Understating Polish when people speak fast

Polish
3 answers

Hi Keith, good question.

I think that the only thing that helps is to listen a lot to Polish content while reading at the same time and going back to listen to it again and again.

This worked well when I learned French. I still cannot speak it well, but at least I can understand a lot 😀

Depending on your level, you need to choose something you can understand fairly well already.

There are some decent Polish language podcast that you may find interesting (check Spotify and similar platforms). There is even a Polish podcast on Repeto, please check Polish podcast.

YouTube and now Netflix have the ability to slow down audio. Netflix original cartoons have Polish audio (although it can be difficult to get it to show up as an option; I usually keep my Netflix account set to Polish) and I am watching them once in Polish and then a second time in Polish with English subtitles so I catch the details and jokes. Keeping the sound set to .75 speed helps me catch more words than I would be able to otherwise, but it's still a hard slog! But one day I'll be able to understand, then I can bump the speed back up to normal and it won't seem so crazy fast.

Unfortunately for us, the subtitles in Polish do not match up with what they're saying because the subtitles were apparently translated directly from the English ones, but the Polish voice actors took some liberties with the audio (probably because of timing; they have to make the Polish sentences fit into the the same amount of time as the English ones to match up with the characters' mouths). I find reading words that don't correspond to what's being said annoying, so I have to skip the reading component (although I suppose you could watch with captions on and the sound off as another step in your practice). YouTube typically doesn't have captions at all.

Good ideas with slowing down audio Keri, thanks for sharing them

I actually used this method with audiobooks from Audible... It certainly helps 😀

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