Learn Polish Vocabulary with Anki

Import a frequency-ordered Polish deck into Anki and study 10 to 20 new words a day. At 15 a day you reach 1,000 words in about ten weeks and 2,000 in about four and a half months.

Why learn words in frequency order

A small number of words does most of the work in any language. In most languages the 1,000 most common words make up roughly three quarters of what people say in everyday conversation, and 2,000 words take you past 80%. Polish has many forms for each word, so the exact figures depend on how you count, but the pattern holds: the first thousand words give you by far the biggest return for your time.

Near the top of any Polish frequency list you find short, everyday words like these:

Themed lists (animals, fruit, clothes) and alphabetical lists mix common words with rare ones, so you spend time on zebra before you know już (already). A frequency-ordered deck gives you dom (house), czas (time) and wiedzieć (to know) first, because you will meet them every day.

Spoken Decks offers free Polish decks of 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 words, all in frequency order, with an example sentence on each card. A flashcard teaches the basic form of a word. Polish words change their endings a lot, and every word on this site has its own page with all its forms.

How spaced repetition works

You forget new words quickly, but every time you recall a word just before you would have forgotten it, the memory lasts longer. Spaced repetition uses this. A new word comes back after a few minutes, then a day later, then after three days, a week, two weeks, a month and eventually several months.

Anki is a free flashcard program that does the scheduling for you. It shows you a card, you try to remember the answer, and you tell Anki how it went. Anki then decides when you see that card again. Words you know well disappear for months. Words you keep forgetting come back often. This is why a few minutes a day can keep thousands of words in your head.

Recent versions of Anki include a newer scheduler called FSRS. It predicts more accurately when you are about to forget a card, which usually means fewer reviews for the same result. You can switch it on in the deck options (see the settings section below).

Step 1: Install Anki

• Windows, Mac, Linux: Anki desktop is free. Download it from the official site, apps.ankiweb.net, install it and open it.
• Android: AnkiDroid is free on Google Play. It is made by volunteers and works with the same decks as the desktop version.
• iPhone and iPad: AnkiMobile is a one-time purchase in the App Store. The money funds the development of Anki. Check that the developer is Ankitects Pty Ltd, because there are unofficial apps with similar names.
• Several devices: create a free AnkiWeb account and log in on each device. Press Sync and your progress follows you from computer to phone.

Step 2: Import a Polish deck

Shared Anki decks come as a single file ending in .apkg. The file contains the cards, their layout and any audio.

On a computer

1. Download the .apkg file.
2. Double-click the file. Or open Anki and choose File → Import, then pick the file.
3. The deck appears in your deck list. Click its name, then click Study Now.

On Android (AnkiDroid)

1. Download the .apkg file on your phone.
2. Open AnkiDroid, tap the three-dot menu on the main screen and choose Import.
3. Pick the file from your Downloads folder and confirm.

On iPhone or iPad (AnkiMobile)

1. Download the .apkg file in Safari. It is saved in the Files app.
2. Open Files, tap the file, tap the share icon and choose AnkiMobile.
3. Confirm the import. The deck appears on the Decks screen.

If you use more than one device, the simplest way is to import the deck once on a computer, press Sync, and then press Sync on your phone. The whole deck, with audio, arrives there.

Step 3: Study every day

Start with 10 to 20 new cards a day. Anki’s default is 20. Each new card comes back several times in the following weeks, so after about a month your daily reviews settle at roughly ten times your number of new cards.

How to review a card:

1. Look at the front and say the answer out loud before you reveal it.
2. Press Show Answer (the space bar on a computer).
3. Grade yourself honestly: Again if you forgot or got it wrong, Hard if you got it right but it took a real effort, Good if you got it right, Easy if it was instant and too easy.
4. Use Again and Good for most cards. Hard does not mean “wrong”. If you got it wrong, press Again.

If you can’t remember a word after about ten seconds, stop trying and press Again. Long thinking does not help the memory and makes your sessions slow. Study at the same time every day, linked to something you already do, such as your morning coffee or your bus ride.

Settings worth changing

Open the deck options: on a computer, click the gear icon next to the deck name and choose Options. These are the settings that matter:

• New cards/day: set 10 to 20. If your reviews regularly take more than 30 minutes, lower it.
• Maximum reviews/day: set it to at least ten times your new cards (for 20 new cards, at least 200). Otherwise Anki hides cards that are due, and they pile up.
• Learning steps: the default is 1m 10m (one minute, then ten minutes) on the first day. Keep it. If you keep forgetting new words by the next day, try 1m 10m 1h. The one-hour step only works if you open Anki again later that day.
• FSRS: switch it on in the FSRS section of the options. Leave desired retention at the default 0.90.
• New card order: make sure new cards are not shown in random order, so you learn the most common words first. Keep the default order in the Display Order section.

Audio, example sentences and typing

Audio. When a card has audio, play it every time and repeat the word out loud. On a computer, press R to hear it again. Polish spelling is very regular, so hearing and seeing each word at once teaches you to read Polish quickly. Listen for the stress, which almost always falls on the second-to-last syllable.

Example sentences. Read the sentence and understand it, but don’t try to memorise it. The sentence shows the word in a real form. dom (house) appears as w domu (at home) and do domu (home, as in “going home”), and that is how you will hear it.

Direction. Start with Polish → English cards, which test whether you recognise a word. Once the first few hundred words feel easy, add English → Polish cards, which test whether you can produce the word yourself.

Typing the answer. Typing forces you to spell ą, ę, ł and ż correctly. To switch it on in a deck, go to Tools → Manage Note Types, select the deck’s note type, click Cards, and add {{type:Polish}} on the front template. Use the exact name of the field that holds the Polish word instead of “Polish”. Anki then shows a box and marks your mistakes letter by letter.

Common mistakes and how long it takes

• Too many new cards. Fifty new words a day feels great for a week. A month later you face 400 reviews a day and give up. Choose a number you can manage on your busiest day.
• Skipping days. Anki keeps scheduling cards while you are away, so after a break they are all waiting at once. If you fall behind, set new cards to 0 for a few days, clear the reviews, then start new cards again. Don’t reset the deck.
• Grading too kindly. Pressing Good on a word you didn’t really know means you see it too late and forget it again.
• Studying in silence. Say every word out loud. You are learning to speak, not only to read.
• Only using Anki. Flashcards give you the words. Listening, reading and talking make them stick. Even ten minutes of a Polish podcast or video a day helps.

With 15 new cards a day you reach 1,000 words in about ten weeks and 2,000 words in about four and a half months. At 1,000 words you can handle simple everyday conversations and short texts with a dictionary. At 2,000 words you can follow most everyday topics. After that, a 5,000-word deck builds the vocabulary for reading real Polish articles and books.