“I Speak Polish”: What Phil Learned from Years of Getting It Wrong (and Right)

For years, whenever someone asked my student Phil if he speaks Polish, he answered the same way: “I’m learning Polish.” A safety phrase. A “please go easy on me.”

Last summer, after two weeks in Poland, he came back and told me something had changed. For the first time, he was telling people: “Mówię po polsku.” I speak Polish.

So we sat down and did what we do — recorded a conversation. But this time Phil brought an engineer’s analysis of his own years of learning: what worked, what wasted his time, and what he’d never do again. Watch it here, then read the lessons I don’t want you to miss:

Lesson 1: You can’t force Polish into your brain — you have to convince it

Phil’s core insight is one every learner eventually meets: your brain deletes most of what it takes in every day. It has to. So your first job isn’t memorizing — it’s convincing your brain that Polish is essential for survival. Immersion works because your brain believes the stakes are real.

Lesson 2: No Poland? Build “artificial immersion”

Phil never lived in Poland. Instead he rebuilt his American life until it was suspiciously Polish: Polish TV instead of American, Polish radio in the mornings, children’s books at bedtime, Polish podcasts on every walk — and constantly narrating his own day to himself in Polish. His wife occasionally asked him to “tone down the Polishness.” That’s how you know the dose is right.

Lesson 3: Emotion + information = knowledge

The grammar Phil remembers best didn’t come from a workbook. It came from a one-minute video of his young daughter singing a Polish nursery rhyme to their new puppy. Years later he can still hear it — and inside that little song sit case endings and past-tense forms he never had to consciously memorize. What carries emotion, stays. Attach new Polish to your people, your life, your jokes.

Lesson 4: Everything must serve YOUR goal

Phil’s goal was always communication with family — so he skipped what didn’t serve it. The politics unit in the app? Skipped. Vocabulary for situations that happen once a decade? Later. If your goal is Karta Polaka, your path looks different from someone marrying into a Polish family. Same language, different game. Learn what your real life will actually ask of you.

Lesson 5: The test is real life

Phil never took a certificate exam. His tests: a yearly trip to Poland — and one children’s book by Astrid Lindgren that he tried to read a few pages of, year after year, until one day he simply… finished it. The first book he ever read entirely in Polish. Today he’s finishing a Matthew McConaughey memoir in Polish translation. That’s a progress bar no app can draw.

Lesson 6: Technology and humanity — never just one

Phil calls ChatGPT “the big game changer” compared to when he started — personalized stories, grammar explanations at 2 a.m., learning plans built like gym programs with progressive overload. And in the same breath: if you learn only with AI, you’ll arrive at your first real conversation with vocabulary no Pole actually uses. His formula is the AIPolish formula: AI for unlimited practice, a teacher for the system and feedback, real people for the real thing.

The moment it clicked

What finally let Phil say “I speak Polish” wasn’t a grammar breakthrough. He stopped caring about speaking perfectly and started caring about telling the story. People understand you. They’re interested in what you’re saying, not in your endings. Confidence didn’t come before speaking — it came from speaking.

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Phil’s story is one of many — these conversations with my students are literally what The Ultimate Polish Language Online Course is built from. If you want to see how the whole method works, start with How to Learn Polish. And if a video course on combining AI with teachers, partners, and Polish family sounds like your thing — the waitlist is open.