Polish lesson & grammar

hello everybody i wonder is there any website where i can learn by myslef Polish language ? 4 years ago i started to learn but i gave up (coz of too hard grammar)

hi Katie! mm.. You wrote you had given up learning so I guess you know some basic rules anyway, I hope this website will help you with learning http://free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/gram00.html
just enjoy the grammar
by the way, in my opinon it's bloody difficult

thank You so much
yes i knw some basic words/phrases but Polish grammar damn so so hard to understand .. anyway ths time i wont give up so easily

Sorry, Nena89, but one could be bored to death trying to learn polish from the site to which you've posted a link. This http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/kurs/0.html can be useful, although in this tutorial there are some extremely weird and useless words

so maybe You Pippirrup know any good website wth polish grammar and useful words etc ??

Hi Katie, I tried to find some useful sites where you can learn a bit of Polish and I guess they might be quite useful I wish you luck 'cause grammar can drive you crazy, but don't give up

http://www.skwierzyna.net/learn_polish.htm

http://www.polishgrammar.com/ here you can test your grammar, I like the prepositions and verbs parts

http://www.digitaldialects.com/Polish.htm here you can learn words in interesting way, I thinks such games are better than lists of vocabulary

if you find a site with vocabulary it'll be better if you first post it here 'cause there a lot of sites full of stupid mistakes and I'm sure you don't want to learn words which simply don't exist

Hi!
I think this site will help you so much with your vocabulary http://www.internetpolyglot.com/

Hi. could someone quickly explain the way it is 'you' formal in polish. i can already speak macedonian which is helpful for some things but not this!
i understood its the same word for 'sir'/'madam'
so its like Jak ma sie Pan / Pani ?
but what do you do if its not the subject?... and then is there only one plural for masc and femin? = panstvo ?

I saw you? I gave you something? can i ask You a question... etc.

dziekuje!

I'm quite lame at rules of Polish grammar so I'll translate only your questions

Pan - Sir, Pani - Madam, plural form - Państwo
Jak sie Pani/Pan ma?

you always use Pan/Pani or Państwo when you want to talk to someone older you don't know

I saw you should be I saw you Madam/Sir in polish: Widziałam/em Panią/Pana
I gave you sth Madam/Sir - Dałam/em coś Pani/ Panu
Can I ask a question - Czy mogę zadać Panu/Pani pytanie?

you don't have to use capital letters, you can write pan/pani and it will be formal
but remember it's just my native speaker's point of view ;P

thanks patryszja the other interesting thing i'm learning now is how polnoc/poludnie/wschod/zachod is north/south/east/west and also midnight/noon/sunrise/sunset... confusing but fun!

btw is it true that you can say 'czy widziales' or 'czys widzial'
do people speak like that or is it just in books?

Originally Posted by sizr_sistr

btw is it true that you can say 'czy widziales' or 'czys widzial'
do people speak like that or is it just in books?

There's nothing incorrect in "czyś widział", but it would be quite odd to talk like that. But it sounds good in poems

Originally Posted by sizr_sistr

btw is it true that you can say 'czy widziales' or 'czys widzial' do people speak like that or is it just in books?

Yea, "czyś widział" is quite archeic, just like "czy żeś widział" ... "czy widziałeś" is in common use

What a shame no one is learning Polish any more...

"Czyś widział" is correct, a bit archaic, OR expressive (e.g. "Coś ty zrobił!?" vs. "Co zrobiłeś?" - the 1st one is a looot more expressive).

"Czy żeś widział" is unfortunately and simply a language error, so don't use it at all.

Only one page??

I feel bad, and besides, I have some Polish dictionaries that I don't have use for, so might as well learn a bit. Gustaw, would you care to teach me some basics?

Originally Posted by dragonfly93

Only one page??

I feel bad, and besides, I have some Polish dictionaries that I don't have use for, so might as well learn a bit. Gustaw, would you care to teach me some basics?

Of course, with pleasure!

Maybe at the beginning you should learn how to read the letters. After that, we could concentrate on how to join them.

a - like, say, Italian or Romanian a
ą - similar to the nasal o, something like the French -on in Gaston for ex.
b - normal b
c - ts, but together
ć - for now, let's say it's like the English tch, though pronounced a lot more softly than the cz
cz - almost like the Englich tch
d - normal d
dz - d + z pronounced together
dż - d + ż pronounced together
dź - d + ź pronounced together
e - almost like the English e in ten
ę - this is a very tricky one, let's say that it's pronounced like nasal e (a little like the French -in in matin, but veery often like en, em..., and at the end of words - always like normal Polish e.
f - normal f
g - g like in goose
h and ch - nowadays no difference between the two - like the Romanian h
i - like the Romanian i, unless... but we'll get to it later.
j - short i, like in Yale, for instance
k - normal k, like in Kent
l - normal l
ł - its apperance is confusing, since nowadays nobody (except old people from the former Eastern Poland, like my grandma, for instance) pronounces it like hard l any more, like in Russian - now it's pronounced exactly like a very short u. So once again: it's not an l of any kind, it's a short u.
m - normal m
n - normal n
ń - hmm, an extremely soft n, exactly like the Hungarian ny, but I suppose this doesn't help you... Try to say ni so fast it'd become one sound - it'll be similar
o - an open o, similar to the Romanian one
ó and u - nowadays no difference between the two - like the Romanian u
p - normal p
r - normal r
rz and ż - now there's no difference any more - similar to the Romanian j
s - normal s
ś and [b]sz[b/]- here the situation is exatly the same as with ć and cz - the first is softer than the latter, but they're both similar to the Romanian ș or English sh
t - normal t
w - like the English v
y - a difficult one, you should hear it, but quite similar to the Romanian ă
z - normal z
ź - again, the difference between this and ż (rz) is that ź is softer.

Now - the difficult vowels are ą, ę, y, and the difficult consonants: cz, ć, dż, dź, ń, rz/ż, sz, ś, ź. It's those sh-tch sounds, as well as the relatively large proportion of consonants that make Polish the "rustling language" it is.

Let's listen to something nice in Polish. Here you can hear a great Polish actor Gustaw Holoubek interpretating one of the greatest Romantic poems by Mickiewicz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V1By25m_NU. And here is the text: http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Dziady...7_III/Scena_II (he starts reading from the "Ja mistrz!"). Tell me later how you liked it.

P.S. BTW, here's also a nice link: http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/gram/gram00.html.

Hello Gustaw!

Thank you/multumesc for your explanations - great language but way too complicated to be pronounced by foreigners I'm a fan of the Polish band Dżem and listening to their songs and reading the lyrics confused me a bit

Originally Posted by Gustaw

ć - for now, let's say it's like the English tch, though pronounced a lot more softly than the cz
cz - almost like the Englich tch

In case you know, is it the same as the Serbian letters Ć and Č? I can't pronounce those either though

great language but way too complicated to be pronounced by foreigners

Hey, I've met Hungarians, as well as one Czech girl, who studied Polish philology, so it's doable! :P

In case you know, is it the same as the Serbian letters Ć and Č? I can't pronounce those either though

Unfortunately, I don't know how it's in Serbo-Croatian, so I can't help you...

Gustaw, here is an explanation of the sounds in Serbo-Croatian...

Č is alveo-palatal, pronounced closer to the teeth than ć. CH as in CHurch.

Ć is palatal, pronounced a bit farther from the teeth than č, further on the roof of the mouth. English speakers should say CH as in CHeap while smiling

Originally Posted by dragonfly93

Gustaw, here is an explanation of the sounds in Serbo-Croatian...

Č is alveo-palatal, pronounced closer to the teeth than ć. CH as in CHurch.

Ć is palatal, pronounced a bit farther from the teeth than č, further on the roof of the mouth. English speakers should say CH as in CHeap while smiling

The scientific classification and the explanation of pronunciation is perfect, though the Polish cz is only similar to the English ch in church. But generally yes, this is it.

And what about the dz, dź, dż, which ones are farther back in the mouth, and which are closer to the teeth?