<p>Try out the online web course by Duolingo for Polish. It’s free, and it treats learning the language like a video game with points and lives. It ramps you up slowly, lets you hear pronunciations, and has a lot of repetition which really helps things stick. I am using it to learn a new language from zero prior knowledge. Granted, I’m not fluent after only two months but if you resolve to work at it for a half hour here and there you might be surprised at what you can get out of it.</p>
<p>Warning: Polish is difficult. Very. You can learn a lot of words, and a lot of phrases, and you’ll thrill your babcia (babci is the word in a declension form) to bits. But don’t expect to gain any kind of proficiency without devoting a great deal of time and energy. </p>
<p>Thank you (dziękuję) so much for the replies! I’ve been practicing since my first post with some old books my Babci (yes, formally “Babcia”) had stored at her house, and I’ve also been trying to listen to things on the internet. I’m of course nowhere near proficient with it, but I can understand some basic things, so I feel that I’ve made at least a little stride forward! It’s hard because I study French in school and so am more geared towards/used to that, and I find myself thinking of French words sometimes when I’m trying to speak Polish. But hopefully I can juggle them both.</p>
<p>And haha, @greenwitch, it’s “pączki” 
they’re really good, especially if it’s made at a proper Polish bakery!</p>
<p>If you want someone to practice with, check out the churches in your area. Are any of them Polish? Many Polish churches still have mass in Polish once a week. There may also be activities there and the people would love to just talk and talk to you. I grew up in a town with a large Polish population so a lot of the workers in our school cafeterias spoke Polish, many grandparents, etc. We all picked up some of the more colorful language!</p>