Polish Food and Travel Vocabulary: A 145-Card Study Guide

You can survive a week in Kraków on English, but you will order badly. Polish menus are written in Polish, market stalls are labelled in Polish, and the cheapest good meal in the country is served in a bar mleczny where nobody translates anything. The Flip It deck Polish Travel & Food Vocabulary (deck code QL4516) is built for exactly that gap: 145 cards, English on the front, Polish on the back, almost all of them nouns you will read off a board or a label.

Ten cards from the deck

What the 145 cards cover

• National dishes: pierogi, bigos, gołąbki, kotlet schabowy, zrazy, pieczeń, klopsik, placek ziemniaczany, rolmopsy, mizeria, surówka.
• Soups: zupa pomidorowa, ogórkowa, grzybowa, barszcz, żurek, flaki, rosół.
• Meat and fish: wieprzowina, wołowina, cielęcina, baranina, kurczak, kaczka, boczek, smalec, schab, śledź, łosoś, dorsz, karp, pstrąg.
• Dairy and staples: twaróg, ser, śmietana, masło, mleko, jajko, chleb, mąka, kasza, makaron, ryż, ziemniak.
• Vegetables: kapusta, ogórek kiszony, burak, marchew, cebula, czosnek, pieczarki, kalafior, brokuł, por, seler, groszek, fasola, soczewica, koperek, pietruszka, chrzan.
• Fruit and desserts: jabłko, gruszka, śliwka, wiśnia, truskawka, malina, borówka, porzeczka, sernik, makowiec, napoleonka, pączek, piernik, faworki, naleśnik, kompot, lody.
• Spices and condiments: sól, pieprz, papryka, majeranek, liść laurowy, kminek, musztarda, ocet, olej, miód, dżem, konfitura.
• Drinks: woda gazowana, woda niegazowana, herbata, kawa, piwo, wódka, wino, sok, miód pitny.
• At the table: śniadanie, obiad, kolacja, przekąska, restauracja, menu, rachunek, pyszne, smaczne, smacznego, dziękuję, proszę, na zdrowie.

Two tips for this deck

1. Learn the three menu modifiers and you can read half the board. Polish builds dish names by attaching an adjective to a noun you already know. Kiszony means fermented (ogórek → ogórek kiszony, kapusta → kapusta kiszona), marynowany means marinated (śledź → śledź marynowany), and soups are zupa plus an adjective made from the main ingredient: pomidor → zupa pomidorowa, ogórek → zupa ogórkowa, grzyb → zupa grzybowa. Three patterns, and a dozen cards stop being separate items.

2. Say the food cards out loud, because the spelling lies. Five letters cause all the trouble: ł sounds like English w, w sounds like v, ó sounds like oo, cz like ch and sz like sh. So gołąbki is roughly go-WOMB-kee, rosół is RO-soow, and barszcz is barshch — one syllable. Drill these cards by pronouncing the Polish side rather than picturing it; the letters you can say are the ones you will recognise when a waiter says them back.

Pacing

Fifteen cards a day finishes the deck in ten days — comfortably less than the time between booking a flight and taking it. Start with the drinks, meals and courtesy cards (about 30 of them): they are the ones you actually speak, while the rest you only need to read.

Where to find it

Open Flip It and search for deck code QL4516 — Polish Travel & Food Vocabulary, 145 cards.

Going further with Polish: How to Master the 1000 Most Common Polish Words.