This Basic Polish book from Routledge says at the outset that it assumes no previous knowledge of Polish. Unlike many other language books, it sticks to that commitment. It begins at the beginning.

I’m not going to tell you it wasn’t freakishly hard for me, because it was. I suffered, but I made it through the book and even started its successor, Intermediate Polish, by the same author, Dana Bielec.

The Polish language-learning market is not exactly flooded with entries. Basic Polish: A Grammar and Workbook is nonetheless a solid, carefully edited self-study resource.

In this book, as in most grammar books I have encountered, the sample sentences occasionally struck me as esoteric. Which is fine with me, by the way; I enjoy the personality of a grammar book as expressed through the vocabulary and ideas the writer chooses to include.

I am pretty sure, for example, that this was the first time I had ever been instructed in how to say, “The piglet’s straw is wet”!