A few brief notes on the Polish Language

To an English-speaking person Polish is a difficult and strange language.
Firstly it has a few letters which are unfamiliar:
1)	"L" with a stroke through the upright which is pronounced like the English "W" e.g. maly=young is pronounced mawy.
2)	"C" with an accent, pronounced "ch" (as are "ci" and "cz")
3)	"S" with an accent, pronounced "sh" (as are "si" and "sz")
4)	"A" with a curl below, pronounced "on"
5)	"E" with a curl below, prnounced "en" but as "e" at end of word and "em" if followed by "b" or "p"
6)	"N" with accent, pronounced "n-y" as in nuance
7)	"O" with accent, pronounced as "oo" in book
8)	"Z" with accent, pronounced as "s" in leasure (as is "zi")
In my glossary I have not included these accents because I and most other English speakers have their computers set to use the Western alphabet.
Other differences in pronunciation:
"aj" = "i" in sight
"au" = "ow" in now
"c" = "ts" in cats
"ch" and "h" = "ch" in Scots loch
"dz" = "ds" in woods, sometimes "dj" like "j" in jam, "ts" at end
"ej" = "ay" in hay
"i" = "ee" in need
"j" = "y" in yet
"rz" = "s" in leasure
"u" = "oo" in look
"w" = "v" in vote
"y" = "i" in pit
Some examples:
"part" e.g. part of a model = "czesc" where the "e" has a curl below and the "s" and "c" at the end both have accents. This is pronounced "chensh-ch".
"lightning" the name of a famous Polish ship = "blyskawica" with a stroke through the "l". This is pronounced "bwiskaveetsa".
"tweezers" = "szczypczyki". Pronounced "sh-chipchikee".
"windscreen" = "przednia szyba". Pronounced "pshed-nya shiba".

There are no words for "a", "the", "an" in Polish.
Nouns have masculine, feminine and neuter genders and decline according to this and to their position and function in the sentence (up to seven cases plus singular/plural - this means the ending of nouns vary. e.g. noc = night is pronounced "nots", is feminine and has the following variations:
Singular
Nominative noc
Accusative noc
Genitive nocy
Dative noc
Instrumental noca (with curl under "a" - pronounced "notson")
Locative nocy
Corresponding pleurals: noce, noce, nocy, nocom, nocami, nocach.
This leads to confusion because they often look like different words to an English speaker.
Adjectives similarly decline. Even the simple pronoun for "I" in English has the Polish forms: ja, mnie, mi, mna.
Verbs alter according to the subject of the sentence and tense.
e.g. "byc"="to be" in English has many forms. (I am leaving out the accents here)
A few follow:
jestem=I am
jestes=you are (singular familiar)
jest=he/she/it is,you are (singular polite)
jestesmy=we are
jestescie=you are (pleural familiar)
sa=they are, you are (pleural polite)
bylem=I was (male)
bylam=I was (female)
byles=you were (male)
bylas=you were (female)
byl/byla=he/she/it was, you were (singular polite M/F)
bylo=it was
bylismy/bylysmy= we were
.....etc.
bede=I will be
bedziesz=you will be (sing. familiar)
bedzie=he/she/it will be, you will be (sing., polite)
etc.
Some verbs have a different prefixes for past and future e.g. z-, prze-, na-, u-, wy-, po-, za- may be added to the beginning of the word. In looking for these words in the dictionary it is necessary to take off the prefix.
It is no wonder that Polish words are difficult for English speakers to look up in a dictionary.