At a café and a restaurant in Polish
9 words in Polish on the topic “at a café and a restaurant”: kawa — coffee, herbata — tea, piwo — beer, wino — wine.
9 words on the topic
- kawacoffeeFeminine, and the gender shows: ta kawa. It is brewed weaker than in Italy, and Poland grows plenty of its own kinds: kawa z mlekiem — "coffee with milk".
- herbatateathe h is sounded: "her-BAH-tah"
- piwobeerMatches sound and spelling letter for letter. Beer is measured by size: duże — large, małe — small.
- winowineMatches sound and meaning at once. Poland is not a wine country — beer is the likelier order — but the word earns its keep in shops.
- chcęI wantthe opening chc is no typo — it is pronounced: "khtsen"
- restauracjarestaurantA place with a full dinner and a bill. Cheaper and homier is the bar mleczny, the "milk bar", where soup still costs pennies.
- kawiarniacoffeehouseFrom kawa. A place people sit in for hours by design, not by abuse. The word itself arrived by way of the Italian cave.
- rachunek, proszęthe bill, pleaseRachunek is literally "a reckoning": the bill in a café, the bank account, and the receipt in a shop are all one word.
- kawiarniacaféYou have met kawiarnia as a coffeehouse: one Polish word serves both, and only context tells them apart. Feminine; "in the café" is w kawiarni, with the ending used after w.
How it sounds in a sentence
A word list is a blank. Conversation is made of sentences, and these are the ones the words fit into most often.
What is worth knowing about these words
kawa — coffee. Feminine, and the gender shows: ta kawa. It is brewed weaker than in Italy, and Poland grows plenty of its own kinds: kawa z mlekiem — "coffee with milk".
herbata — tea. The word traveled from the east — the same road that carried the Latin herba. No traps for the ear, but the opening h must not be swallowed.
piwo — beer. Matches sound and spelling letter for letter. Beer is measured by size: duże — large, małe — small.
wino — wine. Matches sound and meaning at once. Poland is not a wine country — beer is the likelier order — but the word earns its keep in shops.
Test yourself
Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than recognizing a familiar word — and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “coffee” in Polish?
Feminine, and the gender shows: ta kawa. It is brewed weaker than in Italy, and Poland grows plenty of its own kinds: kawa z mlekiem — "coffee with milk".
- How do you say “the bill, please” in Polish?
Rachunek is literally "a reckoning": the bill in a café, the bank account, and the receipt in a shop are all one word.
- How do you say “restaurant” in Polish?
A place with a full dinner and a bill. Cheaper and homier is the bar mleczny, the "milk bar", where soup still costs pennies.
- How do you say “wine” in Polish?
Matches sound and meaning at once. Poland is not a wine country — beer is the likelier order — but the word earns its keep in shops.
- How do you say “tea” in Polish?
The word traveled from the east — the same road that carried the Latin herba. No traps for the ear, but the opening h must not be swallowed.
How to learn the set instead of just reading it
Order, ask the price, ask for the bill. A short and entirely predictable conversation — a convenient place to test yourself for the first time.
A list is read in a minute and forgotten in a day. What works: hide the translation, try to recall, get it wrong — and come back to the same words tomorrow.
- 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.
- Study spread over days wins not only in experiments but in ordinary classrooms, with real students.checked many timesMawson & Kang, 2025, Behavioral Sciences 15(6):771 · 22 studies, d = 0.54 (confidence interval 0.31–0.77). The authors warn that individual studies disagree widely.
Frequently asked
How do you say “coffee” in Polish?
«kawa». Feminine, and the gender shows: ta kawa. It is brewed weaker than in Italy, and Poland grows plenty of its own kinds: kawa z mlekiem — "coffee with milk". It is one of 9 words in the set “at a café and a restaurant” — the rest are in the table above.
How many café phrases do you need to start?
The whole set on this page is 9 words, but there is no need to start with all of it: the words you will need in the next few days are enough. Take them a few at a time — five to seven new ones per session.