Colloquial Polish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Book Only))

Rating:
Summary: totally awesome
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A confusing way to learn a language
Review: This book is ok if you're a tourist wanting to learn some quick phrases or if you have a prior knowledge of the polish language, but if you actually want to learn and understand the language then this book is not for you. It starts off with a dialogue, but they don't tell you the meaning of any of the words. It tells you a phrase and has it's english equivalent, it may be used the same way but if you look up the words in a dictionary, not a single word is the same as in the english equivalent. I like to be told what it really means. Plus the layout of the book is confusing and takes some getting used to. Overall this book was not worth the money.