What is the difference between “kochać” and “uwielbiać” in Polish?
Ola, która kocha jeść dosłownie wszystko
A1 Polish listening practice · Standard Polish · Curated for beginners
Polish keeps two verbs where English makes do with “love.” Kochać is the real thing — kocham cię, “I love you,” said to people. For food, music, or a hobby the everyday verb is uwielbiać: uwielbiam lody, “I love ice cream.” So when the narrator escalates from Ola lubi jeść (“likes to eat”) to kocha jeść (“loves to eat”), it lands as playful exaggeration — a dog who really loves food.
The ladder in the clip is the one to memorise: lubić (“to like”) → uwielbiać (“to love, adore”) → kochać (“to love,” for people). Young speakers do say kocham pizzę for comic effect, exactly as here, but uwielbiam is what you’ll read on menus and hear in kitchens. The punchline list is good beginner vocabulary too: warzywa, mięso, ryż, owoce, orzechy, przekąski — vegetables, meat, rice, fruit, nuts, snacks — czasami nawet chusteczki, “sometimes even tissues.”
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General Polish frequency
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Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A1 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-PL 2014 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.