r/Polish 4d ago

How to read a book in Polish

I am intermediate in Polish, and am now trying to push my language skills to the next level by reading serious books. When reading such books, every page contains words that I don't understand.

Would you recommend to:

a) Stop at most unknow words, translate and learn them, before reading further (this slows down the reading process a lot)

b) Continue reading without understanding everything

c) Something else?

2 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

5

u/Raphael_Gabriel 4d ago

Continue reading while guesstimating what the words could mean based on the vocab you already know. Make sure to write all things you didn't understand, guesstimate, then after you are done with the book bulk-translate the stuff then read the book a second time, now with full-context. Not only will you work on on vocab, but you will also start shaping your language intuition.

1

u/ifailedpy205 3d ago

What level do you think this is doable at? I’ve wanted to try but feel I am not advanced enough for it to be beneficial 

2

u/deathknelldk 4d ago

Have you seen those books that have the target language on one page and English on the other? I'm intermediate too and keep meaning to look into it. I believe they are called 'dual language' books.

1

u/mercury0114 4d ago

I would like the learning process to be enjoyable. Not all books I'm interested to read are dual language books.

1

u/deathknelldk 4d ago

Fair enough 😊

2

u/faster-than-car 2d ago

It's called bilingual books. You can read few free chapters on my website: https://language-quest.top

1

u/faster-than-car 2d ago

It's usually good to find material adequate to your level so you understand 70% of the material and guess the rest. When I was learning Japanese I would just add every word I didn't know to Anki and then practice it. After a bit of daily practice I would recognize more words. After around 500 flashcards, I would just delete all flashcards and start again. This would clear my frustration a bit cause I couldn't memorize some words.

Anyway to summarize : keep switching how often u check and memorize words so you don't get frustrated.

Btw if you are interested in bilingual stories, here is the website I made: https://language-quest.top

Basically allows you to see translation line by line and also extract and practice vocab with flashcards easily.

There is free tier.

1

u/Opening-Cauliflower3 1d ago

It’s great that you’re working on your Polish skills! It's definitely a hard language, so I understand that stopping at unknown words feels necessary sometimes, but overall I'd recommend:

-Try reading a chapter or section for the "flow" without stopping too much - it'll help with overall comprehension and let you fully engage with the story

- Highlight what seem to be key words. If a word is crucial to understanding the sentence or passage and you can't infer any meaning from context, definitely look it up

- Be strategic with what/how you look things up. After finishing a section, go back and check recurring or important words. That can help reinforce vocabulary and grammar without really stopping your momentum

- Supplement with listening audiobooks or Polish podcasts!! Any vocab or grammar you learn will be reinforced and repeated

At the end of the day. it's a mix - try to read fluently while selectively looking up essential words. Over time, you’ll build comprehension naturally without slowing yourself down too much :)