Polish for your first 48 hours in Poland

Polish decides two things about your first sentence before you get to say it: whether you are a man or a woman, and whether the person in front of you is pan or pani. Both change the letters at the end of a word, and both turn up in the rows you need in the first hour. This page runs the two days in order, from the bus into town to the office on day two, and gives you the Polish for each stop. Every row is quoted from the survive lane of our Polish collection, 204 phrases we wrote and reviewed, with the ticket, the room and the lunch rows taken from the travel lane beside it. There are 40 of them.

The first sentence, and the letters that change if you are a woman

Dopiero przyjechałem. is what a man says. A woman says dopiero przyjechałam, and the same swap runs through the rows you will use most on day one. Polish puts the speaker's gender into the past tense and into polite requests, so the ending of your own sentence depends on who is saying it. Three rows on this page carry that alternative in the margin.

Uczę się polskiego. is the one to say early and often. The note beside that row says what it buys you: people slow down and forgive the grammar. Say it before your first mistake and the mistake stops mattering.

The pair behind it are ordinary. Przepraszam, słabo mówię po polsku. admits the level. Czy mówi pan po angielsku? takes pani when you are speaking to a woman, which is the second thing Polish makes you decide before you open your mouth.

Into the city: the machine, the yellow box and the two prices

Czy ten autobus jedzie do centrum? is the question from the pavement. Once you are aboard, the ticket is a two-step problem no English city prepares you for.

Bilet kupuje się w automacie. is what you get told, and the note under it splits the machines in two: the one on board takes cards only, the one at the stop takes cash as well. Then Czy muszę skasować bilet? For a paper ticket the answer is yes, in the yellow box, and an unvalidated ticket counts as no ticket when an inspector reaches your seat.

Normalny czy ulgowy? comes at every ticket window and it is a price question, full or reduced. Reduced needs a Polish student or senior card, so unless you are holding one the answer is normalny.

The starter, and how you put money on it

Nobody in a Polish phone shop says prepaid SIM. Poproszę starter. is the whole transaction, starter being what the pack is called, and you register it in the shop with your passport in your hand.

Chciałbym doładować telefon. is the top-up, chciałabym if you are a woman, and doładowanie is sold over the counter at any kiosk or corner shop as well as in the app. Nie mam zasięgu. covers the other half of the first day, when the phone is live and the building is concrete.

Złoty, the kantor and the one-word questions at the till

Poland is not on the euro, so money is the first errand. Chciałbym wymienić euro na złotówki. belongs in a kantor, the exchange office, and the note is blunt about which ones: a kantor beats airport rates, and the ones on the main square of a tourist city are worth walking past.

At the till you get asked two things in almost no words. Reklamówkę? is a whole question in one word, meaning do you want a bag, and bags cost extra. Paragon czy faktura? asks receipt or invoice; the invoice is a company document that needs a tax number, so the answer for you is almost always paragon.

Czy jest otwarte w niedzielę? is worth asking about anywhere you are relying on. Most shops are shut on Sundays by law, and a small one where the owner stands at the till can open. Plan the first big shop for Saturday.

Lunch, and the cheap way to eat it

Zestaw dnia, poproszę. is the set lunch, soup and a main, and most places do one at midday for a fraction of the evening price. It is the least demanding thing you will say all day.

Poproszę wodę niegazowaną. asks for still water, because gazowana is sparkling and tap water is rarely offered at all. Say the allergy while you order: Mam alergię na orzechy. is the nut version and the shape carries over to anything else.

Then Poproszę rachunek. for the bill. Four of the rows on this page begin with poproszę and a fifth ends with it, because poproszę is the polite frame for asking for anything in Polish, from a ticket to a painkiller. Learn that one word and a whole class of requests comes with it.

The room, the wifi and the hot water

Mam rezerwację na nazwisko Nowak. is check-in, and na nazwisko means under the surname. Jakie jest hasło do wifi? follows it everywhere, in a hotel and in a flat.

Something is wrong with the room and in Poland it is usually the water or the heating. Nie ma ciepłej wody. and Ogrzewanie nie działa. are the pair. The second one hands you a frame worth more than the sentence: nie działa attaches to anything, so the lift, the lock, the intercom and the card reader all take the same two words.

Something is broken in the flat

Coś się zepsuło w mieszkaniu. is the opening line to a landlord, vague on purpose, and you follow it with the specific thing. Cieknie kran. is two words for a leaking tap, with the verb standing in front of the noun.

Kiedy przyjdzie hydraulik? is the one that gets a date out of the conversation. Asking when the plumber is coming turns a reported problem into somebody's appointment, and it is a better second sentence than repeating the first one louder.

The pharmacy at nine, and the prescription on your phone

Gdzie jest apteka? finds one. Czy jest apteka całodobowa? asks for the one still open, całodobowa meaning round the clock.

Inside, Poproszę coś na ból głowy. is the frame for every complaint you will have: coś na, something for, then the part of you that hurts. Swap ból głowy for kaszel and you have asked for cough medicine. Czy to jest na receptę? asks whether it needs a prescription at all, which decides whether your evening ends here or at a doctor tomorrow.

The Polish system has moved to prescriptions on the phone, so Mam receptę w telefonie. is a sentence you will need if a doctor has already seen you. The note on that row explains what the pharmacist wants: the four-digit code together with your PESEL number, or the scannable code on the screen, which spares you reading a long number aloud in a queue.

112, 999, and the call you hope not to make

Proszę wezwać pogotowie. asks somebody else to call the ambulance, and the note on it carries both numbers: 112 reaches everything, 999 is the medical line only. Reading a row once now is worth more than finding it later.

To nagły wypadek. opens the call. Ktoś jest ranny. says why the vehicle is needed. Neither is long, and that is the point of an emergency phrase: short enough to say while your hands are shaking.

Ukradli mi telefon. is the everyday version of the same shock, and it takes you to a police station instead. Say it in the past and plural, literally they stole me the phone, which is how Polish reports a theft without naming who did it.

Day two: the office, the ticket machine and the number they ask for

Chcę się zameldować. is the sentence at the counter. Meldunek means registering your address at the local office, and that is exactly as much as our note claims. Who has to do it, by when, and what it depends on are set by rules that change, and the note points at gov.pl for the current version, which is where you should look before you go.

Czy potrzebuję numeru PESEL? belongs in the same conversation. PESEL is a personal identification number that appears on a great many Polish forms, from a doctor's desk to a bank. Our note says to ask whether it is required for your situation, and we are deliberately leaving it there, because your situation is one we cannot see.

Two rows make the morning survivable. Jakie dokumenty są potrzebne? asked by phone before you travel saves the visit you would otherwise make twice. Proszę pobrać numerek. is the instruction you will hear inside the door: every office and bank runs on numbered tickets from a machine on the wall, so the crowd of people sitting down is not a queue and standing behind them achieves nothing.

One more row belongs to any form you fill in. Ulica Długa pięć, mieszkanie dwanaście. is how a Polish address is spoken, street then building then flat, and it is written Długa 5/12 with a slash. That slash is the part a courier and an office both read.

Where a list stops helping

The honest weakness of a Polish phrase list is the endings. Every row here is fixed in one shape, and Polish moves nouns through seven cases, so the moment you swap a word inside a sentence the ending should change and you will not know how. We accept that on purpose: a beginner who says the wrong case is understood, and a beginner waiting to learn the case system before speaking says nothing for a year.

Fatigue is the second one. By the fourth conversation of a first day your ear stops finding the gaps between words, and Polish consonant clusters give it very little to hold onto. Short rows help a little. They do not repair an ear that has quit, so the office visit belongs to the morning.

The third is the counter that wants a document nobody mentioned. No sentence here fixes that, and if we rebuilt the survive lane the row we would add is the one for the moment somebody hands you a form in Polish and you cannot read a line of it.

Making it stick

Say the rows for tomorrow's first errand out loud on the way there, under your breath, until the shape of each one sits in your mouth. A cashier standing in front of you tests something a page never does.

Vocabcord does the repeating for you, one phrase at a time. The phone goes on the charger and you hear the Polish, a pause, the English, a pause, the Polish again, as long as the Shortcuts automation is set up and the platform lets the sound out. A weighted sampler picks the entry, leaning towards what you have not heard for a while, and it claims nothing about your recall. The case for hanging vocabulary on the charger is made in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail.

These collections live as web pages first and become app packs with text-to-speech audio afterwards, with no date attached. The six lists and the method behind them are on The Vocabcord 500, and the Polish list in full, travel and work lanes included, is The 500 Polish phrases you actually need.

Common questions

What do you say in Polish when you have just arrived?

A man says Dopiero przyjechałem. and a woman says dopiero przyjechałam. Follow it with Uczę się polskiego. which tells people to slow down, and keep Przepraszam, słabo mówię po polsku. for the moment somebody answers at full speed anyway.

Do you have to validate a bus or tram ticket in Poland?

For a paper ticket, yes. Ask Czy muszę skasować bilet? and stamp it in the yellow box on board, because an unvalidated ticket counts as no ticket when an inspector checks. You will also hear Bilet kupuje się w automacie. The machine on board takes cards only; the one at the stop takes cash too.

What is the emergency number in Poland?

112 reaches everything and 999 is the medical line on its own. If somebody else can dial, say Proszę wezwać pogotowie. Pogotowie is the ambulance service. On the call, To nagły wypadek. and Ktoś jest ranny. are the two sentences that matter first.

How do you buy a prepaid SIM card in Polish?

Ask for a starter. Poproszę starter. is what people actually say, and the shop registers the card against your passport there and then. Topping it up later is Chciałbym doładować telefon. with chciałabym if you are a woman, and doładowanie is sold at kiosks and corner shops as well as in the app.