Which is the BEST, EASIEST to learn & most helpful"POLISH FOR FOREIGNERS"course?

Hi everyone,

I was in Empik bookstore this morning searching for the best
POLISH FOR FOREIGNERS beginner course.

Something with CD with native girls who are speaking clearly,
and that explains in very easy way all the basics of polish
for everyday conversation and difficult situations solving.

I found about 3 different courses, from which I bought one
white and blue course "Polski bez problemu" book + CD for 29.90 zl,
which is an absolute disaster.

On the CD there are just few mp3 random spoken by one guy,
who doesn't reflect any of the order of the pages or chapters
in the book, he just reads different phrases from different pages
only in polish, without any translation.

The grammar is awfully explained, with many errors.

It is a compliment to say that this course is just very poor and very chaotic.
It is actually a disaster.

So I am still searching for a good course to learn basic Polish for english
speaking foreigners.

I will be very thankful if you can help with your ideas on which
course to choose.

Thank you in advance. Any idea will be helpful.

Here is the cover of this course that I was burnt by buying it,
which is a total chaos and disaster, put together just for a really quick buck.

"Polski bez problemu!

Polish for foreigners by SuperMemo"

ksiegarnia.pwn.pl/public/pic/covers/240/7532.jpg

Hi. 'COLLINS' do a really good 3 Cd set plus book audio course, it's called 'Easy Learning Polish' You should be able to order it from collinslanguage.com, it'll cost you around £10. I have been learning Polish for about 6 months using this systen and it's been good enough to get me around Gdansk and to be be able to order stuff, buy stuff and make very light polite conversation. I hope this info helps.

There are 2 very good courses available:

1. Polish in 4 weeks (level 1) (but it takes longer than 4 weeks to complete it). You also get a computer program to listen to the dialogs.

2. Colloquial Polish, you also get a CD with the dialogs.

Earlier I preferred Colloquial Polish. But I have seen that it's easier for most people to follow the structure with Polish in 4 weeks.

You also need a special book for conjugation of Polish verbs. It's called 301 Polish Verbs. I strongly recommend it. It'll help you so much.

I don't think I will go that far in learning the conjugation for 301 polish verbs... my brain needs better uses than memorizing some senseless decilnations and conjugations of verbs.

Me and the people for which I will make such course a gift, just want good useful basic polish. Not remembering thousands of endings.

After all, there is more in life than Polish grammar.

The one failing with that book is the CD-ROM is incredibly basic - the files are in MP3 format.

They could have done so, so, so much more with it - it's a shame, because the book is very well written.

Pimsleur Polish (Comprehensive - 30 lessons) is very good.

It costs 274 dollars, but it's worth the money.

pimsleurapproach.com/learn-polish.asp

Looks like Callan - for Polish.

Given the extraordinary amount of difficulty that most students have with understanding English grammar structures from within the cofines of Callan/Avalon/etc - what hope can people have with Polish grammar structures?

You mean you want to learn Polish phrases, not the Polish language. There is a huge difference.

I too bought Polish in 4 Weeks and I think it's a very good course, particularly oriented towards self-study. However, as SzwedwPolsce said, unless you have an outstanding determination and willpower it'll take much more than a month to assimilate it!

The book tells two intertwining story in a soap-opera-like manner. The dialogues and situations seem to be practical and "realistic", that is not as contrived as textbook dialogues often are.

The audio recordings are of high quality; a funny thing is that, as the number of the voice actors is limited (about 6 I think) sometimes the same voice is given to different characters. Nothing wrong with that of course, only one woman of the series, Basia, has a very characteristic, cracked voice and it is funny to hear her turning up from time to time as estate agent, cashier, random pedestrian etc. :-)

I must also say that, at times, I was surprised by some twists of the story itself. Thinking about it, I found them slightly politically-incorrect for a textbook. This is not a criticisms, only I was left wondering if the book reflects a slightly different perception of some things or if it is just all due to the soap-opera quality of the story. Or maybe it's just me...

I'll give some examples (don't read if you don't want spoilers!).
The main characters at the beginning of the story are:
-Alice, about 25, American journalism student living in Warsaw. [she speaks perfect Polish, being American is a pretext to allow some kinds of questions]. She has got a boyfriend called Andrzej.

-Basia, about 25, Alice's best friend and co-tenant.
-Waldek, about 30, radio journalist and new acquaintance of Alice's who's trying to win her heart.
-John Brown, half-Scottish/half-Polish 40-year-old entrepreneur who grew up in the UK and has now gone back to live in Poland.

Here are some of the surprising bits:

-When Alice tell Basia of having met Waldek, Basia asks what kind of car had he got, because "ma dobry samochód, to znaczy że ma pieniądze!"

-Waldek begins a relentless (and ultimately successful) courtship on Alice: restaurants, theatre shows, trips to Kraków etc, all this behind Andrzej's back. Alice complains with Waldek that Andrzej works a lot and doesn't always have time to take her to discos. Big mistake! Waldek is all to happy to seize the opportunity...

-After a row Andrzej tries to make up with Alice with some surprise cinema tickets but Alice coldly dismisses him on the phone saying she can't go bacause she's going away with a "friend" (Waldek). Andrzej asks who it is but she just hangs the phone on him! This is the last we hear from Andrzej.

-That old fox of John Brown tries to hit on Basia at a local bar. Basia understands the situation immediately and is all to happy to be picked up by the (presumably) wealthy businessman. To justify the 15 year gap with Alice she says that after all "zrozumiałam, że najbardziej podobają mi się dojrzali mężczyźni"!

Comments? Personally I found the story line entertaining, better than the usual dull "The pen is on the table" texts for beginners.

No, I want to learn the Polish language that it is most useful in everyday situations.

I don't want to learn past tenses that I will never use, I don't want to learn special exceptions of conditional-optativ tense, I don't want to learn declinations of

"submarines attacking a spyboat" I don't want to learn all types of birds names,
I don't want to learn all polish national dances and folklore songs.

I want just conversational useful polish language.

Did more people try the "Pimsleur approach"?

What is "Callan" delhiandomine?

Thank you guys.

The course that omalley recommended 'Easy Learning Polish' is very good for peole who just want to learn basic Polish phrases. The dialogs are broken down to single words and repeated many times which helps. Very good value for money.

The Pimsluer course is bias towards Americans. Very handy if you want to learn how to say " I am American" :) The approach is good however, but I would not say that it is worth $274, especially as it can be found on the internet for free (so I'm told) or picked up for a few pounds on ebay, under a different title. If all you want to learn are some phrases, to help with everyday life, then a good phrase book with phonetic spelling should suffice.

For learning basic phrases and words I really like BYKI software. They give you free lists but you can purchase a very large list for about $50 with disk for $60. However, I found a Spanish version in a used book store for $10. Amazon might have some used software for really cheap.

Anyway, BYKI software doesn't give the grammar basics but it does let you hear Old / Young.. Female / Male speakers and even take multiple choice tests. Very good for the money and probably the best for beginners who just want to get an intro feel for the language.

I would NOT pay $100s of dollars for Pimleur etc. Here again try Amazon.com for some used cds.

Without conjugation of the verbs you can't even differentiate 'I want' (chcę) from 'you want' (chcesz).

Good Luck to understand the language then...

byki.com

The Rosetta Stone Polish Language CD set. You can't go wrong.

Another vote for BYKI.com, free and a basic intro to the language. Good place to start

Marina1993
Maybe you should practice your English grammar first before you start on Polish! Look at Ebay listings-there are sometimes good Linguaphone courses for sale and you should pick one up for around twenty pounds plus the postage, which to Poland would be quite a lot.

Pimsleur is good, although it will not take you very far. It's definitely not worth $270. Perhaps I'd pay $40 for it or so. Polish in 4 weeks is not bad; it covers all the most important things, it has fairly natural sounding dialogues, and it teaches you a vocabulary of some 1200 - 1400 or so words, although too many of them I would say are too rare to be taught at such an early level (not that you're forced to learn them or anything).

As for grammar, you can't really do without special grammar practice it in Polish. Especially the verb conjugations are important (seeing as personal pronouns in the nominative are generally omitted).

For learning and memorizing new words I recommend the program "Anki"

You can create your own sets of flash cards with words you encounter, or you can download mine (containing some 7700 entries including words, sentences, phrases and expressions, including most words from Polish in 4 Weeks and many many other).

Watching movies/TV-series with Polish subtitles is helpful too for learning conversational Polish. The really tricky part with Polish, though, is listening comprehension. I have yet to find any good way to practise this as it's almost impossible to find Polish movies with Polish subtitles.

If you happen to have the English translations, or else get a Polish/English dictonary and try to figure out what all the pictures mean? Its too time consuming, I will admit it helps to memorize words and basic sentences.

I contacted RS and they denied my request for the translations, but fortunately enough somebody on here sent them to me:)

Btw Rosetta uses the same pics for all thier language CD`s


I purchased the upgraded BYKI version and it came along with easier and more practical Jezyk Polski language CD

transparent.com/languagepages/polish/polish.htm

That was some time ago, it appears they have more products now:)

Powodezenia:)

what? for a book for some crazy language spoken only in a strange country called Poland? fcuk, im glad im native.

ww.Byki.com - some native polish speakers can listen to this and confirm that it is correct polish they are teaching ?:)

Thanks!

Szwed is correct. Without the most basic conjugations of the verbs you don't stand a chance of being understood, with the exception of using stock phrases (in which case you may as well buy a cheap phrase book).

You can get away with errors in declination and even case endings if the context of the conversation gives enough clues but you certainly need to be able to conjugate unless you want to try just using the infinitive with a pronoun - Ja mieć = I have

Ok so conjugations for most important verbs:

I go

I want

I speak

I learn

I know

are important, true. We have them here?:)

These are good books, however, they are all in Polish.

hurra.edu.pl
livemocha.com

How cab you learn polsih from a book WRITTEN in a language that you DONT KNOW ???:))):!!! that's probably the stupidest thing I heard in a long long time...

The best text books are the Hurra Po Polsku series... recently published, colour, CD's, Exercise book etc, but they are in Polish and so you need to work through them with a teacher or in a class. And yes, you can learn from books written in a language you don't know, if you have a dictionary and patience... but it's not ideal and you should have so many questions about the grammar, the endings etc. that you need to ask them somewhere.

Teach yourself Polish was no good for me as it comes in at far too high a level, which disheartened me. And now I am at a higher level, I have no desire to return to it.

I would not recommend Polish in 4 weeks because there are some words in there that should carry an "UWAGA" notice. For example, in the first chapter (maybe second) you learn how to ask for a cloakroom ticket and it doesn't say this is also the same word as for a quickie.

BYKI is good for pronunciation and vocabulary, but at some point, you need to speak to someone else who either speaks the language or is learning it.

And there are somethings in Polish with Polish subtitles, but not so many... personally I liked the soap opera "The Londoners" which you can get on DVD. You can watch it with English subtitles or Polish and the dialogue is simple and the story entertaining in a far-fetched way.

You can always contact LINGUA POLONICA for lessons or other professional language help: linguapolonica.com.pl

Haha... come on. You also think that one should be careful with the word numer (number), because it can also mean sex-act?
Then I have to stop asking people for their (telephone) number.

There are so many words that have dirty associations. And it's not a big problem.

But "Poproszę numerek" has a sense of humor.

Tak zagadzem sie, Ja kupilem Polski Bez Problemu, przez SuperMemo dla cudzoziemcow, wydanie I, 2,3 okolo 2 lata temu i te ksiazki pomogly mi duzo. Also I have bought Polski for Dummies. this was okayish!, i jeszcze ksiazka "Jezyk Polski w cztery tygodnie", this was very good, with the slowest Polish recordings so you can clearly hear everything. In all I buy many Polish books for foriegn learners, I have just recently bought another Polish Book for English learners of Polish from Poland. I have been learning for 8 years.

The Polski bez problemu is very fast and even the starter book or Elementary book is advanced for English learners, BUT if you can stick to it and not get disheartened it is a very good book, it took me a year to get through this book! another year for the intermediate and soon I will start the advanced book from the Polski bez Problemu set!!

Stick to the English please

Hello,

I have bought Polish in 4 weeks book but my cd is not supported by my laptop. Can anybody recommend a website where I can find the dialogues online so I can use the book? Many thanks guys.