05 Oct, 2008
Thank you and please – polish our Polish, part 5
Posted by: Michał In: polish your Polish
Had a bit of a long break with my Polish lessons, but just got back from Greece (lovely and sunny Cycladic Islands) and realised again how important it is to know just a few basic phrases. You don’t need to be fluent, you don’t need to shine, but just make the effort and learn a few phrases – and everyone will be so much more helpful.
Hence I will carry on with the most basic phrases before even attempting anything more complex. Today it’s time for those polite phrases, like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
The first phrase is
Proszę
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which is the equivalent of ‘please’. But ‘Proszę’ is often also used to say ‘here you are’ when presenting someone with something. So don’t roll your eyes when a Polish waitress brings you your coffee and says ‘Please’ instead of ‘There you go’. She’s not asking for anything. (BTW, you will also hear ‘proszę’ when you knock at somebody’s door – in such situation ‘proszę’ means ‘come in’.)
Talking about asking for coffee, the word ‘Proszę’ has also a longer form, ‘Poproszę’. It’s a slightly more polite way of asking for something and unlike ‘proszę’ it doesn’t work on its own, hence you can say:
Poproszę kawę
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‘(Can I have) some coffee, please?’ Or:
Poproszę herbatę z cytryną
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‘(Can I have) tea with lemon, please?’ Yes, we do prefer it with lemon. Nothing wrong with milky tea, but lemon is the default choice in many Polish places.
But I’m digressing. So what do you say once our lemon tea is there?
Dziękuję
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‘Thank you’. If you want to emphasise your ‘thankyou’, go for:
Dziękuję bardzo
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‘Thank you very much’. In a more informal situation, go for:
Dzięki
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‘Thanks’ Now, the last phrase has a few variations, all rather colloquial, but probably the most popular one is:
Wielkie dzięki
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‘Thanks a lot!’
It might be worth mentioning here that all those phrases are only useful if you speak for yourself, if there is more than one person, we’d need to use some plural forms in certain cases, but don’t worry about that now. We’ll cross that bridge.
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