This page is a phrase bank for the one place where you most need Polish: the Polish classroom (or the conversation with the patient friend who is teaching you). These are the phrases that let you keep learning in Polish instead of constantly retreating into English. They are worth memorising as whole units, but the real prize is the grammar hidden inside them — once you see it, you can build dozens of your own questions.
"I don't understand" and "could you repeat that?"
The single most useful sentence in any language. In Polish it is short and the verb is regular:
Nie rozumiem.
I don't understand.
Przepraszam, nie zrozumiałem. Czy może pan powtórzyć?
Sorry, I didn't understand (said by a man). Could you repeat (that), sir?
Nie zrozumiałam ostatniego słowa — proszę powtórzyć wolniej.
I didn't catch the last word (said by a woman) — please repeat it more slowly.
Two grammar points are doing quiet work here. First, the past tense is gendered: a man says nie zrozumiałem, a woman says nie zrozumiałam. You cannot avoid choosing — Polish has no neutral past-tense "I". Second, the polite request uses może pan / może pani ("can you, sir / madam") — the formal pan/pani address, not ty ("you", informal). With a teacher you have just met, use the pan/pani form. A shorter, register-neutral option is simply Proszę powtórzyć ("Please repeat"), where proszę + infinitive is the everyday polite request frame.
"How do you say…?" — the impersonal się
Here is the phrase English speakers consistently get wrong, because the underlying logic is alien. To ask "how do you say thank you in Polish?" you do not translate the English "you". Polish uses an impersonal construction with the particle się:
Jak się mówi „thank you” po polsku?
How do you say 'thank you' in Polish?
Jak to się mówi po polsku?
How do you say this in Polish?
Jak się pisze twoje nazwisko?
How do you spell your surname? (literally: how is your surname written?)
The "you" in the English "how do you say" is not a real second person — it means "how does one say", "how is it said". Polish marks exactly that with się plus a third-person singular verb: mówi się = "one says / it is said", pisze się = "one writes / it is written". There is no word for "you" at all. English has the same impersonal "you" but hides it; Polish forces you to use the dedicated impersonal się construction instead. For the full mechanics of this very productive pattern, see the impersonal się and passive page.
So the template is fixed and reusable:
- Jak się mówi…? — How do you say…?
- Jak się pisze…? — How do you spell / write…?
- Jak się czyta…? — How do you read / pronounce…?
- Jak to się robi? — How do you do this?
Jak się czyta to słowo? Nie wiem, gdzie pada akcent.
How do you pronounce this word? I don't know where the stress falls.
A jak się to pisze — przez „ż” czy przez „rz”?
And how do you spell it — with 'ż' or with 'rz'?
"In Polish" — the po polsku form
Notice po polsku in the examples above. This is not an adjective and not a case form of Polska ("Poland"). It is a special adverbial construction: po + the adverb built from the language name. It answers "in what language?" and is used with verbs of speaking, writing, reading, and understanding.
Czy może pan mówić po polsku trochę wolniej?
Could you speak Polish a little more slowly, sir?
Jeszcze nie mówię dobrze po polsku, ale rozumiem coraz więcej.
I don't speak Polish well yet, but I understand more and more.
Jak będzie „cat” po polsku? — Kot.
What's the Polish for 'cat'? (literally: how will 'cat' be in Polish?) — Kot.
The pattern extends to every language: po angielsku (in English), po niemiecku (in German), po francusku (in French), po rosyjsku (in Russian). The ending -u on polsku / angielsku is fixed — it never agrees with anything and never changes. It is one of the easiest patterns in Polish precisely because it is frozen. The full story, including why this is an adverb and not an adjective, is on the po polsku manner page.
"What does … mean?" — znaczyć and co to znaczy
To ask what a word means, Polish uses the verb znaczyć ("to mean"). The everyday question is Co to znaczy? ("What does this mean?"). The little to ("this / that") is doing the work of pointing at the word in question.
Co znaczy słowo „owszem”?
What does the word 'owszem' mean?
Co to znaczy? Nie ma tego w moim słowniku.
What does this mean? It's not in my dictionary.
Co masz na myśli? Nie rozumiem pytania.
What do you mean (by that)? I don't understand the question.
Notice the contrast between Co to znaczy? (asking about the meaning of a word or phrase) and Co masz na myśli? (asking what a person means — "what are you getting at?"). English uses "what do you mean?" for both; Polish keeps them apart. For more question frames, see the wh-questions page.
Asking permission and asking to ask
Two more high-frequency classroom moves. To ask a question politely, you can first ask permission to ask:
Czy mogę o coś zapytać?
May I ask (about) something?
Mam pytanie. Czy możemy wrócić do poprzedniego slajdu?
I have a question. Can we go back to the previous slide?
Przepraszam, czy mogę prosić o przykład?
Excuse me, may I ask for an example?
Note zapytać o coś — "to ask about something". The verb pytać / zapytać governs the preposition o + accusative: o coś ("about something"), o to słowo ("about that word"). This is a fixed government pattern you simply have to learn with the verb; see the verb pytać reference. And prosić o coś ("to ask for something") likewise takes o + accusative: prosić o przykład ("ask for an example").
Homework and study verbs
Finally, the vocabulary of the work itself:
Czy mamy coś zadane na jutro?
Do we have any homework for tomorrow? (literally: anything set for tomorrow?)
Codziennie odrabiam zadanie domowe przez godzinę.
I do my homework for an hour every day.
Muszę się jeszcze nauczyć tych słówek na sprawdzian.
I still have to learn these words for the test.
The collocation for "do homework" is odrabiać zadanie / odrabiać lekcje — note odrabiać, a special verb, not the generic robić ("to do/make"). Saying robić zadanie is understood but sounds non-native; the idiomatic verb is odrabiać. And "to learn / study (something)" is reflexive: uczyć się + the genitive of what you are studying (uczyć się słówek, uczyć się polskiego).
Common Mistakes
❌ Jak ty mówisz „thank you” po polsku?
Incorrect — using 'ty mówisz' ('you say') for the impersonal 'how do you say'.
✅ Jak się mówi „thank you” po polsku?
How do you say 'thank you' in Polish?
The English "you" in "how do you say" is impersonal. Use się, never ty mówisz.
❌ Jak to mówi się po polsku?
Incorrect — wrong placement of 'się' (and a clumsy word order).
✅ Jak to się mówi po polsku?
How do you say this in Polish?
The clitic się likes to sit right after the first stressed element; Jak to się mówi is the natural order.
❌ Mówię po polski.
Incorrect — using the adjective 'polski' instead of the adverb.
✅ Mówię po polsku.
I speak Polish.
"In Polish" is the frozen adverb po polsku, ending in -u, never po polski.
❌ Co znaczy ty?
Incorrect — asking 'what do you mean?' word-for-word from English.
✅ Co masz na myśli?
What do you mean (by that)?
To ask what a person means, use Co masz na myśli?; Co to znaczy? is only for the meaning of a word or expression.
❌ Czy mogę zapytać coś?
Incorrect — missing the preposition 'o' that 'zapytać' requires.
✅ Czy mogę o coś zapytać?
May I ask (about) something?
The verb zapytać governs o + accusative: you ask o coś, not just coś.
Key Takeaways
- "How do you say / spell / pronounce …?" is Jak się mówi / pisze / czyta …? — impersonal się, no word for "you".
- "In Polish" is the frozen adverb po polsku (lower case, ending -u), not an adjective.
- "What does … mean?" uses znaczyć: Co znaczy …? / Co to znaczy?; "what do you mean?" is the separate Co masz na myśli?
- The past tense and request verbs are gendered — keep zrozumiałem / zrozumiałam both ready.
- "Do homework" is odrabiać zadanie / lekcje, and "study something" is reflexive uczyć się
- genitive.
Now practice Polish
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Start learning Polish→Related Topics
- Impersonal się and the się-PassiveB2 — The everyday Polish way to say 'one does / you do / people do' without a subject — the impersonal się of signs, rules and generalisations, plus the się-passive for backgrounding the agent.
- The po + Adverb Construction: po polskuB1 — Learn the frozen po + -u adverbial used for 'in a language' and 'in the manner of' — po polsku, po angielsku, po swojemu, po staremu — and why it is not the adjective polski.
- mówić / powiedzieć — to say, speak, tellB1 — Full reference for the suppletive pair mówić (impf, 'speak/talk') / powiedzieć (pf, 'say/tell'): present mówię/mówisz…, future powiem/powiesz…/powiedzą (the wiedzieć-stem), imperatives mów / powiedz — and when to use each.
- Question Words: kto, co, gdzie, kiedy, dlaczego, jakA1 — How Polish wh-questions work: the question word goes first, the rest keeps statement order, there's no 'do' auxiliary, intonation falls — and kto/co/który must appear in the exact case their role in the sentence demands.
- pytać / zapytać — to ask (inquire)A2 — Full conjugation of pytać / zapytać ('to ask, inquire'): present pytam/pytasz…/pytają (regular -am/-asz class), past pytał, perfective future zapytam, imperative zapytaj!, and the government English speakers must learn — inquire about is pytać O + accusative, and the person asked goes in the accusative (Zapytałem nauczyciela).
- Impersonal and Subjectless SentencesB1 — A survey of the many Polish sentences that have no grammatical subject — the się-impersonal, the -no/-to past, trzeba/można/wolno, weather verbs, and dative-experiencer states like zimno mi.