monaubergine Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5848 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 1 of 7 14 December 2008 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
Does anyone know of any helpful books, websites, etc. for learning Polish? I'm at a beginner level.
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rlf1810 Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6346 days ago 122 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, German, Slovak
| Message 2 of 7 14 December 2008 at 2:27pm | IP Logged |
Hello,
When I studied Polish, I used Oscar Swan's good (and free) course at http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/
Also, if you are a fan of the method, there is a Pimsleur course available for Polish.
That would be enough to get you started. Good luck with this interesting and difficult language!
-Robert
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monaubergine Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5848 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 3 of 7 21 December 2008 at 9:46am | IP Logged |
That course is extremely helpful, especially on a budget. Thanks!
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sotong Newbie Australia Joined 5834 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Indonesian, Mandarin, Polish
| Message 4 of 7 21 December 2008 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
I'm not sure if your Polish is basic enough to warrant this suggestion, but I can personally recommend Michel Thomas Foundation Polish if you are still in the early stages. The method does sound a bit gimmicky, but having worked through MT French, I had a solid command of French verb patterns. I'm currently going through the Polish course, and it gives a similar overview of the grammatical structure of the language, although very little vocabulary to accompany it. It might ease you in gently to a more structured course such as the Oscar Swan, particularly as I find the grammar of the Slavic languages to be a bit of an oddity.
Hope I won't get banned for this (!), but the MT course is available on several BitTorrent trackers if you just want to see how appropriate it would be before purchasing.
Volte, a highly accomplished language learner on these forums, also found great success in acquiring a passive knowledge of Polish using the "L-R method" in addition to some good old-fashioned reference grammars. You might want to do a forum search to investigate.
Good luck with your Polish!
Edited by sotong on 21 December 2008 at 7:22pm
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sotong Newbie Australia Joined 5834 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Indonesian, Mandarin, Polish
| Message 5 of 7 21 December 2008 at 7:25pm | IP Logged |
I just read your language profile properly and discovered that you speak French! In that case, you could do worse than to try Assimil's Le polonais sans peine. I have not used this course myself as my French is lacklustre, but many swear by the Assimil courses on these forums, and the English-base French course, which I have used, is solid.
Le polonais sans peine seems to get favourable reviews on Amazon.fr.
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andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7083 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French
| Message 6 of 7 22 December 2008 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
Indeed.. Le Polonais is good; typical of Assimil. An older course is Mowimy po Polsku, which I love, although the recordings are sometimes annoyingly slow, etc. And there is Linguaphone, which you can often find on ebay for $10-20.
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stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin
| Message 7 of 7 22 December 2008 at 7:21am | IP Logged |
I would recommend 'Polish in 4 Weeks: An Intensive Course in Basic Polish' Ignore the title as it will take you more than 4 weeks to work through properly. It has about 30 chapters each with dialogues accompanied by a translation. It comes with a CD, the actors speak clearly and with good diction. Grammar is introduced systematically and in nice digestable chunks and then there are several exercises. It also gives you a good vocabulary.
Another nice book for beginners is Powiedz to po polsku/Say it the Polish way. It also comes with a CD and is useful for learning basic speaking and listening skills.
Edited by stelingo on 22 December 2008 at 7:22am
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