The Polish language is a member of the Western Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages. It is easiest to learn if one already knows some other related language.

Flag of Poland

The most closely related are other Western Slavic languages: Czech, Slovak, Silesian, Kashubian and Sorbian. More distant are the Southern and Eastern Slavic languages like Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Russian, Ukrainian, Belorusian, respectively.

Polish is spoken by a total of approximately 40 million people, making it the second most widely spoken Slavic language in the world, after Russian. Speakers of related languages can pick it up without much effort.

Someone who doesn't speak any Slavic language, but speaks some other Indo-European language, may still find many similarities between Polish grammar and the grammar of that language, as well as many similar words.

This Wikibook is designed for anyone who wants to learn the basics of the Polish language. It is suitable for beginners and those who have been learning the language for a few years.

Table of contents

 
Market square of Kraków

Lesson 1

  1. Polish pronunciation
  2. Basic grammar
  3. Some useful expressions
  4. Introductions
  5. List of words (Lista słów)

Lesson 2

  1. More on nouns - genders
  2. Order of words in a sentence
  3. Plural
  4. Noun cases (declensions)
  5. Cześć! Jak się masz?

Lesson 3

  1. Conjugations of common verbs
  2. Adjectives

Lesson 4

  1. Grouping expressions
  2. Questions
  3. Verbs
  4. Na kursie

Lesson 5

  1. Conversation in Polish
  2. Vocabulary

Lesson 6

  1. Declension

Grammar

  1. Present tense (czas teraźniejszy)
  2. Past tense (czas przeszły)
  3. Future tense (czas przyszły)
  4. Conditional mood (tryb przypuszczający)
  5. Imperative mood (tryb rozkazujący)

Grammar 2

  1. Nouns - Gender (Rzeczowniki - Rodzaj)
  2. Nouns - Number (Rzeczowniki - Liczba)
  3. Pronouns (Zaimki)
  4. Possessive pronouns (Zaimki dzierżawcze)
  5. Nouns - Gender II (Rzeczowniki - Rodzaj II)
  6. Adjectives (Przymiotniki)
  7. Nouns - Number II (Rzeczowniki - Liczba II)
  8. Verbs (Czasowniki)


This document was originally copyright 2002 Tomasz Węgrzanowski & Anna (grammar) <taw@users.sf.net>

It may be distributed under terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Since its original writing, it has been edited and redistributed on Wiktionary and, currently, Wikibooks.

See also

Further reading

  • Sadowska, Iwona (2012). Polish: A Comprehensive Grammar. Oxford; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-47541-9.