lista zakupów
“lista zakupów” — shopping list in Polish. Noun, level A1, topic — shopping and money. The order runs the English way backwards — the "of what" comes first: lista zakupów, literally "a list of purchases"; zakupy are "shopping". In a live sentence: “Lista zakupów jest w torbie” — The shopping list is in the bag. One of 82 words in the set “shopping and money” in the Polish course.
In short
| Written in Polish | lista zakupów |
| Translation | shopping list |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
The order runs the English way backwards — the "of what" comes first: lista zakupów, literally "a list of purchases"; zakupy are "shopping".
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.
- Lista zakupów jest w torbieThe shopping list is in the bag
Nearby words: shopping and money
How much it costs, whether there is a smaller one, whether cards are accepted. A shop forgives mistakes: miss a word and they will show you the thing with their hands anyway.
- ile to kosztuje?how much does it cost?About one thing, ile kosztuje is enough — and the vendor will understand a bare Ile?. Literally "how much does this cost".
- euroeuroPoland pays in zloty, not euros: pięć złotych — "five zloty". Euro here is the neighbors' currency and the stuff of European-union talk, and it never declines.
- sklepshopA false friend with a body: it looks like the word for a burial vault in several languages, and the resemblance is real history — the shop once sat in a cellar, straight from the Latin crypta.
- targmarketThe same root as the trade words of half of eastern Europe: the market was the trading. The most famous one is Kraków's Cloth Hall on the Rynek.
- ladacounterNo kinship with any familiar word — the word came from Italian, and it names the counter in a shop and in a bank alike. And lada dzień is "any day now" — a different creature entirely.
- sprzedawcashop assistantFrom sprzedać, "to sell" — the root says itself. A woman is sprzedawczyni, and at the market counter it is more often her.
- klientcustomerThe same Latin root as the English word, and the same wide job: the customer of a shop, a bank, a hairdresser. The bookish kupiec, "merchant", is not heard at the market.
- wagascalesSingular, where English is plural: ta waga. Weight and scales are one word, and to weigh is ważyć.
- kilogramkilogramAt the market it is said short: kilo. What is weighed follows in its of-form, like English "of": kilogram chleba.
- świeżyfreshThe ż is that zh sound, and the ending is y, not the long ee of other adjectives: "SHVYE-zhih". Feminine świeża, neuter świeże.
Test yourself
Five questions from the same set — “shopping and money”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “shopping list” in Polish?
The order runs the English way backwards — the "of what" comes first: lista zakupów, literally "a list of purchases"; zakupy are "shopping".
- How do you say “customer” in Polish?
The same Latin root as the English word, and the same wide job: the customer of a shop, a bank, a hairdresser. The bookish kupiec, "merchant", is not heard at the market.
- How do you say “shop” in Polish?
A false friend with a body: it looks like the word for a burial vault in several languages, and the resemblance is real history — the shop once sat in a cellar, straight from the Latin crypta.
- How do you say “fresh” in Polish?
The ż is that zh sound, and the ending is y, not the long ee of other adjectives: "SHVYE-zhih". Feminine świeża, neuter świeże.
- How do you say “shop assistant” in Polish?
From sprzedać, "to sell" — the root says itself. A woman is sprzedawczyni, and at the market counter it is more often her.
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 timesKim & 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 timesAdesope, 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 timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “shopping list” in Polish?
«lista zakupów». In a live sentence: “Lista zakupów jest w torbie” — The shopping list is in the bag. Noun, level A1, from the set “shopping and money”.
Why does this word look the way it does?
The order runs the English way backwards — the "of what" comes first: lista zakupów, literally "a list of purchases"; zakupy are "shopping". A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.