Basic Polish: A Grammar and Workbook

by Dana Bielec

Basic Polish presents concise explanations of grammar with related exercises, to build confidence in using the modern language.

Assuming no previous knowledge of Polish, its step-by-step approach guarantees the reader a thorough grounding in the basics of its grammar. Each of the forty units introduces a particular grammar point and provides a variety of exercises to enable the student to practice what they have learnt.

Features include:

* notes on the Polish alphabet, pronunciation and stress
* full answer key to all exercises
* Polish-English glossary.

Dana Bielec is the author of the popular Polish: An Essential Grammar, also published by Routledge.

Genres: Language, Polish Literature

248 pages, Paperback

First published November 22, 2001

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is mainly a workbook, and students are expected to be following some other course to get the bulk of their learning. However, each chapter covers some particular aspect of Polish grammar, and it first briefly summarizes that aspect and provides tables of paradigms before moving on to the exercises. Therefore, a reader who already knows a Slavic language could probably rely mostly on this book together with literature selections and chats with native-speaker friends to learn Polish (that was certainly the case for me, who already spoke fluent Russian).

This first book (it is followed by Intermediate Polish) covers all nominal declension and the present tense of most verbal declensions. It ends just as the past tense is introduced for the verb być ‘to be’. Thus, students won’t get to the imperfective/perfective distinction – always a tricky aspect of Slavic languages – until after this book. In addition, this book contains chapters on telling time, on the months of the year and the seasons, and the use of various prepositions.

An answer key is provided. However, a particularly disappointing aspect of the second edition of this book, published in 2015, is a large amount of typos in the answer key. The author seems to have revised her text without ever going back to check that the answers given match the new questions. Really, to reveal this problem, it would have been enough to ask one learner to work through the new edition before sending it to press.

The author included as an appendix a brief guide "How to learn an inflected language" that seems like it would be useful for those with little or no foreign-language-learning experience. This merited being placed in an introduction where readers would be more likely to notice it.

[Max Stoffel-Rosales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another knockout from Routledge. Lucid, discerning, & to-the-point, this is a text for the serious student.
Be assured that, at the very least, it will put you well beyond the Borat level of speech.

[Nicholas Rybicki-Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would caution anyone who is new to the Polish language against buying this book as a preliminary introduction to the language. Contrary to the books self proclamation that the book is aimed at learners "with no previous knowledge of Polish", it is not. That is a shame because the basic layout of the book has so much potential but sadly it is littered with errors, omissions and inconsistencies which you will only pick up on if you are reasonably familiar with the language. I have been studying the language on and off for a number of years, my wife is a native Polish speaker (first generation) and so is very familiar with the contemporary Polish language and so through my own studies and with the guidance of my wife I have been able to see just how many shortcomings this book has and how instead of helping a raw beginner wanting to follow the tricky path of learning the Polish language it could ultimately lead them down a number of blind alleys! I bought my copy of the book after 2008 by which time it had been re-printed, I understand, six times and so to see the basic mistakes repeated at each re-printing shows a shocking lack in the editing of this book. I suspect it has never been peer reviewed by a native Polish speaker, had it been I think the errors and omissions would have been picked up upon. The book does not warrant the price which is currently being charged by any of the outlets I have seen, in excess of £35 at the time of my writing this review. If you are indeed a beginner I would recommend looking at the courses offered by Supermemo, if you are going it alone (I have no interest in the company) or the "Hurra po polsku!" series of books, ideally with a tutor. There is also a very good but slightly dated (no fault in that) course on the internet produced in the 1990's "Uczyme sie polskiego" on you tube. Good luck with your language learning.

[Luca Campobasso · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jut one thing: Is a very good book, AS REVIEW. If you know nothing about polish and your language is not from slavic family, you will find this book very hard. It's a good companion book as complete grammar.