 | well-written but poorly planned
rating: 2
This is a lucid and well-written language book, that delves quickly into realistic and colloquial conversation. Descriptions of grammar rules and usages are thorough, and descriptions of the typical "patterns" of noun & verb endings may spare the learner from too much rote memorization.
The problem with this book, and it's a substantial problem, is that it is not at all suitable for beginners- at least not by itself. New grammatical structures are unnecessarily introduced in the context of new vocabulary. Instead of learning in baby steps, you are expected to learn several new things simultaneously. Many new words are never again seen in subsequent chapters, and this book puts far too much emphasis upfront on the exceptions rather than the rules. I'm amused at how often the book plays "gotcha" with the brief exercises by highlighting exceptions as often as rules; sometimes these exceptions aren't even introduced in the text.
If you are a very disciplined student and have other resources available, it's possible to get through this. In my case, I skimmed through each chapter, and memorized all the new words before even attempting the exercises. But, as the exercises are terse and focus too much on exceptions, it's possible to master a chapter and still not be able to readily construct even the most basic sentences in Polish. You need other resources- either a workbook, a teacher, or some practice via reading Polish children's books.
The accompanying audio cassettes are practical, in terms of learning to listen to full-speed Polish, but I'd argue that for most learners (myself included), it's far more effective in the long run to start slow and steadily build up to speed.
If you already know Polish and are looking for a compact but nuanced, tedium-free review, this book is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, it completely misses the mark as a "complete course for beginners."
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Well, for a good part, this is worth your money.
rating: 4
Colloquial Polish is a satisfactorily written book that comes with a pair of cd's and cassettes. But all you need to are the cd's. Too bad you end up paying for the cassettes too.
Anyways, I'm on lesson 17 now and I feel that I've made some sort of accomplishment and beofore long I will have finished the whole book. This isn't particularly a major problem, but my learning hasn't been fully smooth and trouble-free for reasons that are because of the book and the language itself. I'll tell you about my problems with the language and the book.
The book isn't too bad. But the reason I say it is only satisfactorily written is because there is a considerably serious problem with it. Just one. In Polish, it is necessary to learn both the imperfective and perfective verbs. (However, a minority of verbs exist in only an imperfective form.) For example, 'do' is robiæ(imperfective) and zrobiæ(perfective).
With the imperfective, you can say the following:
I do(present tense)
I was doing(imperfective past tense)
I will be doing(imperfective future tense)
And with the perfective form you can say the following:
I will do(future perfective tense)
I did(perfective past tense)
The author thinks that perfective verbs aren't too important and (finally) introduces them in lesson 13. And the reason why I was somewhat pissed was because imperfective and perfective verbs, with the execptions of common yet relatively few in number of irregular verbs (I hope) share the same conjugation rules after all! By lesson 13, you will have learned several imperfective verbs, but guess what? You encounter very few perfective ones. And what's more, there are some verbs that are completely different from each other like: mówiæ(imperfective) and powiedzieæ(perfective) which mean speak. These two do not look or sound similar to me and there are more that are like that. If you want this book, I'd advise you to look up in the glossary or a Polish-English dictionary for the perfective counterpart of any imperfective verbs you learn until lesson 13. Don't worry too much about the conjugations. They show you the conjugations of irregular verbs at the back of the book or you can go to http://www.logosconjugator.org/newverb/verba_dba.verba_main.create_lang_page?lang=PL&total_verb=1156
And also, they did not bother to record everything and the total length of recorded material comes to about 1 hour and forty something minutes. I'm not complaining about that because it only turns out to be something less than 2 hours but because not everything is recorded. These are: one reading lesson, and three brief letters which they should've recorded anyway. Why oh why? And unfortunately, there is a 'Recipe for Potato Pancakes'. Why did they even put that in? They offer no vocabulary assistance and give only a translation. When I speak a language, I want to know and understand exactly what I'm saying. It's like listening carefully to a song in another language but not understanding it but they teach you to say it and tell you whats it means only.
In Polish, you'll have to know that adjectives and nouns always have to come in a case. There are seven in all. Although they will take a little time to learn, they will not prevent you from learning the language.(There are five genders in existance for this language, but thankfully, they it seem like there are only the usual three:masculine, feminine, and neuter.) But you will learn the five genders.
And what I find worst are the sounds. There is nothing that could annoy you more than not being able to pronounce the language correctly. In Polish, several consonants have a 'soft' pronunciation and a 'hard' one. Soft and hard ones are considered different but as a native speaker of English in the US, I cannot understand or hear the difference in the 'b' sound between 'bank'(this loanword in Polish uses the hard sound) while the 'b' in 'bilet'is soft. I got a dictionary for the heck of it, and it even uses different symbols in the phonetics to show pronunciation between hard and soft. The book explains it briefly followed by examples, but I still just don't get it. Also, I don't understand the difference in sound between the letters '' and '¯' as they sound the same to me. I wonder what I will do...to correct my pronunciation...sigh.
Anyways, you'll make it through with this book, but I think the sounds is what's really bad. it's not that they don't show you, its just that I can't understand these differences.
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Good for those who know some polish
rating: 4
I grew up in a Polish speaking family and have taken lessons. I think without that this book would quickly leave me behind. There is some tendency to make things a little more difficult than they could be by adding extra words in greetings. I bought this book for review and to help me retain what I learned, and I think it serves this purpose. Really a good buy with book, tapes plus CD.
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A practical guide for new adult learners of Polish
rating: 4
B.W. Mazurs colloqial POLISH provides good practical examples for adults trying to learn Polish for the first time. I have tried several other books which have also been quite good however some are a little short on detailed examples. This book seems to me to suceed better than some because multiple examples are often used. I found the practice section examples at the end of each lesson to be well chosen.
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