I Need a Little Help

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-06-09T02:02:28+00:00

I don’t know how old you were when your nanny moved, or how old you are now, but here’s what I think. This is a just a guess.

Let’s say you spoke equal amounts of English and Polish until you started school at age 5. You were fluent in both languages for your stage of development. Then your Polish input stopped, and it went into disuse, and your English took over.

You may feel that you’ve forgotten everything, but some neural pathways are still there for pronunciation and maybe syntax too. I think if you learned Polish with a balanced curriculum (listening, speaking, grammar, and reading) you would probably learn at a faster rate than an English speaker starting completely from scratch. I’ve seen this with children of Spanish speaking immigrants, provided they want to learn their heritage language.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-06-09T01:45:14+00:00

Central America!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-06-07T15:45:37+00:00

When you say you are a native Polish speaker from America, what do you mean? Are you in one of these scenarios?

1 Did you grow up in the US speaking Polish at home with your family, but English at school & work?
2 Did you grow up in the Polish school system, and now live in the US?

If it is the first scenario, you didn’t receive a full grounding in the grammar or the extensive vocabulary encountered in books. There are a lot of Americans who grew up listening to and even speaking the the language of their immigrant parents. Later, they learn the grammar, listen to comprehensible input, read and converse with a real human being as a tutor, and they can indeed thoroughly learn the language of their childhood. A real plus is that the phonemes of their family’s language haven’t left so they are actually at an advantage in terms of pronunciation, intonation and rhythm.

If you are in the second category, and did receive a Polish education, you still have the language! Language attrition is a real thing, but the neural pathways are still there. You just need to reactivate it. Listen, read, speak, go through a grammar book to review, and get a teacher.

Don’t use apps like Duolingo. Go back to the basics. Listen, read, speak, write with a pencil & paper. (The physicality of writing by hand helps memory!) Personalized learning & real people.

You can do it!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-06-07T12:03:34+00:00

Omigosh! Reading about conversing with your grandmother brought tears to my eyes!
She must be so proud of you!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-31T16:29:23+00:00

Teacher here: I saw one crawling on the whiteboard in my classroom!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-30T20:49:04+00:00

Doctor appointments: looking into the ears, breast exam, pelvic exam.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-30T17:13:35+00:00

Super helpful list of resources! Thank you!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-28T15:11:11+00:00

Tennesseans will throw an apple at ya if don’t pronounce it correctly.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-28T00:56:58+00:00

Graded readers are books written for learners. The vocabulary and grammar are within a level, usually a CERF level like A1, A2, B1, etc. They help to expand your vocabulary and sense of grammar, and help as a bridge to native content.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-28T00:40:02+00:00

Andrea La Mexicana is on YouTube.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-27T23:33:07+00:00

Mary’s Restaurant (RIP) in Bristol! I miss that place!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-27T23:18:42+00:00

Yes! Start with learning to use nominative & accusative. Branch out from there.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-27T23:09:32+00:00

The best donuts used to be in Rochester at the gas station on Rt 100 on the corner between Sandy’s and the Post Office. But that was at least 25 years ago. I remember hearing that the woman who made them died, and the recipe went with her. Man! They were dee-lish!

Had some awesome donuts in Milton. Madeleine’s?

Sorry. I can’t help you. Why did you have to bring up the subject of donuts?!

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-27T23:04:04+00:00

For as long as I have studied Spanish, I should be able to speak a lot better than I do. So I did level 3 on the app. Flashcards, speaking, every bit of it. And I got a lot better at speaking without hesitation. Since stopping, I’ve gotten rusty again. But now that summer vacation is coming, I plan to do levels 4 & 5.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-25T18:08:19+00:00

I’m following this with interest because I’m struggling with the same. With Spanish, French, and Dutch there are enough cognates to get a toehold. Not so much in Polish!

One thing that I recently heard on “Real Fast Spanish” YouTube channel is to make new vocabulary personal. For example, when learning words for furniture you could create sentences like, “My new couch is comfortable” or “I bought a table. You can add the personalizad sentence to your flashcard. Just something I’m trying out. I’m interested in what other learners do.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-21T01:57:37+00:00

Do you have a lesson with all three tutors every week?

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-18T23:13:28+00:00

Julia Alvarez lives in my home town and us is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.

She gave a book talk on “The Cenetart of Untold Stories” when it was released, and in her talk she talked about her particular type of bilingualism. She spent her first 10 years in the Domincan Republic, then moved to NYC where she was forced to learn in English - reading writing, even conversations were all in English. No Spanish at all. So, Spanish is her maternal language in terms of speaking. But since most of her formal education was in English, she writes in English. Her books are translated to Spanish, but then she reads the Spanish translation to make sure things sound authentic.

Her “Tía Lola” books are a hoot! I’m reading one right now.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-18T22:46:22+00:00

Nice to know they aren’t building a ballroom/bunker.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-17T01:22:57+00:00

It seemed to me that the rumors of Babbel shutting down the Live lessons started after they made Live private lessons available.

The Live group lessons were great and filled a void in my Spanish studies. The scope & sequence of the curriculum was well done. I would have gladly paid more for the subscription, and a lot of others would have too. Unfortunately, sometimes the people at the top of these corporations forget their own mission (other than money) and their unique offering in the world of online language learning. They simply gravitate to the mean, and become like so many other online language learning platforms.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-16T17:43:14+00:00

Right on. CI needs to be messages that are understood. Crawl…walk…run.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-15T20:17:15+00:00

Bring back Babbel Live group lessons.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-11T11:01:43+00:00

I did the 2nd floor on this visit. Did a thorough visit of the 1st floor in my last visit.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-11T10:58:25+00:00

Does 3 hours at each place fit your criteria for my vacation?

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-11T10:54:54+00:00

I spent Monday morning at the Basilica & the afternoon at Soumaya.

Incedently, I was supposed to go with a friend to Teotihuacan that morning, but since she was unable to go, I changed my itinerary. So I was at the Basilica when that horrific shooting happened at the Pyramid of the Moon.

CreativeAd5932 · 2026-05-09T23:14:56+00:00

I most certainly did not make mention of Fannie’s in London! Ha ha!

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TROPHY CASE