Colloquial Polish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) [Paperback]

Bolesaw W. Mazur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0415157528 | ISBN-13: 978-0415157520 | Edition: 2nd

This new edition of the best-selling Polish course for beginners has been completely rewritten to make learning the language easier and more enjoyable than before.

Written by an experienced teacher and author, Colloquial Polish offers a step-by-step approach to the language as it is spoken and written today. No previous knowledge of Polish is required.

Features include:
* Lively dialogues
* Lots of exercises with full answer key
* Jargon-free grammar notes and a quick reference grammar
* Extensive Polish-English and English-Polish word lists

With all the language support you'll need, Colloquial Polish will soon have you speaking, reading and writing Polish with confidence.

Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack. Recorded by native speakers, this will help you with your pronunciation and listening skills.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Polish

About the Author

Boleslaw Mazur teaches at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2nd edition (October 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415157528
• ISBN-13: 978-0415157520
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #354,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > More Languages > Polish
  • #17 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Polish
  • #29 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Polish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars totally awesome, March 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Colloquial Polish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

I've been learning Polish for almost two years, but most of the courses I've gone through have been keeping the vocabulary and grammar below the intermediate level and not going beyond that point. Of all the courses I've gotten so far, this is the absolute best. It keeps the language at a level of simplicity that almost everybody who uses it will be able to understand. If you have a sufficient knowledge of how Polish pronunciation works, you might be able to use just the book only. If you don't know the sounds of Polish or are unsure about certain sounds, I'd recommend getting the cassettes that accompany the textbook. (I already had some cassettes for Polish when I bought this course, and I also have a Polish friend who helps me with speaking the language, so I didn't buy the cassettes and can't tell you about their content.) The pronunciation, though at times difficult to enunciate clearly and often frustrating to those who aren't used to the frequent combinations of consonants, is mercifully straightforward and has few exceptions. Once you know how Polish pronunciation works, you can read Polish right off a page. The books details the common exceptions (very few words are read differently than they're spelt orthographically. One tense has a switch of stress, from the penultimate to the antepenultimate), and the grammar is explained clearly. It speaks from a "native-English" point of view so that all native speakers of English can relate the information through the idioms and logic they naturally use. Overall, this is the best book you can buy for learning how to both write and speak Polish. Speaking what you read or hear is the absolute best way to keep your knowledge fresh in your memory. Langenscheidt offers an awesome dictionary which can be used to further your Polish after completing the course. With this dictionary and the course, you should be able to converse with Poles is a short time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Language learning for intelligent people, not for Pavlov's dog, August 21, 2010

By 

musikwissenschaft - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Polish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

This book is light-years better than many of the so-called conversational methods around, such as Pimsleur -- which repeats so often and goes so slowly that one loses all interest -- and unlike those books, it actually teaches grammar, but in a logical order. I have no idea what "Hello Kitty" reviewer could possibly be criticizing: how can one learn a language without learning grammar? (I am a language teacher myself and have taught myself several languages with textbooks. Good language students want to learn grammar!) If one wants actually to understand what one is learning, so that one can freely produce the language oneself rather than mechanically repeating phrases, this is the way to go. It is indeed a book for beginners, but beginners who think, not parrots (which is what many other language tapes are designed for).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Language Course, February 7, 2011

By 

carvelle33 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Colloquial Polish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Audio Cassette)

I've been studying Polish for about a year and a half and have gotten to an intermediate proficiency with this book as the keystone of my studying. I have supplemented my use of this book with a couple of other courses when I reached a point where I felt I needed more work on real-time hearing skills or what-have-you. Anyway, this course/book has a very orderly progression both in vocabulary and sentence complexity that builds on past lessons while supplementing them. Proper focus/emphasis is given to the key noun/adjective cases in Polish that are most predominant.

It should be noted that this book definitely goes beyond a course for "beginners" in my opinion. It introduces all 7 cases, both perfective and imperfective verb aspect and all verb tenses in Polish. In other words, it lays the essential groundwork for the language. When you've completed the book (if you've really mastered it), you'll know how to express yourself in Polish in all but rather complex conversations.