Polish Phrases for Travelers: 60 Essentials (With Audio)

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Updated August 2026 · Everyday Polish · 10-minute read · 🔊 every phrase has native audio

Most Polish phrase lists are written for someone spending a weekend in Kraków. This one is written for you as well, but it assumes something the others do not: that you might be going to Poland to find something rather than to see it.

A great many people who fly to Poland from the United States are not tourists in the ordinary sense. They are going to meet relatives they have only written to, to stand in a village their surname came from, to look for a grave, or to sit at a table where nobody speaks English and try to say something true. There is a section further down for exactly that, and you will not find it on any other page.

Everything here has native audio — tap any row. And one piece of good news before you start: Polish is regular. Each letter keeps one sound. Read the rules once and you can pronounce any Polish word you meet, which is more than English can offer in return.

The ten that do most of the work

These ten will carry you through a shop, a restaurant, a station and a first meeting. Everything else on this page is detail.

Pan and pani — Polish doesn’t say “you” to strangers

This is the part every other travel page gives one line, and it is the thing that will actually shape how people respond to you.

Polish has ty — the informal you — and it is used with family, close friends and children. With everyone else, Polish does not use a word for “you” at all. It speaks about the person in the third person, using pan for a man and pani for a woman. So “Do you speak English?” is literally Does sir speak English?

It feels strange in English and it is completely ordinary in Polish. Using ty with a stranger, a shopkeeper or anyone older is not casual — it is rude in a way that registers immediately. Default to pan and pani with everyone outside your family. With relatives, ty from the first minute.

One more thing worth knowing: Poles answer this question honestly. Jak się masz? is not a greeting the way “how are you” is in America — ask it and you will get the real answer, at length. That is not gloominess. It is a culture where the question means what it says.

If you are going to find family

This is the section written for the reader nobody else writes for. If you are flying to Poland to meet relatives, find a village, or look for a grave, these are the sentences that open doors — in a parish office, a cemetery, a town hall, or a kitchen where nobody speaks English.

Say them slowly. Nobody expects fluency from someone whose grandparents left. What people respond to is that you tried, and in small towns in Poland that response is often overwhelming.

Getting someone to understand you

Finding your way

Eating, and being fed rather a lot

Two Polish table customs will catch you out. Someone will say smacznego to you before you eat — it is the equivalent of bon appétit and you say it back. And if you are eating in someone’s home, refusing a second helping once is heard as politeness rather than as an answer.

Shopping and paying

The phrases you hope not to need

Four mistakes almost every visitor makes

1. Bringing an even number of flowers. If you are visiting relatives — and you should bring flowers — bring an odd number. Even-numbered bouquets are for funerals and graves, and everyone in Poland knows it without having to think about it. Chrysanthemums are for cemeteries too. Nobody will say anything; they will simply notice.

2. Treating a first refusal as an answer. At a Polish table, declining a second helping once is a politeness move, not a decision. You will be offered again. If you genuinely cannot eat more, say to wystarczy — that’s enough — and say it warmly, twice.

3. Asking a stranger jak się masz? It uses ty, the informal you, so with someone you have just met it is both too casual and genuinely asked. Poles answer this question truthfully. With strangers, stay with dzień dobry and leave it there.

4. Expecting your surname to be pronounced the way you say it. If your family name ended up spelled for English speakers, the Polish version may sound quite different — w is a v, ł is a w, j is a y, and ch is closer to an h. It is worth learning the Polish pronunciation of your own name before you go; relatives find it genuinely moving.

Numbers you’ll actually use

Eight will do. The full set, with audio on every one, is in our Polish numbers guide.

Questions travellers actually ask

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