Preparing for the Polish league Ekstraliga: Dipping into language learning

Professional chess players jump from league matches in one country to league matches in another country. Language-wise one of the easiest ways to play in the first league of several countries for German speaking players might be playing in Germany and Austria. However, the Ekstraliga in the Czech Republic is popular to get an extra tournament for professional players. There are also players going to other leagues. GM Rasmus Svane (German Blitz Champion 2025) previously announced in his latest youtube video about the German Chess Championship that he and his brother GM Frederik Svane (2nd place European Chess Championship 2025) will participate in the Polish league, same as GM Matthias Blübaum (European Chess Champion 2025).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD1asGerOGw

For information on the Polish Ekstraliga, you can check out this Polish page. It includes the players registered for the tournament.

I’m sure the players will prepare accordingly for the Polish league chess-wise. As a language teacher, I’m here to talk about the possibilities of language preparation for the Polish league! Most international chess events plan for players who can’t speak the local language so that communication via English is possible in most cases. Living in Germany and getting to know the German speaking chess world, I also observe that sometimes people speak English for the not-German-speaking players until they don’t. Accidentally, someone switches to German and that was it with the information.

Get started with Polish!

So, let’s talk about the hypothetical case of someone wanting to prepare language-wise for the Polish league. How do you start? The fastest way to get access to material is using one of the language learning apps that has Polish in their repertoire. The fastest way to learn exactly the words and phrases you want to learn and to train that content with a real person, is looking for private lessons with a Polish teacher, in particular a Polish teacher who can tell you a thing or two about chess. Let’s face it, language learning apps and curricula not exactly concentrate on chess for their content.

Communication when English is out of the equation

When I was playing at a tournament in France, one of my opponents who tried to analyze the game with me afterwards spoke in French while my French level wasn’t that elevated. But understanding the names of the pieces and some extra words already helped to understand enough to learn something from that conversation. In addition, some basic words helped to respond with a few words and showing my thoughts on the board. It wasn’t ideal but communication was possible. What if you want to offer a draw but your opponent doesn’t understand English? Of course, there are other ways to make yourself understood, like putting the “=” sign on your notation sheet and show it to your opponent, but just in case, a few words for being able to offer a draw wouldn’t hurt, right?

Get ready to be able to pronounce names of places and people in Polish

If you see Polish names of people or names of places and try to pronounce them with the English or German pronunciation, there is a big chance that you don’t say what you wanted to say. Learning a few things about the pronunciation of a language right, helps you with being understood when looking for a place or person. Moreover, if you are actually playing in the Polish league or in some other context with team members who have Polish names, it might be a nice idea to learn how to pronounce Polish names correctly anyways.

For some support, here is a guide from a Polish language and culture website run by the Polish culture institute Adam Mickiewicz Institute (run by the Polish state) to learn the pronunciation of letters in Polish. And for whatever beautiful reason, that article also exist in Portuguese (of all languages they chose Portuguese to talk about Polish pronunciation? <3).

Pronunciation detective: The treatment of Polish names in different language systems

If you encounter a Polish name in a context of an English using website or a list of some German association, don’t believe them instantly that the writing of the name is correct. Polish has some letters that do not exist in neither German nor English, so the systems (or humans) just change the name to German/English letters.

In Hamburg, we have the Polish GM Monika Socko playing for the first league team of St. Pauli and the first women’s league team of the Hamburger SK. If we go for the pronunciation of her name according to the article about the Polish pronunciation, we will end up with /Sot͡sko/. The article says written <c> is always pronounced like /t͡s/ and never like /k/ as in the English word <cat>. We can even find evidence of that pronunciation, as in an interview at the World Blitz Championship 2021 in Warszawa where the interviewer pronounces her name in front of her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iq8K5QxbuE

However, if you look for actual Polish videos with her, you find that “Socko” is not actually how her name is written in Polish. It’s Soćko! That changes the pronunciation of the name! Let’s check the Polish pronunciation guide again. It says that written <ć> is pronounced like <ch> in <China> just softer. As a linguist, I can’t really work with that description. Let’s check the best resource for academic knowledge: Wikipedia. The irony is that you get warned about using Wikipedia but for general phonology knowledge, it’s actually quite good. But you really shouldn’t base your research on it! There is an Wikipedia article about the phonology (aka. pronunciation) of Polish. If you scroll to the consonants, you can find <ć>. Its pronunciation is described with a phoneme that has an IPA sign that this Lichess blog is making difficult to show. It's a combination of a /t/ in combination with a "c" with a curl. You can find the description for the combined phoneme with pronunciation on a different Wikipedia page (for the Polish <ć> sound). That phoneme explains why the description only worked with “softer” as “ch” in “China” in the article, we don’t have a similar sound neither in Standard German nor in Standard US or British English (for all I know)! An advantage of the Wikipedia page is that they’ve linked to an audio file for the proper pronunciation.

Here is a Polish video (title: “Szachowe Arcymistrzynie #02: Monika Soćko”) in which she’s saying her own name in Polish. That pronunciation of the sound before the [k] sounds way more like the one for <ć> in the Wikipedia article than any other alternative!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOPNj1SXXgE

So, me asking my Polish speaking friend about how to pronounce <Socko> correctly, actually did not help as much as I should have asked for <Soćko>.
Fyi, Polish Grandmaster Monika Soćko will participate in the Ekstraliga as well as her husband. Also IM Klaudia Kulon who plays in the German league for SK Kirchweyhe is going to participate in it (source: link to the participation list for the Ekstraliga).

Handy language skills for a trip

The nice thing about learning a language for a chess tournament (or in this case a league trip) is that the non-chess bits of it are very similar to “vacation trip” particularities. How to say your name? What’s the word for “street”? How to say “hello” and “goodbye” and how to ask for some coffee? That means, that you can choose any language learning material that looks like it’s designed for holiday learners, and it should help you with the basics. Material that includes spoken material is a big advantage for you, especially if you can’t learn with a teacher or friend who actually knows how to pronounce Polish words and phrases.

More tips for language learning for chess trips?

Last year, I’ve already written an article about language learning for a chess tournament abroad. In that instance, it was written for a tournament in the Czech Republic: “How to prepare for a chess tournament abroad – language-wise”.

It has already got more than 9,000 views!

If you want to support me spreading the word around language learning and chess, share my articles and feel free to contact me with language learning specific questions! For Polish language specific questions, please, go to Polish language experts instead!

Source for the Polish in the title picture:
English-Polish dictionary Diki.pl: https://www.diki.pl/slownik-angielskiego?q=give+up.

Changes within the current article

In an older version of this article, I misspelled Monika like this: <Moniką>. If you've checked out the Polish interview with Monika Soćko, you'll find a subtitle spelling her name like that: <Moniką Soćko>. While I mistakenly assumed that to be the correct spelling of her name in general, that <ą> had actually another task. At this point, I want to thank GM David Navara for making me aware of this mistake: The <ą> was used in that occasion of the video because the name was used in the grammatical case "Instrumental". The Instrumental case is used in Polish, for example, after prepositions like "z" ('with'). So, while the name is "Monika", we would say "z Moniką" ('with Monika') in Polish, or in the case of the interview: "...z GM Moniką Soćko". For an English explanation of the Polish Instrumental, you can check out a blog article by Jarek from "Course Of Polish" about the Polish Instrumental Case.