Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar

I started studying Polish with a teacher and our Krok po Kroku book is not very helpful. But, this little gem, which is more than a book of verbs, summarizes basic grammar rules. No, it won't follow the order of whatever text you might be using, but information is easy to find. Most of the chapters cover one part of speech--nouns, adjectives, etc. Content is well organized. I use a highlighter to review grammar that I am introduced to in my class. It works very well for me. I come to Polish language study with limited Polish vocabulary (heard as a child) and no understanding of Polish grammar, which is difficult and often operates differently than English. I'd be lost without this book. And for a beginner, anything more detailed would be too confusing.

I am learning Polish because my family is part Polish and have been invited by a relative in Krakow to visit. Our family has always been devoted to St. Maximilian Kolbe; my brother picked him for his confirmation. So, I have always wanted to visit Auschwitz, in addition to the hometwon of Pope John Paul II. So, this book is a resource to help fulfill a dream. This book is available in an online format too, but I really like having this handy at my fingertips. It covers the grammar in a step-by-step method and is easy to follow. I have Pimsleur's tape series as well, but having this book as a companion has been invaluable, and allowed me to more strongly benefit from the audio Pimsleur lessons. The author is a professor, and his training comes through clearly. If you are only going to get one resource, get this one, but you will need some audio, because the sound system is tricky. I suggest using your local library as that resource.

Was looking for a concise book to use as an aid while learning Polish through an online language course. I looked over all the choices and decided on this one. I haven't been disappointed. Polish is a difficult language to learn so when there is a clear, concise learning aid available for less than $21 you may want to consider having it at your fingertips.

A good book if you know the basics of the Polish language. It's a lot to grasp for someone looking to learn from scratch. Overall has helped me understand as I have started studying the language more regularly.

I bought this book as a supplement to learn polish. I wanted something that would help with conjugation and explain the polish language. This book does a great job as explaining rules and grammar. As I said, this should be used as a supplement to a program such as supermemo UX or any other language software.

These are all good books and have used them to learn other languages. Information is presented clearly and concisely, making it a good reference or initial learning tool. Would highly recommend.

I rarely give one star, but this warrants it. Online resources, like Word Reference, and apps, like Duolingo, are useful, this is not. I say this because as I was reading through the first chapter I realised that, apart from what I already knew, the explanations of everything were pretty meaningless. The author writes obscure things about how to hold your mouth when pronouncing things and at one point describes as certain letter pronunciation as sounding like an m without completing the full pronunciation of the letter m or some such rubbish that is both meaningless and unhelpful. After several pages of scratching my head in bewilderment I realised that I was already 10% of my way through the book and had really not advanced my understanding of Polish grammar one iota. One would be better buying a book of verb tables than this. I haven’t got to the verb lists yet and don’t intend to as I suspect, given the short length of the book, that the author has merely listed the infinitives of 500 verbs which really you could pull from many places online without spending a penny.

Swan's book is a godsend to people trying to study and/or review the Polish language. It is lucidly presented, well done typographically. Don't let its small size fool you, this book is full of quality information, most of which has yet to be presented so ably in an English-language publication.

It's useful if you need to review quickly some topics, but you can't use as a starting point for your polish studies. It's very schematic and synthetic, it refers to some concepts which you should already know. Otherwise it can be very confusing.

Not only is this the best and most concise book on Polish grammar, but probably – simply – one of the best grammar learning books written for any language. Tackling a language with a notorious reputation for complexity and difficulty, this book simplifies and demystifies the language in ways other Polish-learning books do not. The author, Oscar Swan, has done an outstanding job in presenting the Polish language in a simple format for the learner and removing a lot of the fear factor. Granted alone this book will not teach you conversational Polish, and you do need to understand basic grammar terminology and function – but for even a casual learner such as myself, after just a quick flip-through some chapters, it explained and made clear some grammar points that previously I did not know or did not grasp, or laid out its verb and declension tables in such a manner that I was able to immediately pick out differences and distinctions. Even after 10 minutes, I had picked up and committed to memory useful language points from its pages. While the McGraw Hill series of languages books often tend to be light on pronunciation details, this specific title actually gives useful details and an easy description/comparison when dealing with the difficult hard and soft pairings, such as cz vs. ć, or sz vs. ś, where I felt I was able to make an immediate, clear distinction between these and other subtle (to the English ear) sounds, where I was unable to do so before. If you are learning Polish from a book, self-teaching, etc. this book should be the second Polish learning book you acquire and your go-to-reference work moving forward. While I myself have had a casual interest in the langauge, this book has actually given me a better appreciation of Polish and sparked me to make further progress with the language.

A very interesting book, simple enough to learn the language (in my case, in conjunction with "Learn Polish with Monika" on Youtube) and complicated enough to enable you some progress. I strongly recommend.

This book is truly excellent and covers Polish grammar very well and has many very relevant examples of usage. I do not think it is for the beginner but is a very good guide for when you have acquired some knowledge. I am bilingual(Polish & English)and my spoken Polish is good and so is my reading. However I did not have a formal education in Polish and when I write in Polish I often have to check spellings especially for different noun and verb endings. This book will be excellent for that as it gives me the guidance that you do not get in dictionaries. It is well laid out and with a size of font that is easy to read which is also a great help.

Swan is a noted author of Polish grammar texts and this is a very handy but very thorough review not only of the Polish verb but also of other elements of Polish grammar. It includes numerous tables and paradigms of both declensions and conjugations as well as very helpful lists of basic vocabulary and expressions. This is an informationally dense book but physically very light and portable, being less than 140 pages in length. If travelling to Poland, you need a book like this with you. It's not one of these "learn Polish in twenty minutes" type scams. If you really want to learn or review the basics of Polish, this book is for you.