How to know what level of Polish you have e.g. pre-intermediate

I've been learning Polish for a while. I think I am pre-intermediate but I'm not sure. Is there a way to tell for sure which level you are? And if listening is worse than speaking or whatever does that mean I could be pre-intermediate regarding speaking and intermediate when it comes to listening?

It depends. It's surely easier to get the meaning of a spoken word (ie. listening) than to write or to speak. I guess to know a language (not only Polish) well, you need to be rated in the following: Writing / Speaking / Listening (understanding). So you could rate each of these two categories, eg: Writing (60%), Speaking (45%), Listening (80%) and get an average ratio, ie. sum up the three scores and divide by 100; the result is your language level competency.

Now you can translate your post into Polish (without cheating ;) and we'll tell you the level of your Writing skill at least.

Thanks Nathans. Okay, I'll give it a go for the laugh. My writing skills aren't great though.
Nie jestem przyzwyczajony piszenia (?) po polsku.
Okay so;


Uczę się polskiego od jakiego czasu. Myslę, ze mój polski jest niższym średnem zaawansowanym, ale nie jestem pewny. I jeśli słuchenia jest gorsza niż mowienia lub cokulwiek, znaczy że mogłabym pre-intermediate w słuchenie i intermediate w mowenie?

O God, how did I do? The only word I looked up was "pre intermediate" and I tried to put it into the instrumental because "jest" was in front of it but it doesn't look right at all . The joys of learning Polish ...

Dla mnie jest mówiene bardzo łatwe, porozumienie już trudniej a pisanie ale najtrudniejsze! Jeszcze muszę się przy klasówki dużo rozmyśleć, który czasownik czyli 'dokonany' vs. 'niedokonany' powinnem wybrać:-)

(non-Polish speakers or elementary learners!) Speaking is for me quite easy, understanding more difficult and writing the most difficult! When writing an essay for my teacher, I still have to think hard which verb, perfective vs. imperfective, I should choose:-)

Hi Lyzko,

for me speaking is definitely the most difficult. Reading is easiest and listening to (real) Polish is very difficult. How long have you been learning Polish? Do you live there?

No, adbut. I visited Szczecin one time, but that was easily twenty years ago! In toto, I guess I studied Polish for approx. four years with a private Polish bilingual native-speaker tutor. I use Polish daily as I'm an interpreter and translator. German's my strongest language (after English, of course:-)), but we do from time to time have Polish walk-ins who are looking for English instruction and I definitely have to intervene on more than one occasion.

Ya see there, adbut! Found a mistake already (and a whopper!!!): "przy klasówce" would be the correct way to write it, as it requires a Lokativ ending:-)

lol

lol I hadn't even noticed that haha Thank God you found it :) Could you correct my translation?

Frankly speaking, I'll leave that at the moment to a native Pole. Anybody who writes the non-existent "ogórka" instead of the correct "ogórek" (pickle), i.e. yours truly, ought to step back several kroki and get clear on their skills!!! On the other hand, INTO English from Polish?? Nooooo prob.

"Dla mnie jest mówiene bardzo łatwe"

Your translation "Speaking is for me quite easy"

Is there no word in Polish for quite, so that you had to use bardzo meaning very (at least thats what I thought it always meant) ?

eh?, rarely does a language have a direct equivalent in another. "Bardzo" can mean "very" or "quite", it always depends on the context:-) "Już" for instance is usually translated as "already". In Polish, it can indeed mean such, though is also a particle filler, frequently left untranslated, e.g. "Już dzisiaj.." as the header in a Polish-language newspaper for the days events. A smooth translation into English is hardly "Already today"!!! This smacks strongly of 'translationese'. In fact, the idiomatically natural English would simply be "Today..". The "już" however is as important for flavoring in Polish as it is unnecessary, in fact, confusing, in English:-)

-) @ Adbut your Polish skills are on similar level to Lyzko skills.In other words I can understand what you are trying to say but you still have a lot of (hard) work to do.-)

There is Polish word for "quite" ,actually at least 2 words "całkiem" or "zupełnie".
"Uczę się polskiego od jakiegoś (już) czasu.Myślę że jestem prawie na poziomie średnio zaawansowanym ale nie jestem (do końca) pewny.Czy jest jakiś sposób żeby stwierdzić na jakim poziomie zaawansowania jestem (się jest)?I jeśli (jeżeli) rozumienie przychodzi mi trudniej niż mówienie to czy znaczy (oznacza) to że jestem na poziomie prawie średnio zaawansowanym pod względem rozumienia i średnio zaawansowanym pod względem mówienia?"

I replaced "słuchać" with "rozumieć" because in Polish you can "słyszeć" perfectly but understand "rozumieć" nothing at the same time.

Polish native speaker here.

Here is the translation of the opening paragraph done by google:


The good news - your translation is on about the same level (Google is better at spelling, but you're better at logic and accuracy). The bad news, you're not quite there yet. Compared to a native Polish speaker, your writing/translation skill is about 5.5 out of 10. It is a great achievement already and I'd say 10-15% of native Poles are on this level, but you need to practice more to be as good as some of us ;). Lyzko's level is about 6.5; it's a little higher than yours ;)

@trucker,

"Całkiem", of course! Must've slipped my mind:-)
@Nathans,
Thanks for the positive assessment. I have though seen both words translated as "quite", although surely "całkiem" is the more literally correct meaning in Polish!

No, polska mowa, trudna mowa. To prawda, wiesz?
lol

Thank you Lyzko, thank you Trucker

:)

Hoped it answered your query:-)