Question about grammar books

Hello, I am a new member to this forum and have just started trying to learn Polish. I saw on a previous thread (polishforums.com/archives/2010-2019/language/difficult-verb-pairs-isc-80046/) that DominicB sayed


I have Iwona Sadowska's Polish A Comprehensive Grammar, and would like to ask, to anyone who has experience with grammar books, if this would suffice and compares at all to the book given above, or if I should just by the other one instead. Thanks a million in advance!

Why waste your time with outdated books when there are excellent internet choices like babbel.com

Use your mic on the computer to practice with the program or find a Polish wife.

I feel sorry for you already...

I was born in Poland and lived there for 24 years. When I need to write in Polish, I use English and Google translate.


...or go to Polish prison. Some say it feels the same...

Na, the food cant be as good. The worst thing would be having to listen to Polish being spoken all day long. It gives you a headache after awhile. Not as bad as listening to a British accent though, its sounds like they have marbles in their mouths when they speak.

My recommendation would be an older book that isn't a reference grammar but does a pretty good job of explaining structures in plain language

Teach Yourself Polish, by Polish, by M. Corbridge-Patkaniowska (not the later revised version by a different author which is... not so good).

The biggest problem is that some of the vocabulary is outdated (nobody uses pióro for pen anymore...) and so is a lot of the phrasing ('transposition of endings' was still a going concern when the book was published but all but vanished from modern spoken Polish).

Still, it's very good at explaining things step by step in a pretty accessible way.

Sorry but not true. The word is still used it's just that people nowadays usually use ballpoint pens (dlugopis) and not fountain pen (pióro) so it's not used often.

The book doesn't actually explain the difference (just has 'pen' as the translation and długopis is nowhere to be found IIRC).

It did lead to me, more than once, asking someone in a store for a pen only to be told they didn't sell any (while standing in front of about a thousand pens).

I figured it out but... still.... not fun memories....

Nobody needs grammar books.

Kids speak and read very well at 10 without them.

Sadowska is nearly as comprehensive as Brooks published by Mouton in the late 80s.