Poland Survival Guide

Just dropped in on British in Poland. The whole blog is a practical guide as to how to cope with living in Poland long-term. Ideal for anyone intending to work or settle in Poland long-term and new to Polish bureaucracy. The section on learning Polish from scratch, Polish language books and websites, is practical and informative.

I have been asked a couple of times how I learnt Polish – basically I taught myself (and am still going of course!). I already had a good understanding of grammar from studying German and dabbling with Latin, so was happy with things like cases and tenses etc.. Therefore I just got myself a couple of books, found a course on the Internet, and went from there.

I tried learning Polish from zero when I was still in the UK but without much luck. Now, a couple of years later, there are more resources available including evening classes…

As everyone says, there is nothing like being in the country to help you learn. Obviously the more enveloped you are in the language the better. But even this ranges – I know some people who live and work with English speakers and don’t bother to learn Polish at all. At the other end of the scale, I was thrown in at the deep-end because I rarely have contact with English speakers, and I have only got Polish TV. It was tough at the start but was worth the extra effort.

I’m by no means an expert, but my advice to anyone starting to learn Polish is this – THE FIRST 100 WORDS ARE THE HARDEST – KEEP GOING!