Language / Some suggestions for Polish soft consonants and difficult word pronunciations [17]

I am having some difficult with Polish phonology, particularly the soft alveolo-palatal sounds ń, ś, ź, ć, dź. Also, I am having trouble with the letter z and ż in Polish, especially in front of words like: z Francji, w Londynie, etc. I'm often obliged to say jkra for w Krakowieeven when I should pronounce it like fkra. I am having problems because English doesn't have a complex system of soft and hard consonants like Polish, which is part of the Proto-Slavic language family.

Sometimes I think that some consonants are palatalized, but that doesn't appear to be the case in Polish, as it is in Russian.

Now, do you have any tips for speaking these difficult words (tongue twisters for me):

Wziąć

Wziąść

Dopełniacz

Narzędnik

Miejscownik

Language / Imperfective verb question [9]

Hello, everyone in cyberspace.

I have a question about imperfective verbs. I know that you can form an imperfective verb to express something that's in the process of being done in the present only, so I have a few questions about the rules governing those verb tenses. Many Poles put a suffix before a verb; for example, the verb pić changes to wypić in the imperfective tense.

1.) How do you know what suffix to put before a verb? For example, how do you know that czytać becomes przeczytać?

2.) Do imperfective verbs describe things that occur occasionally, frequently, or not enough?

History / Communal living in Poland [5]

In 1992, I visited Russia in order to visit my aunt. She is from Minsk, Belarus, and her father was a Belorussian nationalist (surprise, surprise, they exist!). She lived in a Kommunalka in St. Petersburg, a communal flat that houses six or seven families, all sharing one kitchen and toilet. And she still lives there, although most tenants own their own rooms, and the older Kommualkas are being demolished to make room for single-room apartments with modern amenities.

Since I have never visited Poland, I was wondering if Warsaw still has Kommunalkas from the Communist years. If so, what are they like inside? Are they as cramped and dimly-lit as the Kommunalkas in St. Petersburg? My aunt's Kommunalka flat was once a hotel for the prosperous, aristocrats. The building, I think, still has chandeliers and door cravings from the late 19th, early 20th century. The revolution in 1917 forced the aristocrats to give up their luxury flats in order to house the "proles" streaming into the city in search of work and food. There are indications on the ceiling of where a wall divided two families. The bathrooms are small, too.

Travel / Museums in Warsaw [8]

Hello everyone,

I am going to be visiting Warsaw this summer and was wondering if anyone knows any interesting historical museums that I could visit. I am interested in Polish history, as well as Poland's role in World War I and II.