Polish is the language people cite when they want to name a hard one, and the reputation is half deserved. Seven cases is a real amount of grammar. The consonant clusters, on the other hand, are mostly a spelling problem: sz, cz and rz are single sounds in disguise. What you get in return is a country that reacts to a foreigner speaking Polish with something close to delight.
A rule that surprises everyone: making a sentence negative changes the ending of the noun.
Prepositions, negation and even numbers change the ending of the noun that follows. This is the work, and there is no shortcut through it, only a lot of sentences.
Two verbs for one English verb, split by whether the action got finished. Like Russian, it is the mistake you can make correctly for a long time before anyone tells you.
Ś against sz, ć against cz. English hears one sound where Polish hears two, and the difference decides which word you said.
Informal Polish agrees with you by saying "no". It catches every English speaker exactly once.
| Say this | When |
|---|---|
| Jak to powiedzieć po polsku?yak toh po-VYE-jech po POL-skoo | How do you say this in Polish. Your best vocabulary tool. |
| Możesz powtórzyć?MO-zhesh pov-TOO-zhich | Can you repeat that. Ask early, ask often. |
| Nonoh | Informally, "yeah". It agrees with the person who just spoke, which is the opposite of what your instincts will do. |
| DobraDOH-bra | "Alright." Wraps up a topic and moves things on. |
| Na raziena RAH-zhe | "See you." The casual goodbye you will hear far more than do widzenia. |
Corrections say which case the sentence needed and what triggered it, which is the only way seven of them become a system rather than a list.
Every fix is kept, so the case you keep dropping shows up as a pattern instead of feeling like bad luck.
On Pro, your speech is scored per sound, which is how you find out whether your ś and sz are actually landing differently.
This language is in beta: it works end to end, and it has had far fewer real conversations behind it than Spanish or Japanese. If something sounds wrong, tell us from inside the app.
It is genuinely demanding, mostly because of seven cases and the way numbers, negation and prepositions all reach in and change the nouns around them. It is also extremely regular once you see the system, and Poles are notably delighted by anyone attempting it.
They look far worse written than they sound. Sz, cz and rz are single sounds wearing two letters, so a word like szczęście is shorter to say than to read.
Standard Polish, the variety used in media and education across the country.
Two minutes, no account. Getting a case wrong here costs you nothing at all.
Start speaking Polish