tablica rejestracyjna
“tablica rejestracyjna” — license plate, number plate in Polish. Noun, level B1. In speech shortened to just the plate. The first letters of the number name the city: WR for Wrocław, KR for Kraków. The plate is also the school board. In a live sentence: “Zapisałem numer tablicy rejestracyjnej” — I wrote down the license plate number. A word from the everyday Polish course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Polish | tablica rejestracyjna |
| Translation | license plate, number plate |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
In speech shortened to just the plate. The first letters of the number name the city: WR for Wrocław, KR for Kraków. The plate is also the school board.
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.
- Zapisałem numer tablicy rejestracyjnejI wrote down the license plate number
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 “license plate, number plate” in Polish?
«tablica rejestracyjna». In a live sentence: “Zapisałem numer tablicy rejestracyjnej” — I wrote down the license plate number. Noun, level B1.
Why does this word look the way it does?
In speech shortened to just the plate. The first letters of the number name the city: WR for Wrocław, KR for Kraków. The plate is also the school board. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.