puzzle
“puzzle” — jigsaw puzzle in Polish. Noun, level A1. Written the English way, said the way you expect; neuter and barely declined. One assembles it with the same verb as things into a suitcase. In a live sentence: “Puzzle mają tysiąc części” — The puzzle has a thousand pieces. A word from the everyday Polish course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Polish | puzzle |
| Translation | jigsaw puzzle |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
Written the English way, said the way you expect; neuter and barely declined. One assembles it with the same verb as things into a suitcase.
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.
- Puzzle mają tysiąc częściThe puzzle has a thousand pieces
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 “jigsaw puzzle” in Polish?
«puzzle». In a live sentence: “Puzzle mają tysiąc części” — The puzzle has a thousand pieces. Noun, level A1.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Written the English way, said the way you expect; neuter and barely declined. One assembles it with the same verb as things into a suitcase. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.