Your First Questions: A Toolkit

Here is some genuinely good news for English speakers: questions in Polish are easier to build than in English. English makes you reach for a helper verb ("Do you speak…?", "Does she know…?") and flip the word order ("Where is the station?"). Polish needs neither. To ask a yes/no question you just add the little word czy at the front, or even just raise your voice at the end. To ask "where / what / who," you put the question word first and keep the rest of the sentence exactly as it is. This page is a starter kit of the questions you will use on day one.

Yes/no questions: just add czy

To turn a statement into a yes/no question, put czy at the very front and leave everything else untouched:

There is no "do" and no flipping of words. Czy is roughly a spoken question mark — it signals "a yes/no question is coming" and otherwise changes nothing. The full set of patterns is on the yes/no questions page.

In casual speech, Poles often drop czy entirely and just raise the pitch at the end of the sentence, exactly the way English can ("You're coming?"):

Both versions are correct. Czy is a touch more careful and is always safe; the bare intonation version is everyday and friendly. The rising intonation that signals a yes/no question is described on the intonation page.

"What is this?" — Co to jest?

The first object-identifying question. Use co ("what") with to jest ("this is"):

You will also hear the shortened Co to? ("What's this?"), dropping jest, which is completely natural in speech. The answer pattern is To jest… ("This is…") or just To….

"Who is this?" — Kto to?

For people, swap co for kto ("who"):

The distinction is strict and worth fixing early: co is for things, kto is for people. (Polish never says "who" for an object the way casual English sometimes blurs them.) Their full forms are on the kto/co page.

"Where is…?" — Gdzie jest…?

To locate something, lead with gdzie ("where") and then jest + the thing:

Again, notice what is not happening: English says "Where is the station?" with the verb hopping in front of the subject. Polish keeps jest in its plain spot after gdzie — no inversion, no rearranging. You front the question word and the rest follows naturally.

"How much is it?" — Ile to kosztuje?

The shopping survival question uses ile ("how much / how many") plus the verb kosztować ("to cost"):

Ile to kosztuje? is the single most useful market-and-shop phrase; learn it as a fixed unit. The bare Ile? ("how much?") also works on its own when the item is obvious.

"What's your name?" — Jak masz na imię?

This everyday question is an idiom worth memorising whole. Literally it is "How do you have on (your) first name?", using mieć na imię ("to be called, by first name"):

Two registers to keep apart. Jak masz na imię? is informal and asks for your first name; the answer mirrors it: Mam na imię… ("My name is…"). The more formal full-name question uses nazywać się ("to be called"): Jak się pan/pani nazywa? These are core survival phrases.

"Do you speak English?" — Czy mówisz po angielsku?

A lifesaver, and a clean example of the czy pattern with the manner adverb po angielsku ("in English"):

Note po angielsku / po polsku — not the adjective, but this special po + -u manner form for languages. To ask formally, swap ty for pan (to a man) or pani (to a woman) and adjust the verb to third person: Czy mówi pan…?

The toolkit at a glance

The wider family of these question words (kiedy, jak, dlaczego, który…) and their grammar is on the wh-questions page.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Yes/no questions need no "do" and no inversion: prepend czy (Czy masz czas?) or just raise the pitch (Masz czas?).
• Wh-questions front the question word and keep normal order — and carry falling intonation (Gdzie jest dworzec?).
• Co for things, kto for people. Keep them strictly apart.
• Learn the idioms whole: Jak masz na imię? ("what's your name?"), Ile to kosztuje? ("how much is it?"), Czy mówisz po angielsku?