zająć miejsce

In short

Why it looks that way

Literally "to occupy the place", as in English. The occupied sign on the toilet door is the same participle: the place is taken.

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.

• Chcę zająć miejsce przy oknie

  I want to take the seat by the window

Nearby words: the city and its places

Street, square, pharmacy, bank. An address is built out of these, and an address is something you have to both say and understand.

• miasto

  city

  A false friend: not "place". The place is miejsce, one suffix away — the two are a standing trap.
• ulica

  street

  Said much the way it is spelled. In an address the street comes first — ulica Marszałkowska 5 — and signs shorten it to ul.
• plac

  square

  Said with the same "ts" sound as its military cousin in several languages. Kraków's main square goes by the name Rynek — and it is a plac too.
• apteka

  pharmacy

  The same Greek word several languages borrowed. The night one is apteka nocna, and you find it by search, not by the green cross.
• bank

  bank

  Matches sound and meaning at once. No false caution needed: bank really is a bank — the glass jar is słoik.
• tłum

  crowd

  A short word, and the ł is a w: "twu". Stress on the first syllable. At the market on Saturday it is exactly this: a crowd, crowds of people.
• sygnalizacja świetlna

  traffic lights

  The full road-rules word, long and clerical. In speech people just say światła — "the lights": na czerwonym świetle — at the red.
• rower

  bicycle

  The word arrived from a bicycle brand name — and stuck. The Latin-built word of other languages is the learned one; this one is brand-born and long naturalized.
• przystanek autobusowy

  bus stop

  From przystawać, "to pull in at the edge": the stop is where the transport "pulls in". The plain przystanek serves the tram too.
• bilet okresowy

  travel pass

  Okres is "a period": a ticket for a term, not one ride. The monthly one is miesięczny — and it is stuck onto the card.

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “the city and its places”. 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

• The city and its places81 words on the topic
• przejechać przystanek — to miss the stop, to ride past itphrase
• wezwać taksówkę — to call a taxiphrase
• wysiąść na następnej — to get off at the next stopphrase
• kierownica — steering wheelnoun
• All Polish wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note