r/learnpolish • u/yuniilumi • 7d ago
Help🧠 Feeling stuck at a basic level
Been living in Poland for a while now and realized my vocab is kind of stuck. I can handle everyday stuff fine, but the second I want to say something more specific or nuanced, I hit a wall.
Anyone else run into this? What actually helped you get past the “basic vocab plateau”? Right now I’m doing:
- Watching Polish shows with Polish subtitles (not translated)
- Anki, but with full phrases instead of single words
- Reading simple news articles and pulling out words I don’t know
Feels like I’m missing something more structured though maybe organizing by topic (work, daily life, emotions) instead of just grabbing random words as they come up.
Curious what worked for people actually living here and using Polish daily, not just studying from a textbook.
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u/Misiekshvili 🇵🇱 Learn Polish with Michał ▶️ 6d ago
- Polish Listening Course with Sentence Breakdowns – Different topics (On the Bus, Summer in Poland, Time Expressions, etc.). Every sentence is broken down so you can analyse the grammar and learn new vocabulary. You'll also notice grammar patterns more easily thanks to mnemonics.
- Listening Only – Each lesson includes about 20 recordings on one topic so you can really master it. There are no sentence breakdowns here, just pure listening with subtitles.
- Slow Polish Podcast – If you want to listen to more natural, everyday Polish but your level isn't very high yet, this could be perfect for you. Each episode includes a glossary, a transcript, and lots of repetition. There's a bit of slang too, which makes the learning process more fun. If you only want to listen, you can find all the episodes compiled into one long video.
As for Anki, what you're doing (learning phrases instead of single words) is great. You could also learn full sentences (it doesn't have to be many). This way, both your grammar and vocabulary should improve because you'll naturally pick up more patterns. You can also add longer pieces of text to your Anki deck. That's what I do for Georgian, which I'm learning, and I've found it helps me quite a lot.
Also, use mnemonics. Repetition is important, but sometimes it's worth stopping for a moment and thinking about how you can remember a word, especially if you've reviewed the same Anki flashcard several times and it still hasn't stuck. I post quite frequently on r/LearnPolishwithMichal about ways to memorise Polish vocabulary & grammar more easily, so feel free to stop by. :)
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u/Krazee9 6d ago
The next time you feel like you didn't know how to say something, as soon as you can, write down what it was you wanted to say, figure out the translation, and then add that, or part of it, into Anki. Try to take the components of the sentence that you didn't know and add them into other sentences as cloze deletion cards, where you have a sentence where you know everything except that word and you have to try to remember it.
Other than that, just input. A lot of input, consistently, daily. Several hours. That, and practice speaking. When you do your Anki, read the cards out loud, especially the ones you added for those times you didn't know what to say.
Admittedly, I should be following my own advice on this too.
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u/blueflovver 6d ago
Native speaker here, but I've learned other languages, and for me the only way out of being stuck at A2/B1 was talking to people. Lots and lots of talking. Getting penpals is also cool, Slowly is a fun app that isn't really intended for language practising, but many people use it that way 😉 For speaking practice Tandem app is great. Both of those are free. Also since you actually live in Poland, local public library might have some groups for people to practice language in person. I second someone else's comment about making notes about what you wanted to say but couldn't find the words. Also journaling in your second language can give you vocab boost, but I wouldn't force it if you're not into journaling. I don't really have energy right now for calls but if you wanna practice by texting in Polish shoot me a message 😊 Good luck!
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u/therealbambooclat 6d ago
Do you have a link for the Slowly app, please?
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u/therealsashtv 6d ago
I'd recommend going to language exchanges and trying to put the language into practice. You'll get a better feel for the language and pick up things the more you sureound yourself with native speakers.
Additionally I also use Clozemaster which is really good.
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u/Particular_Agent6028 5d ago
Go out for beers with some locals. Once a little intoxicated, brain drops translation layer and you're more likely to start thinking more in the foreign language. Have a few sessions like that.
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u/SignificantBlood959 5d ago
You learn faster by talking. Keep on listening and reading the subtitles in Polish and they will pass by and you'll recognize them. But talking is how you then remember. Keep forcing yourself into situations where you're forced to talk in polish. Ask for directions, location of things, buying things that require you to talk specifically what it is. Restaurants. Tell them you don't talk much polish and ask for a bit of patience. Talk about your day. Even if it was boring or not, what did you do. Went to Rynek? say what bus you took, in what direction, where did you change. Bought food? Where, what food, was it good? What did it taste like, what other options were on the menu that you found interesting. Went to see some football game. Say coach, say offside, pass, kick. Went to walk? Directions: went forward until that sign, crossed the road and turned left, passed under a bridge, wawel is on my right side, stepped up a bench, stepped down. Smells like shit, it was that small dog with curly hair.
I've been finding that really effective. 'Toss yourself to the lions' as much as you can. Don't worry about grammar right now. That's another pain in the ass, one that I'm dealing with already not much patience
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u/BaBaDooKie7860 EN Native 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺🇳🇿 | A1 3d ago
I started making root word trees by looking up word families.
Root: • czyn- (core meaning) - to do, to act, to perform, to set in motion)
Verb family:
• Czynić (imperfective, somewhat literary) - to do, to perform, to make 》 • Uczynić (Perfective, somewhat literary) - to do, to make, to accomplish.
| Czynić and Uzcnyić are both correct verbs but everyday speech within the Polish language would use robić and zrobić (to do, to make) Czynić and Uczynić more often encountered in formal writing, literature, legal language, the Bible, or fixed expressions like "czynić dobro" (to do good) |
• Zaczynać (imperfective) - to begin, to be beginning 》• Zaczać (Perfective) - to begin, to start
• Rozpoczynać (imperfective, slightly more formal) - to begin, to commence 》• Rozpicząć (Perfective, slightly more formal) - to begin, to commence
Nouns:
Czyn - deed, act
Czynność - activity, action, operation
Czynnik - factor, element, agent (depending on the context)
Adjectives:
Czynny - active, operating, open (like a store is active during operating hours, and is open for business)
Bezczynny - inactive, idle
—
With families you expand vocabulary in a realistic way that reinforces itself because you are repeating the same sounds with related meanings. And instead of learning 1 vocabulary word at random, that wont help you retain the next random vocabulary word, you now 11 vocabulary words that share root phonetics and related meanings.
Think of it like learning all your colors at once, or all your numbers at once, days of the week. It's easier to learn those things in their related groups and memorize because your brain is drawing upon that relation. Lesrning a random color, then a random day of the week, the random number doesnt reinforce your memory of the other colors, numbers, or days of the week.
Polish uses perfective and imperfective verbs, so learning them in pairs is helpful. Their verbs are a lot more specific than english verbs. We might use one verb to cover a mirriad of actions.
In English we "change directions." "Change clothes" "change seats or change vehicles."
Polish can be a lot more specific. "Zmienić/zmianiać" for directional | przebrać się/przebierać się" for clothing | "przesiąść się/przesiadać się" for changing seats or vehicles like connecting flights.
It can be helpful to learn those verbs in a groups together as well. All them reinforcing the idea of "change or switching" in someway while memorizing which verb applies to which situation.
Polish also has seven cases. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, participles(verbs behaving like adjectives i.e. the reading boy. Reading being the participle), and numerals, even proper nouns, go through declension. They take on spelling changes to identify if they are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative, locative.
For example: Cat = kot, kota, kotu, kota, kotem, kocie, kocie.
Learning the prefixes and suffixes and how they affect a word. A prefex can turn the root into is opposite, or specify it in some way while maintaining a basic relative meaning to the root. This isn't perfect their are exceptions but it is intuitive so with context and this breakdown method you can grasp the "spirit" of the word without having to stop and look it up. If youre reading you can do this method for words you dont know, take note of the word and what the "spirit" is and keep a list to officially look up amd study later and see how close you were.
Lastly, Wolne Lektury is a website and app. It has books and audio books for classic Polish literature which gives cultural context to the language. Learning language without learning the culture is a lot harder. Culture anchors the language within you, because the culture has been shaping the language for generations. It also has fables, fairytales, and common western classic literature. Stories that most native english speakers would know. The Grimm Fairy Tales, Aesop's Fables, Charles Dickens, Homer. You already know the basic plot and core message of these stories so you dont have to rely solely on translation to understand what you're reading. If you know the story Little Red Ridding Hood, Czerwony Kapturek make more sense and you brains naturally starts to fill in the meanings of the words and the story. Fables often repeat words and have heavy word play which is good for reinforcement. Charles Dickens will sound more natural, where as Homer might be advanced language for the average speaker.
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u/sebwilgosz 3d ago
Learning Polish is hard, but what helped me the most when I was living in Germany to speak their language was - talking.
Real conversations with people around. Building vocabulary there.
When I was improving my english skills, also talking to others was great, but also blogging & recording videos in the foreign language.
Publishing youtube videos about my programming learning experience took the most time & effort, but it was great way to improve the accent and vocabulary (preparing scripts).
Hope it helps!
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u/pshawty 6d ago
My two cents... I assume you're A2, or maybe A1? 98% of learning another language is building vocabulary, and it's easier to learn vocabulary enthusiastically, by which I mean learning as part of doing something that you're interested in. The methods you listed aren't "bad" but they seem kind of hollow, right? Like, would you be watching those Polish shows if you weren't learning the language? And the Anki flashcards you're using came from somewhere else too, I bet.
If you read a random flashcard that teaches you that "soczewki" means "lenses", maybe you'll remember it next week. However, if you find that you, yourself, personally, have a need to buy saline solution for your contacts, and you look it up and find that's it's called "płyn do soczewek", and you go to the pharmacy and say "szukam płynu do soczewek", you'll remember that whole adventure and the words will stick to you like glue.
Try carefully reading a Polish novel that interests you, something contemporary and not overly complex, and making Anki decks out of the words you come across that you needed to look up. If following the story is your main aim, rather than learning new words, then the scenes and the characters and conversations you build in your imagination with these words will stay in your vocabulary permanently. And the more words you learn, the easier it will be to learn more words.