you can also watch Polish TV on this site, although it costs about 5 dollars/month:
http://www.ipla.tv/start
Also, here's a video by a good comedy Polish channel: (RODZAJE SINGLI - "types of single people")
^Apparently from 0:58, "żeglarz" (literally "Sailor") means player in Polish.![[Image: banana.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/banana.gif)
I think that's about it. Obviously Polish is not as popular as Russian but it's still a great language to learn. On my last trip to Wroclaw I was able to chat a few girls that spoke little English and overall it was a cool experience to see how I had improved after several months of study. Be sure to share any other useful resources, particularly if you are learning several slavic languages at the same time.
Without further ado, here are the books/resources that I use to learn the language:
Hurra Po Polsku 1: (textbook+Workbook)
Although this is widely thought as THE book for learning Polish from scratch, there's quite a few things I don't like about it. First of all, it tends to introduce a lot of new vocab at once without going over it at all in the subsequent chapters (following the spiral learning approach, which is better for long term memory). In addition, I find the order at which it teaches the cases to be quite confusing and weird. If you follow the book chronologically, you don't learn the Nominative plural until you've already studied the instrumental, accusative and genitive which I found a bit annoying since you can't form plurals until you're halfway into the textbook (I found the approach I learned in Russian to be much more logical, where you learn the nom. plural at the beginning). In addition, the book is completely in Polish, meaning that you won't find any explanations or anything in English so either you understand things intuitively from context or you'll have to use google translate for certain parts. Other than that, this book is just ok. The chapters and vocab are very generic for a beginner's textbook (hobbies, going on holidays, professions etc) and it more or less does the job. The exercise book is quite good as you will need to practice certain things over and over again until they stick (more on that later).
Gramatyka Dlaczego nie? (grammar exercise book)
Now this one I can definitely recommend. It's a lot thicker than the other books (250 pgs) and it focuses mainly on grammar. The reason why I like it is because it's very comprehensive and I like the way the different sections are divided into (one chapter for nouns, adj and pronouns in a variety of cases, another one just for pronouns, prepositions etc). It's hard to explain but the exercises seem to follow a logical repetition pattern and at the end of each chapter you apply at random all of what you've learned and it helps a lot with the case endings (repetition is really important). The only downside again, is that it's completely in Polish although it has a preface in several languages.
Polish Grammar in a Nutshell:
You can find this pdf all over the internet. It's supposed to cover all of the grammar but mostly I only use it for reference when I can't remember something very specific. Today for example I forgot that the verb słuchać is always followed by the genitive (unlike in Russian), so I quickly looked up the genitive in the pdf and read a brief list of the main verbs that happen to be followed by it for no apparent reason.
Other resources:
List of almost 500 conjugated verbs
Wikitionary- occasionally if I run into a new verb that doesn't happen to be in the above list, I'll look it up in here, it's pretty good.
Polish movies and music:
As always, it's very useful and painless to listen some music or watch a film in the target language (even if you don't understand everything)
A few Polish songs that I like:
Songs are specially useful since they usually repeat many words. You can look up the lyrics by googling the name of the song and "tekst" or just through this site: http://www.tekstowo.pl/
You can also find many full Polish films on Youtube although they usually don't have subtitles or the video quality is very poor. Search "Cały film" on youtube (full film) and you'll get many results there. This one is called "Galerianki" ("Mall girls"), which fellow RVF member Magicone shared on the Poland thread a while ago. It details the lives of several teenage girls that go to shopping malls in search of older men to sponsor them and get them out of poverty (Greek Kamakki's wet dream
)If you are curious, you can also watch Polish TV on this site, although it costs about 5 dollars/month:
http://www.ipla.tv/start
Also, here's a video by a good comedy Polish channel: (RODZAJE SINGLI - "types of single people")
^Apparently from 0:58, "żeglarz" (literally "Sailor") means player in Polish.
I think that's about it. Obviously Polish is not as popular as Russian but it's still a great language to learn. On my last trip to Wroclaw I was able to chat a few girls that spoke little English and overall it was a cool experience to see how I had improved after several months of study. Be sure to share any other useful resources, particularly if you are learning several slavic languages at the same time.
Тот, кто не рискует, тот не пьет шампанского
![[Image: wink.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/wink.gif)
