czy mówisz po angielsku?

In short

Why it looks that way

Czy at the front turns any phrase into a question. Languages are spoken "adverbially": po angielsku is literally "in-the-English-way". Politely: Czy mówi Pan(i) po angielsku?

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• Czy mówisz po angielsku?

  Do you speak English?

Nearby words: phrases that save you

“I don't understand”, “say that again”, “slower, please”, “help”. They are learned first for a reason: they bring back a conversation that has already gone wrong.

• nie rozumiem

  I do not understand

  Rozumieć is "to understand" — a cousin of English "to reckon with", same idea of working something through. The negation nie stands apart and refuses to fuse.
• powoli

  slowly

  Literally "at a walk's pace" — unhurried. The most useful word of the first week: Proszę mówić powoli.
• proszę powtórzyć

  repeat, please

  Literally "I ask [you] to repeat". An infinitive after proszę and the request is complete — the politeness is already inside proszę.
• ratunku!

  help! (emergency)

  Literally "of rescue" — the shout, one word only: Ratunku! The calmer pomoc is "help" as a thing: Potrzebuję pomocy — "I need help".
• zgubiłem się

  I am lost

  ł here is a w: "zgoo-BEE-woh shcheh"
• nie działa

  not working

  From działać, "to operate". About machines: Winda nie działa. About a person the same two words mean "he is not working" — context does the separating.
• proszę chwilę poczekać

  wait a moment, please

  Literally "I ask you to wait an instant" — a Pole counts not minutes but chwile. Informal: poczekaj chwilę, the same frame: proszę plus the infinitive.
• nie mogę otworzyć

  I cannot open

  Mogę is the personal "can" that the hint to można warned about. An infinitive follows: Nie mogę otworzyć drzwi. Nie wolno mi — "I am not allowed" — is a different beast, and not to be confused.
• pogotowie

  ambulance service

  Literally "on readiness" — from the familiar gotowy, and gotówka is from the same nest. The single emergency number is 112 — here as across Europe.
• potrzebuję lekarza

  I need a doctor

  Literally "I am in need of a doctor": potrzebować takes the of-form, so lekarz becomes lekarza. There is no "for me" anywhere — the verb ending already says "I".

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “phrases that save you”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Phrases that save you17 words on the topic
• dobranoc — good nightphrase
• kawa — coffeenoun
• herbata — teanoun
• woda — waternoun
• All Polish wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note