Polish with ChatGPT and Claude:
prompts and what's missing

Short answer. ChatGPT and Claude speak Polish and make a good practice partner if your prompt sets the level, the formal Pan/Pani, restoring Polish letters and corrections after the conversation. A plain chat lacks a pronunciation score, scheduled review and a record of your progress; the Talkfirst connector adds them.

ChatGPT and Claude speak Polish, explain cases with examples and will happily play a clerk at the immigration office or a doctor. As a practice partner that works, but Polish needs its own rules in the prompt: the formal Pan/Pani, Polish letters, false friends. Below: ready-made prompts, where a plain chat falls short and what Talkfirst adds.

What to put in a prompt for Polish

The Pan/Pani form

In Poland you address strangers, people at work, doctors and officials in the third person: Czy może Pan powtórzyć? — “Could you repeat that?” (to a man). Assistants often default to the informal form. Set the register explicitly: Pan/Pani for an official scene, the informal form with a friend.

Polish letters

Without a Polish keyboard people type dziekuje instead of dziękuję, and the assistant quietly understands. Ask it to restore every letter with a diacritic and point out where you dropped one: ą, ę, ł, ś, ć, ż, ź, ń, ó change both the sound and the meaning. You can add the “Polish (Programmers)” keyboard in your system settings and type these letters with the right Alt key (Option on a Mac).

False friends

Some Polish words look like English ones and mean something else: aktualnie — currently, ewentualnie — possibly, or alternatively, pensja — salary, dres — a tracksuit. Ask the assistant to flag such words in your sentences.

Phrases, not transcriptions

Spellings like “pshe-pra-sham” teach you a sound that isn't there. Ask for Polish spelling only and listen to the pronunciation — in voice mode or with audio.

Prompts for Polish

Immigration office: applying for a new residence permit

You are a clerk at the foreigners' department of a voivodeship office, I've come to apply for a new residence permit (karta pobytu). Speak only Polish, A2 level, address me as “Pan” (or “Pani”) and I'll do the same. Ask one question at a time. Don't correct me during the conversation. After 8 of my replies give me a list in English: what I said → the correct version → why, and separately — where I slipped into the informal form.

Correcting a text

I type Polish without a Polish keyboard. Correct my text: restore all the letters ą ę ł ś ć ż ź ń ó, fix the cases and the verb aspect. For each mistake — one sentence in English on why. Flag false friends separately. Text: …

B1 oral exam

I'm preparing for the oral part of the Polish B1 exam. Topic: work. Ask me 5 questions in Polish, one at a time, and wait for my answer. Then tell me in English where an answer was too short for B1 and suggest one linking phrase (moim zdaniem, z jednej strony…) to add.

How the B1 exam works — in the guide Polish B1 for long-term EU residence. The chat doesn't reproduce the timed format: it doesn't keep time and doesn't know the order of the tasks.

Phrases for a situation

Give me 12 Polish phrases at A1–A2 for talking to a courier at the door: what the courier will say and what I can answer. Format: Polish phrase — English translation. No transcription.

Where a plain chat falls short

• Pronunciation. The pairs sz / ś and cz / ć and the nasal ą and ę trip up almost everyone. Voice mode tries to understand you, not to grade you: it will understand a phrase with a wrong sound and won't tell you which word it was in.
• Review. The chat won't remind you tomorrow to review warzywa. Words you meet once fade unless they come back after a day, three days, a week.
• Progress. The assistant's memory holds notes about you, not a list of words with dates. In a new chat you explain your level and what you know all over again.
• Confident mistakes. In Polish the model sometimes gets an ending wrong or invents a rule and explains it very convincingly. Check what matters against a dictionary or a textbook.

What Talkfirst adds

Talkfirst is speaking practice for Polish with explanations in English, and it works in Claude and ChatGPT as a connector (an MCP server). In the chat you get:

• a pronunciation window — say a Polish phrase and get a word-by-word score from speech recognition; in recall mode you see only the translation;
• voice conversations with a Polish-speaking partner in a scene (some scenes are in Pro) or, in Pro, on your own topic, then the pauses, corrections and more natural ways to say it;
• spaced-repetition flashcards — words from a conversation go into your vocabulary, and the assistant knows what to review today;
• quizzes on your words — recognition, recall, listening and speaking.

Vocabulary and progress are shared with the web app and the Telegram bot. That's also where the timed mock B1 oral exam is — it isn't in the chat.

The Talkfirst quiz window on Polish words. A frame from our test setup, not a screenshot of a live chat.

Each of these is unpacked step by step, with prompts and Polish examples, in the section how to learn Polish with an AI agent: words into your vocabulary, pronunciation, lectures from the agent, a study plan and the app.

How to connect it

1. Claude: in the browser or the desktop app — Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, URL https://mcp.talkfirst.io/mcp.
2. ChatGPT: developer mode (Settings → Apps → Advanced settings), then an app with the same URL and OAuth sign-in. Whether developer mode is available depends on your plan and region.
3. Sign in with an email code or Telegram.
4. In the Talkfirst app (web or Telegram), pick Polish. The tools work in your active language; switch the language you're learning in the Talkfirst app.
5. Type: “Let's practise a short conversation in Polish: I'm picking up a parcel from a courier.”

Voice windows work in Claude on the web and on desktop; in the Claude mobile apps the windows have no microphone. More in the docs. The voices are synthesised, and scores are automatic and can be wrong. More guides — Polish guides.

Questions