Best products from r/learnpolish

My humble opinion... it sounds like you judge yourself even more than others judge you, and you need to address that more than your pronunciation (especially if you're already B1!).

I'm a total beginner in Polish, and whenever I speak I totally butcher the language with my Neanderthal skills, but I still always get the feeling that people are very friendly and smile, even if I just somehow puzzled together a few words with no declination or anything. The worst that can happen is that they don't understand, and while that might be a bit bad on the self esteem, I'm always sure the universe still doesn't mind much. And the best thing that can happen is that they understand, but I think that regardless, they always appreciate I'm trying to make an effort to communicate in their language.

Think that you wouldn't judge a kid for making mistakes while speaking, but we do it with adults (and ourselves) all the time, as if it was fine.

I'd say read a book that can help with your self confidence, whilst I don't know many on that specific topic, I'm sure you can search on Amazon and just pick one with lots of 5 star reviews.

Sort of related, on the topic of performance and not being judgemental: "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey. Outstanding, and whilst using tennis as an example, it's not really about tennis but about performance, and you can apply it to any field. It spawned a series of "Inner Game of..." other things, but I'd stick to the original. Such a great book.

Also, a quick Amazon search tells me "You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life" has almost 5,000 five star reviews - might be an interesting read, even if the subject might initially sound a bit too cheesy for you.

Sorry if I'm going too off topic, hope this helps!

http://ikindalikelanguages.com/labs/lesson.php?id=195

This is cool website with basic basics that can show you how language looks. First "mistake" I notice that people learning new language make is NOT learning the alphabet and how it's pronounced first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeO-d7Y9-t8
^ she speaks kinda fast but goes thro (keep in mind that she avoided Ą Ę Ó because there are no words starting with that letters, There is no Ż Ź also but I have no idea why.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeO-d7Y9-t8&t=4m40s
^ here she just spells entire alphabet without example words

Go to youtube and look for "Alfabet" or "Abecadło" to get alphabet - there is poem called abecadło ? by Julian Tuwin that we used in pre-school

Other than that http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/polish/ is a good source of vocabulary BUUUUT from my experience with languages, verbs are the most important.

http://forvo.com/languages/pl/ - you can hear how to spell stuff here.

When you know alphabet pretty good you can look around the net for courses like:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Polish-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/0415559472/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381506004&sr=1-5&keywords=Polish

Colloquial X is a pretty good language learning series.

tip: Cz , Sz, Ch, Rz, Dz, Dż are "letters"/sounds too - you don't say them by combining to letter but but saying single sound for example: cz is said like ch in chamber, sz is said like sh in shadow - rz dz dż no equivalent that I can think of.

Well, I'm off for today so please just send me a blank or any e-mail and get in touch with me that way cause reddit works in mysterious ways and sometimes I forget my passwords. (damn throwaway accounts)

When you say the app do you mean it's now available on mobile?

I gave my opinion on how to study Polish here in this thread.

In addition I'd also recommend a good grammar book. I found these two pretty good: Hurra!!! Discovering Polish: A Learner's Grammar by L Madelska and Basic Polish: A Grammar and Workbook by Dana Bielec.

Good luck!

This book contains several 19th century British short ghost stories, simplified somewhat and very competently translated into Polish. It’s dual-language so you get the English text too. I found it an invaluable aid in improving my reading enough to start tackling native texts.

After that, I read A Graded Reader of Classic Polish Literature. I recommend this as well, but it will still be challenging at your level. A fair bit of archaic/literary vocabulary, but many words are glossed. You might do well to read the above first, then move on to this one.

There's a book for that: My First Polish Reader. You can download samples (the first ten chapters with audio) for free with a quick Google search.

This is an incredibly in-depth look at grammar by Oscar Swan: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0893572969

Honestly it is worth your time and effort to study separately and only practice with her, instead of learning from her. She will be able to tell you when you say something incorrectly, or tell you the more common way to say something, but otherwise unless she is a trained Polish teacher, trying to learn from her will frustrate both of you.

"Why did you say X instead Y?"

"Nie wiem, kogo/czego"

"?!?!!?"

There are a ton of resources out there, Youtube, interia, wp, wykop, news sites, etc., you will have no trouble finding media to listen to. Force yourself to watch pure Polish 30 mins to an hour a day. Pause, lookup, and re-listen, over and over.

As far as formal resources, I used the book and audio series We Learn Polish (although it looks like this is the newer addition) and can't recommend it enough. One of the books gives you the 'direct method' experience while the other explains the grammar behind it. There are a ton of formal resources though, look in this subreddit for other recommendations, or online elsewhere.

Bottom line, learn on your own and practice with your girlfriend. Take notes when talking to her, so that when she corrects you, you can write it down and correct future usage. The hardest thing is to make it clear it is okay to correct you, since you are just learning. Some partners are reluctant to correct their significant other, but that's the only way you will learn properly. I knew a person who had to unlearn using -am in the first person past tense (byłam, przeczytałam, itd.,) because that's what his girlfriend would say. On the other side of the coin, don't be offended when you are corrected and you think you are already right.

Powodzenia!