You can spend months studying Polish grammar and vocabulary, only to visit Poland and realize you don’t understand half of what people are saying on the street.

Textbooks teach you to say dzień dobry (good day) and do widzenia (goodbye).

But on the streets of Warsaw or Kraków, you’ll hear something else.

To really fit in and understand casual conversations, you need to learn colloquialisms. Polish slang is rich, expressive, and honestly, a lot of fun to use. It helps you sound less “stiff” and builds an immediate connection with native speakers.

In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the essential slang words that you’ll hear every single day in Poland.

Casual greetings and goodbyes

If you walk into a shop or a formal meeting, stick to dzień dobry.

But if you are meeting friends, using formal language can actually create a weird distance between you. You want to sound relaxed.

Siema / Elo

Siema is the most common informal greeting. It is actually a shortened version of jak się masz? (how are you?), but over time it just became a word for “hi”.

You might also hear Elo, which comes from hip-hop culture (influenced by the English “Hello”), but Siema is universally understood by young and old alike in informal settings.

Na razie / Nara

When leaving, instead of the formal do widzenia, most Poles will say na razie.

It literally means “for now” (as in, “bye for now”), but it functions exactly like “see ya”.

If you want to be even more slangy, you can shorten it to Nara.

The most important word: Spoko

If you only learn one slang word from this article, make it this one.

Spoko is the Swiss Army Knife of Polish slang.

It comes from the word spokój (peace/calm). However, in everyday conversation, it is used to mean:

• Cool
• Okay / Alright
• Don’t worry about it
• No problem

It doesn’t change form or conjugate. It just stays spoko.

Here is how flexible it is:

It’s a very safe word to use. You can’t really offend anyone with it, and it makes you sound very natural.

Expressing shock or disbelief

Poles are quite expressive people. When things go wrong, or when things are surprisingly good, we have specific words for it.

Masakra

Literally, this translates to “massacre”.

That sounds violent, but in Polish slang, it is used to describe anything that is a disaster, annoying, or just overwhelming.

• Stuck in traffic? Masakra.
• Too much homework? Masakra.
• The weather is terrible? Masakra.

Bez kitu

This is a phrase that translates literally to “without putty” (glazing putty used for windows).

It sounds strange, but it means “No kidding” or “For real”. You use it when you want to emphasize that you aren’t lying, or when you are agreeing with someone’s complaint.

Money, work, and people

Just like in English we say “bucks” instead of dollars, or “guy” instead of man, Polish has casual equivalents for everyday nouns.

Common slang nouns

Here is a quick table of nouns you will hear in casual conversation.

A quick note on No:

This confuses beginners constantly. In Polish, the word No (pronounced distinctly, not like the English ‘no’) is often used colloquially to mean “Yeah” or “Well”.

If you ask a Polish person a question and they say No, they are usually agreeing with you, not saying no!

Regional slang variations

Poland is fairly linguistically similar across the country, but there are regional flavors.

If you are traveling to specific cities, knowing a local word or two can really impress the locals.

Poznań (Greater Poland):

In Poznań, you will often hear the word tej inserted into sentences. It essentially means “you” or “hey you”, similar to how people in London might say “mate”. Co ty gadasz, tej? (What are you saying, mate?)

Kraków (Lesser Poland):

In Kraków, people go na pole (onto the field) when they go outside. In the rest of Poland (especially Warsaw), people go na dwór (into the courtyard/outside). This is a never-ending friendly debate between Warsaw and Kraków residents!

Silesia (Śląsk):

Silesian is almost a different dialect entirely. A common word for a girl there is frela.

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Slang is what makes a language feel alive.

Don’t be afraid to use siema instead of dzień dobry when meeting new friends, or to complain that the traffic is a masakra.

To recap, here are the essentials:

• Greeting: Siema
• Agreement: Spoko
• Disbelief: Bez kitu
• Goodbye: Nara

Start sprinkling these into your conversations and you’ll notice that native speakers will feel much more relaxed around you.