Learn Polish
Polish looks unpronounceable and is not. The clusters that frighten people are built from a small, closed set of two-letter sounds, and once you have the set the words come apart into pieces you can say. iLexiBox teaches that set first, together with the one free gift Polish gives a beginner: the stress never moves.
Start at the alphabet
The Polish on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 480 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Polish voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.
- 32letters
- 10digits
- 18pronunciation rules
- 300core words
- 60everyday phrases
- 60sentences
Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the on-ramp teaches them:
- poniedziałek — stress falls on the SECOND-TO-LAST syllable of every word — the one free gift Polish gives you. The only common exceptions are Greek loanwords ending in -yka or -ika, which keep it one syllable earlier: muzyka, matematyka, gramatykadziękuję — thank you
- ś ć ź dź — the four SOFT hushing sounds — tongue flat and forward, lips relaxed; they come out gentle, almost whisperedciocia — aunt
- sz cz ż dż — the four HARD hushing sounds — tongue pulled back and curled, lips pushed forward; heavier and buzzier than the soft fourczarny — black
Your first Polish phrases
The first phrase and sentence cards of the on-ramp, each spoken in a recorded voice:
- Jak się masz? yak she MASH — how are you? (informal)
- Co słychać? tso SWY-hach — how’s it going?
- Wszystko w porządku. FSHYST-ko f po-ZHONT-koo — everything is fine
- Nazywam się Anna. na-ZY-vam she AN-na — My name is Anna.
- Jestem studentem. YES-tem stoo-DEN-tem — I am a student. (a man speaking — a woman says studentką)
Then material that does not run out
Above the on-ramp sit the practice path (A1 to C2), Make a text at your level and the album: more than 2,700 photographs, each captioned and spoken in Polish. Polish has practice and tools, not lessons — the only course on iLexiBox is the full English course (how each part works).
What Polish actually costs a beginner
Stress sits on the second-to-last syllable, near enough always. The work is in the eight hushing sounds, which arrive as two groups of four. The soft ś ć ź dź are made with the tongue flat and forward and come out almost whispered; the hard sz cz ż dż with the tongue pulled back and the lips pushed forward, heavier and buzzier. English has one sound in that whole region and Polish has eight, so the pairs have to be heard rather than described — and they are, on every card, in a recorded Polish voice. The nasal vowels ą and ę are the third cost, and the cases are met in sentences rather than in tables.
The full English course, A1–C1 →