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Product Description
Product Description
Polish can be a difficult language to master. It is pronounced phonetically and has several unique characters in its alphabet, but with Polish For Dummies in hand, you′ll find yourself speaking like a local in no time. Packed with practical lessons, handy cultural facts, and essential references (including a Polish–English mini–dictionary and lists of common verbs), this guide is specially designed to get you speaking Polish with confidence. With advice on speaking Polish within the construction, teaching, and public sector industries, this book is a truly practical tool for anyone wanting to speak the language either professionally or socially.
- Includes sections dedicated to Polish in action, Polish on the go, and Polish in the workplace
- A companion audio CD contains Polish conversations spoken by native Polish speakers in a variety of everyday contexts, perfect for learning Polish on the go
- A Polish–English dictionary is included to provide quick access to the most common words
With easy–to–follow instruction and exercises that give you the language to communicate during day–to–day experiences, readers of Polish For Dummies will learn the words and verbal constructions they need to communicate with friends and colleagues at home, find directions on holiday, and more.
From the Back Cover
The fast and informal way to learn to speak Polish
Packed with practical lessons, cultural facts and handy references, this book gets you up and running with everything you need to start speaking Polish with confidence. Whether you want to chat with Polish friends at home or find a Thai restaurant while in Krakow, this easy–to–use book and audio CD help you wrap your tongue (and your head) around this tricky language in no time.
Jump in with both feet – start off with a quick primer on Polish pronunciation, grammar basics and the use of accents and inflections
Hit the ground running – practise speaking Polish in real–world situations
Take it on the road – be a confident visitor to Poland – from taking in a museum to getting through Customs; checking into a hotel to ordering a meal
Get down to business – get a handle on Polish business–speak and the specialised language of Polish office and worksite culture
Polish your Polish – sharpen your conversational Polish skills with the help of ′Talkin′ the Talk′ dialogues strategically placed throughout the book
Bonus CD includes
Over 30 Polish dialogues to help you get used to spoken Polish and perfect your pronunciation.
Featuring a host of everyday words, sentences and conversations to speak aloud, this CD is an essential companion to the book.
Open the book and find:
The essentials of Polish pronunciation and grammar
Greetings, introductions, small talk and basic everyday conversation
All the Polish that travellersneed to know
Fun facts about Poland and Polish culture
Ways to speak Polish quickly
Phrases that make you sound fluent in Polish
Polish/English mini–dictionary
Lists of Polish verbs with conjugations
Learn to:
Speak Polish on the go in a variety ofeveryday situations
Communicate confidently in Polish
Get to grips with Polish grammar and vocabulary
Perfect your pronunciation with the audio CD
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Customer Reviews
The book is clearly very focused on improving your conversation, rather than filled with grammar drills. Learning the Polish grammar, being as it is among the most complicated European languages, can be a daunting task. The author took the approach to introduce the correct forms of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc indirectly through dialogues and practical phrases that are useful in everyday conversations, rather than by making you memorise large tables of endings, which is common in some other Polish textbooks. I personally think that this was a brilliant decision. There is, obviously, an introductory chapter which covers the essentials of Polish grammar, as well as endings tables where necessary - however vast majority of the content of the book consists of conversations and phrases. Also the book is organized into chapters, each covering a different aspect of conversation, for example Talking on the phone, or Planning a trip. So you end up learning the grammar while focusing on the practical conversation skills.
Every Polish phrase is provided with a pronunciation transcript. The conversations in the book are also included on a CD that comes with the book, so you can use either the transcripts or the audio tracks to get an idea of how the text of a dialogue would be pronounced by a Polish speaker.
There are also numerous boxes describing various aspects of Polish culture throughout the book which I found very useful.
Overall, a very useful book with a heavy emphasis on the practical conversation skills. Recommended.
I will make no bones about it though, Polish is a very difficult language to learn if you are starting from scratch. Some of the pronounciation is nigh on impossible even though the book does spell it out for you in an easy way. Like another reviewer mentioned, there are several different letters in the Polish alphabet, including a 'hard' L. Which as this reviewer pointed out is pronounced like a 'wooh'. My surname (or at least the start of it has this 'hard' L in it). It is good to remember too that although there is a 'W' in Polish , it is pronounced as you would a 'V'. So Warsawa in effects becomes Varsava. This always tripped my Papa up with things like Vilkinson Svord (Wilkinson Sword). However, I shouldn't knock a man who could speak 6 languages pretty fluently.
Fortunately the book doesn't bog you down with grammar which is a relief in itself. It is also divided into easy and helpful sections. I don't think a total beginner would come out of this speaking fluent Polish but it would certainly give the reader a good working knowledge of this unique language. The CD is very helpful particularly regarding pronounciation.
I would say to anyone thinking of buying this book,'do'. It gives you the main essentials for getting by in Poland and from here you could go on to learn even more from say a Polish email friend or even (how old fashioned) a pen pal.
The layout of the book supports a practical, communicative approach to learning Polish, being divided into situational and topic-based chapters. These are based broadly on the kinds of real situations a visitor to Poland would need to cope with, such as eating out, planning travel and so on. But there's also a good mix of conversational topics in there, so you'll learn how to talk about yourself, your hobbies and so on. As such it should be excellent support for someone studying for foundation exams in Polish, such as GCSE, as well as travellers wanting to learn enough to get by.
As well as the audio CD, all the words and phrases in the book are printed with very clear guides to pronunciation, including word stress. It's a great support for learning the sounds of Polish letters, and giving the learner a bit more confidence in speaking the words.
It's also useful that the book demystifies grammatical terms and some of the grammatical novelties of Polish very early on - not by smothering the reader in grammar straight away, but by simply explaining the terms and the peculiarities of Polish compared to English (such as the case system and the perfective-imperfective verb system). This is a great way of setting the reader up for a better grasp of the points when they're explained more fully later on. Thankfully, there's enough grammar in the rest of the book to give the learner a strong, constructive ability in the language. You won't be simply learning phrases parrot-fashion as with some beginner's courses - but at the same time, it's done in enough of a softly-softly manner as to be as painless as possible.
In short, Polish for Dummies is a great language course which won't overwhelm, but likewise, will build the committed learner up to a very decent foundation standard.
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