English-Polish tests

The following "tests" may be useful to any beginners learning Polish.

goethe-verlag.com/tests/EO/EO.HTM

Also if there are any Polish people learning English, follow the link "back to languages" on the test page and, you can then, change the tests to Polish-English or most other European languages.

just tried that its very good....thank you

Great site, thanks Vincent! x

Great site..... Thank you it all helps!! :-D

A very nice find - just downloading it now.
All those languages, hey, it's got finnish too - I'm in language heaven :D

Thanks guys. Glad that you are finding it useful.

I must admit, I'm finding it a bit addictive, but it is a good way to find out how sentences are constructed. I have just been learning polish for three months now and, my average correct words in the first 20 tests is only 5. I did manage to complete one and, have a few 8's and 10's. It's the different endings for words, that's seems to catch me out.

Still it is a good learning tool and, hopefully in another 3 months my average will be much better. I wonder how many words, you guys are getting correct?

These tests are not completely correct. The first easy test is definetly slightly broken- there is suich word as 'paierosy' in Polish.
Some phrases are, hmmmm..., strange. For example (a- advanced, e- easy):
test a-23: 'zarabiać majątek', 'na brzegu ulicy'- you won't ever hear that.
test a-77: 'przychodzić na świat' is a description of ongoing action (substitute for continuous tense), so I'd rather say 'przyjść na świat',
test a-38: there is no 'być przy władzy', 'być u władzy' is the correct form, there is no 'biędę' in Polish; should be 'biedę',

test a-72: "ta sala pomieści 90 osób' is somewhat speculative statement- well, it will, but you might need to squeeze them a bit- drop the 'po' and you're OK (well, you have tested that and you're sure it will).

test e-56: I'd recommend _not_ to say "Płacić!" in this situation, unless you want to be considered quite rude; I'd rather say 'Poproszę rachunek',

test e-83: "rozumie niemiecki" -> "rozumie po niemiecku"/"zna niemiecki", unless you want to point that it's _him_, who knows German, you can drop 'on'.

Please, don't treat those tests as beeing 100% accurate, but on the whole- they are good. OK, I might be picky... :)

Thanks for taking the time and pointing out these mistakes.

You're welcome. I just did some tests in random, so the list is far from complete :).

i love this test.... im awful at it but its still great thanks :)

Test your level of Polish with this online test!

Test your level of Polish with this online test!

This test is hard enough I thought, I got 59%.

transparent.com/learn-polish/proficiency-test.html

I thought my polish was better but only scored 53% despite nearly 20 years speaking polish did score slightly better at dutch with 58%. and still classed as a beginner : (

you have made my day! this is a godsend for me. have just done test number 1 and all of it was correct, however i seriously had to think about it, because yes its always the endings that get me every time.am sort of looking forward to test numer 2.....but this is the easy section...


no probs here either.dont think i will look at advanced anytime soon though!

I wanted to check the tests but I can't find the above examples in test number a-23. Have they changed them?

'Zarabiać majątek' is good, be it as colloquial as it is, and 'zarabiać krocie' is heard more often.
'Na brzegu ulicy' is indeed strange. 'Na skraju ulicy' would be proper. Na brzegu: rzeki, jeziora, morza. Na skraju: miasta, lasu, pola.

Can't imagine why they would be changed, but all the other examples the particular poster you quoted gave also don't correspond to the test numbers given. Very strange.

Glad this thread has re-emerged though as I'd forgotten about these tests. Have to have another bash as it's been a long time since I had a go at them.

I've only found this thread recently. I must say the tests are quite difficult, even at the e (easy) level. I was checking them for Polish as well as for Dutch my knowledge of which I may compare to the knowledge of Polish among the non-Polish members of PF.

In general, I think those tests often need some detailed knowledge of the language.

How accurate do you find them? I don't want to spend a lot of my time going through them if they are riddled with mistakes because that's defeating the object.


I randomly picked easy test number 85, and got 12 out of 15. I wouldn't say my Polish is particularly good either.
I would say though that if you have a good vocabulary and reasonable knowledge of verbs, you should be able to get a fair few right, and then the rest is guesswork.

I hope these tests are fairly accurate because it would be quite easy to learn from the mistakes.
Don't dare look at the advanced ones yet though.

The tests show accurate, typical and natural language "scenes", so they are really good from this point of view. In number e-85:

- line 7 and 9 can be difficult (the answer requires perhaps what I referred to as 'detailed knowledge of the language');
- line 11 : when you read the English 'to live in the town', you may automatically try to put 'żyć' rather than 'mieszkać';
- line 13 : ambiguous, you may also use the genetive here.
- line 15 : today you can often hear 'coś' in place of 'czegoś', but only the latter is correct;

No mistakes in test e-85 except for one letter lacking in line 13 (próbwać --> próbować).

Next time try test a-2. I've just had trouble with two lines (succeeded only at the third go in both of them), and I couldn't find the answer to line 7.

Overall very good tests, however in the p.2:


I never heard this term - "żywa ulica"
In Polish more appropriate and common saying is "ruchliwa ulica"

Great, I'll have a go at a few when I'm on here then.


I got 7,8 and 9 wrong.


I didn't, I automatically thought to put mieszkać.


Just done this. I got 13 out of 15, although a couple I had to guess at. I failed on questions 4 and 7.

Thanks very much for your help Ziemowit.


This is the problem that a learner of Polish will have. I had to pick 'ulica' from the list as it obviously means 'street', and that was the easy part. Unless I know for sure the particular phrase, how am I supposed to know whether the rest of the sentence is accurate as I asked Ziemowit? Maybe the pitfall of these tests is that they will contain phrases/words not commonly used.

Is żywa not grammatically correct then?

'Żywa' is gramatically correct, but not appropriate to describe a street. The appropriate word would be 'ruchliwa'. We use phrases like 'żywy oddźwięk' or 'żywe zainteresowanie', but both imply the human force behind them, whereas 'ulica' is a material thing though frequented by people. There is a problem with this English phrase 'busy street' in other languages, too. I once accompanied a French woman around Warsaw and at one point I said to her in English: 'the streets are very busy today'. Then I asked her how she would say this sentence in French to which question she thought for a while and said: 'I really don't know'. She was probably trying to rely on the English word 'busy' while searching for the matching adjective in French in the context of 'street'. Then on refelection, and forgetting English for a while, she said: 'Les rues sont très animées'. She wouldn't say 'ocupées' which is a proper translation for 'busy' in other contexts, but not in this one. A similar story in Polish: 'ruchliwa ulica' rather than 'żywa ulica'.

But in this case it's just a quiz, and you can only use the answers already set out at the top of the page. Mieszkać the verb (to live) is the perfect fit. It is much harder translating English into Polish and sometimes it doesn't appear to be exact. Could be the same for Polish people translating into English. I had a look at test e-85, and from the index changed the language to Polish into English, and it only took me a couple of minutes to complete the test. Although the answers were grammatically correct, I felt there could have been a better/different choice, which would make the answers seem more natural.

Ok, thanks for that Ziemowit.
I think these tests will be generally good but as with this example, there is always going to be the problem of words /phrases which don't translate well into other languages. I am surprised that 'ruchliwa' wasn't given as an option tbh if this is the more appropriate word. However it's just a quiz!