So let’s all face them and get intimidated.

CH – chodnik, chemia
pavement, chemistry

In modern standard Polish, ch is pronounced identically to h. It obviously makes the pronunciation aspect easier while messing up the simplicity of the spelling at the same time… For most Polish schoolkids, learning when to use ch and h is a painful process involving hours of writing mind-bogglingly boring dictations. The same goes for rz and ż, and for u and ó.

CZ – czas, czerwony
time, red

This sound is pronounced similarly to the English ch in chalk. It’s not exactly the same sound, though, and you should try not to confuse it with ć, which sounds softer.

DZ – dzwon, dzban
bell, jug

This is a voiced variant of c. The letters this digraph comprises give a clue as to how it’s pronounced: as an affricate (a plosive and a fricative in rapid succession) of /d/ and /z/. Take an English word with these sounds – for example sounds – and focus on the final consonants. Try to pronounce them one after the other very quickly, so that they no longer sound as /d/ and /z/ but rather as one sound.

DŹ – dźwięk, dźwig
sound, crane (machine)

This is a voiced variant of ć. Try not to confuse it with ć or dż!

DŻ – dżem, dżdżownica
jam, earthworm

This is a voiced variant of cz. It sounds more or less like the English j in Joe.

RZ – rzecz, rząd
thing, row

You pronounce it identically to ż – practically the same as the s in leisure or pleasure.

SZ – szary, szpilka
gray, pin

This is a voiceless variant of rz or ż. It’s easily confusable with ś.

niebieski ptak – a blue bird
A careless, irresponsible bum who idles around instead of getting some useful work done, like all decent people do.

z lotu ptaka – from a bird’s flight
From a bird’s eye view, from above.

pisać / bazgrać jak kura pazurem – to write / scribble like a hen with its claw
A not-so-nice way of commenting on someone’s calligraphy. Because hens aren’t known for their hand- (claw?) writing skills.

kura domowa – a home hen
This basically means a housewife, but in a rather pejorative sense – a woman who spends all her time caring for home and children and doesn’t know much about the world. Many women would probably take offence at being called that.

kura znosząca złote jaja – a hen laying golden eggs
This is how you can call something, for example a business, that’s very profitable.

gapić się jak sroka w gnat – to stare like a magpie at a bone
That’s what you do when you just stare at something thoughtlessly. Do magpies really stare at bones? I have no idea.

trzymać dwie sroki za ogon – to hold two magpies’ tails
To have too many irons in the fire. It implies that multitasking is bound to be a failure, because, well, go and try catch two magpies by their tales…

rządzić się jak szara gęś / szarogęsić się – to boss around like a grey goose
That’s what you do when you think you’re the most important person in the world and expect everyone to do your bidding, even though in fact you’re just a rude asshole.
Szarogęsić się is an interesting verb. It comes from szara gęś – a grey goose – and means the same as rządzić się jak szara gęś. So you could say it’s a whole idiom neatly packaged in one word… Something like "greygoosing," even though it sounds horrible in English.

kaczka dziennikarska – a journalistic duck
A misleading newspaper story. In English it’s called a canard, which comes from the French for duck as well.

puszczać kaczki – to let out the ducks
To skip stones on the water.

So, if you don’t speak any gender-distinguishing language, you’ll probably need time to get used to calling a carrot a "she." And you’d better put some effort into that; being able to determine the gender of a noun is absolutely crucial to producing grammatically correct Polish sentences. Why? Because other parts of speech that modify the noun can take different forms depending on the gender. Compare:

Ten budynek jest wysoki.
This building (m) is tall.

Ta wieża jest wysoka.
This tower (f.) is tall.

To drzewo jest wysokie.
This tree (n.) is tall.

As you can see, even such a small, innocent word as this changes its form depending on the gender of the noun it points to. Not to mention the different adjective endings!

Are you already looking forward to memorizing dozens of Polish words with their completely arbitrary genders? I hope so. In fact, this task is much less daunting than it appears, since it’s easy to guess the word’s gender looking at how it’s built. Well, easy for native speakers at least, but there are some rules you can learn, and soon you’ll start picking up the patterns.

Let’s start with the

Feminine gender

If a noun ends in –a, it’s most probably (though not always!) femine:

kobieta – woman
marchewka – carrot
torba – bag
szkoła – school
mąka – flour
nadzieja – hope

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that only words ending in –a are feminine. There’s a couple of feminine nouns ending in consonants:

krew – blood
brew – eyebrow
sól – salt
moc – power
noc – night
oś – axis
północ – midnight
twarz – face
Bydgoszcz – a town in Poland
podróż – travel
miłość – love
radość – happiness
nienawiść – hate
przyjaźń – friendship
pleśń – mould
łódź – boat

…and many more. As you can see, many of them end in particular consonant clusters, such as –ść, -źń or –śń. Getting used to such patterns will make it easier for you to remember the gender, but it’s better to avoid relying on them all the time – for example, while krew and brew are feminine, lew (lion) is masculine. Sól is feminine, but ból (pain) is masculine. Oś is feminine, but łoś (moose) is masculine…

So it’s a lot of fun. How do native speakers handle this? They rely on how the word is inflected. For example, the fact that the genitive singular of krew is krwi indicates that it’s a feminine word. Lew, a masculine noun, becomes lwa. Obviously, without a native intuition to lead you, you can’t rely on this knowledge, so you’ll have to memorize at least a handful of those atypical nouns.

Remember how I said not all nouns ending in –a are feminine? That’s a good moment to have a look at the

Masculine gender

The situation is similar here – there’s a general rule and some interesting exceptions.

If a noun ends in a consonant, it’s most probably (though not always, as you’ve already seen) masculine:

stół – table
kamień – stone
widelec – fork
pies – dog
dom – house
grzyb – mushroom
chłopiec – boy

A rule wouldn’t be a rule without exceptions, right? Have a look at those masculine nouns:

mężczyzna – man, adult male
poeta – poet
artysta – artist
dentysta – dentist
sędzia – judge
kolega – colleague
doradca – advisor
spadkobierca – inheritor
idiota – idiot

They all end in –a and have something in common: they refer to males. Poeta is a male poet, and his female counterpart is poetka. Artysta is male, but artystka is female. Doradca and spadkobierca are male, but doradczyni and spadkobierczyni are female. Kolega is male, but koleżanka is female… Just so that you don’t think transforming these nouns is easy and straightforward ;)

If you’ve already come to terms with how mężczyzna, despite being an indisputably masculine noun, has the same ending as feminine nouns, you can have a look at the last class:

Neuter gender

No nasty surprises here, fortunately – not many, at least. If a noun ends in a vowel other than –a – that is, –o, –e or –ę, it’s neuter:

krzesło – chair
mięso – meat
dziecko – child
jedzenie – food
słońce – sun
morze – sea
imię – name
źrebię – foal
ramię – shoulder

There’s a couple of nouns that don’t conform to this pattern: some Latin borrowings ending in –um. They’re neuter as well:

muzeum – museum
forum – forum
liceum – high school.

You can read more about them here.

If you’ve made it so far,

you should have a rather clear picture of how to distinguish noun genders in Polish. With this knowledge, you can happily start pointing to things and referring to them as either on (he), ona (she) or ono (it). You also know which form of the pronoun this to use: ten (m.), ta (f.), or to (n.).

Is there anything else you need to know? Actually, yes. So far we’ve only been concerned with singular forms of nouns. In the plural, however, things get a bit more complicated: suddenly, you have to use a completely different pronoun to refer to these men and these tables, for example – but we’ll have a look at that some other time!

1st – m. pierwszy – f. pierwsza – n. pierwsze
3rd – m. trzeci – f. trzecia – n. trzecie
10th – m. dziesiąty – f. dziesiąta – n. dziesiąte

Here are the ordinal numbers in their basic forms:

1st – pierwszy
2nd – drugi
3rd – trzeci
4th – czwarty
5th – piąty
6th – szósty
7th – siódmy
8th – ósmy
9th – dziewiąty
10th – dziesiąty

11th – jedenasty
12th – dwunasty
13th – trzynasty
14th – czternasty
15th – piętnasty
16th – szesnasty
17th – siedemnasty
18th – osiemnasty
19th – dziewiętnasty
20th – dwudziesty

30th – trzydziesty
40th – czterdziesty
50th – pięćdziesiąty
60th – sześćdziesiąty
70th – siedemdziesiąty
80th – osiemdziesiąty
90th – dziewięćdziesiąty

100th – setny
200th – dwusetny
300th – trzechsetny
400th – czterechsetny
500th – pięćsetny
600th – sześćsetny
700th – siedemsetny
800th – osiemsetny
900th – dziewięćsetny
1000th – tysięczny

So far, so good. But what about some more complex numbers? Well, they’re created a bit differently than in English.

• In numbers between 21st and 99th, both parts are ordinal numbers, unlike in English. For example:
  21th: dwudziesty pierwszy (not *dwadzieścia pierwszy)
  58th: pięćdziesiąty ósmy
  99th: dziewięćdziesiąty dziewiąty
• In numbers bigger than 100th, the hundreds and thousands are cardinal numbers, while the tens and ones are ordinal numbers. For example:
  103: sto trzeci
  274: dwieście siedemdziesiąty czwarty
  1931: tysiąc dziewięćset trzydiesty pierwszy
  8111: osiem tysięcy sto jedenasty

Yes/no questions

Transforming statement into yes/no questions is a piece of cake. You take your sentence, stick a czy in the beginning, a question mark in the end and you’re done. No troublesome changes in the word order, weird auxilary verbs and other nightmares of English learners!

Ta książka jest bardzo droga.
This book is very expensive.

Czy ta książka jest bardzo droga?
Is this book very expensive?

Anna lubi wszystkie koty.
Anna likes all cats.

Czy Anna lubi wszystkie koty?
Does Anna like all cats?

Twoje dzieci jedzą dużo czekolady.
Your children eat a lot of chocolate.

Czy twoje dzieci jedzą dużo czekolady?
Do your children eat a lot of chocolate?

Easy, right? As you can guess, the word czy doesn’t really mean anything here – it’s not a verb like do, just a particle that indicates a question is about to follow. But let’s explore the topic of questions a bit deeper. Imagine you want to transform the above-mentioned sentences into indirect speech: I don’t know if the book is expensive. In English, this type of construction consists of two clauses: I don’t know and The book is expensive, connected with if. How about Polish then? What’s the Polish word for if (in this context only, though)?

Piotr pyta, czy ta książka jest droga.
Piotr is asking if this book is expensive.

Nie wiem, czy Anna lubi wszystkie koty.
I don’t know if Anna likes all cats.

Chcielibyśmy wiedzieć, czy twoje dzieci jedzą dużo czekolady.
We would like to know if your children eat a lot of chocolate.

See? This time, our czy is the equivalent of the conjunction if. You have now seen that making yes/no questions and transforming them into reported speech is a matter of, well, sticking stuff together.

Or?

Another important use of czy is that corresponding to the English or in situations where you want your listener to pick only one of the possibilities.

Chcesz kawy czy herbaty?
Do you want coffee or tea?

Która książka jest lepsza – ta czy tamta?
Which book is better – this or that one?

Które miasto jest większe – Poznań czy Wrocław?
Which city is bigger – Poznań or Wrocław?

Zostajemy w domu czy idziemy do kina?
Are we staying at home or going to the cinema?

Zamierzasz zrobić to dzisiaj czy jutro?
Are you going to do it today or tomorrow?

Note that this is an exclusive or – your listener is supposed to choose one of the options. It’s not the same or you use in sentences like I’m going to do it either today or tomorrow. If you want to render the either…or construction in Polish, you have to use another conjunction: albo.

Zamierzam zrobić to dzisiaj albo jutro.
I’m going to do it either today or tomorrow.