How to Learn Polish: Why It's One of the Hardest Languages

Why is Polish considered one of the hardest languages?

Ah, Polish. First notably spoken around 500 AD by Slavic tribes, it’s now considered one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. According to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, Polish ranks as a Category III language — meaning it takes an estimated 1,100 hours to reach fluency. That’s double what it takes to learn French or Spanish.

Why is Polish hard for English speakers to learn?

Pronunciation, for one. Polish is hard for english speakers because Polish is full of clustered consonants, nasal vowels, and subtle sound pairs like i/y or e/ę that can break your brain (I still can’t say się correctly). And then there’s the grammar — verb conjugations, seven grammatical cases, and more exceptions than rules.

Once you climb Conjugation Crag, you are welcomed to an Everest of Exceptions, Cliff of Cases and Depression of Declination, which is where the next 900 hours of learning start to make more sense. You begin to wonder why you made this choice and wish you could turn back now… but you keep going. You’ve already done the amount of work that could've gotten you fluent in another language. Might as well see it through.

Then you converse with your Polish friend, and they casually admit they have no idea what “declension” means either. You hit the valley of despair. And that, my friends, is how my notebook ended up with tear stains.

Just look at this image… the verb to eat in English listing a couple of forms compared with the verb to eat in Polish listing over 100 forms

The struggle: Main challenges with learning

To make matters worse, Polish is not a priority language for most countries, schools or language companies; it simply isn't a popular choice for language learners. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve interacted with a native Pol, and the question

‘but why on earth are learning this stupid language anyway’

came up, I could fund a marketer for TaleTutor full time; maybe even three I hate marketing my app.

That lack of mainstream interest means fewer local language classes for Polish, fewer (if any) books in local libraries, and fewer meet-up groups established. You then say

‘well online make any language available’

and while it is better then 10 years ago, Polish does not have an abundance of great language resources online that are both affordable, in abundance and effective at the same time that languages like French or Spanish get by default. But you can check out my polish resources blog post for some of my favourites.

It is definitely possible for the average learner with the average learner's budget to learn Polish, but it requires more researching time than a more common European language like French or Spanish; it is quite literally the reason I developed TaleTutor.

Real Stories

I talked to a bunch of learners at different stages of their Polish journey. Some are deep in it. Others are still in the “what have I done?” phase.

Nearly everyone agreed: grammar is the worst. And how they tackled it varied wildly.The traditionalists swore you couldn’t skip grammar. They’d say, “studying Polish will be mostly about learning grammar” . Meanwhile, the immersion-heads avoided grammar altogether — opting instead for massive input. Hours of listening. Children’s books. Rewatching YouTube clips like it was a religious ritual.

One quote that stuck with me:

“Starting with grammar doesn’t make much sense to me either. You can memorize rules and words, but that won’t lead to true fluency. Focus on tons of input and the progress will come naturally.”

Even learners with “low” hour counts (100–200 hours in) could understand real native content — especially when built with techniques like TPRS, Automatic Language Growth or Krashen Comprehensible input. Most of them hadn’t even started speaking Polish much yet.

Conversation is the final boss for many learners. You can read and listen comfortably… but forming a sentence on the spot? Terrifying. Personally, I couldn’t read Polish for a full year — but I was talking early. Imperfectly. Like a caveman. Maybe still like a caveman… Polish people, in general, are super kind when you try to speak — though Reddit doesn’t always share that kindness when you try to celebrate a conversation milestone. (Yes, I’m still salty.)

But once learners crossed the 600-hour mark, something shifted. Stories became heartwarming: a professor letting them off for being late because they’d apologised in Polish without skipping a beat. Chatting with Polish officials without even realising they were doing it. Locals smiling at two non-natives holding a full conversation in this beautiful language. Those little moments? They make the Everest worth climbing.

Funnily enough some of my learners shared in my experiences of when I was in my early days of learning. Knowing few phrases in polish, politely saying

‘przepraszam, nie mówię po polsku’

and being spoken to in polish anyway. My first job at a Polish cleaning company was always like this.

In general though, a healthy approach is matching up rules when you start to spot them to help you understand the patterns you’ve spotted. Although declinations still might not soak into an English brain.

Resource they used

Here are some of the tools and platforms my interviewees used (alongside a few of my own favourites). Obviously these are going to be the best resources for learning Polish. If you’re into comprehensible input, especially check out my separate deep-dive here.

Final Take Aways

Every learner I spoke with had a different approach. Some loved grammar tables. Others swore off rules entirely. Some studied for an hour a day. Others binged Polish podcasts while cleaning their apartment.

What was clear with every learner though, was getting something done every day was key to their success as nothing with get you closer to fluency then time; and definitely not Duolingo; fun as a game though.

So, is learning Polish harder than other languages? It might take more than French, but whether you’re 10 hours in or 1,000 hours deep. Speak badly. Listen passively. Make flashcards. Burn the flashcards. Do whatcha gotta do.

And if you're looking for a tool to help make the whole thing easier, check out TaleTutor — the language learning platform I built after - during - climbing my own Polish-language Everest.

Questions:

📌Why is Polish so hard to learn?
  • 7 grammatical cases
  • Challenging pronunciation and consonant clusters
  • Verb conjugation + declension overload
  • Fewer resources than mainstream languages
📌How long does it take to learn Polish?

According to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, it takes around 1,100 hours for English speakers to become fluent in Polish.

📌What’s the best way to learn Polish?

Consistency, comprehensible input, and a mix of grammar + immersion methods work best. Getting through some basic verbs first via an app like Duolingo and then moving onto podcasts, TaleTutor and books seems to be a favourite.

April 17, 2025 mercedes