Any bilingual Polish-English here?

[jessia]

Hi, Im new to Mumsnet, living in Poland with 2 gorgeous DDs, 4 and 2.5 (DH Polish). Kids bilingual.
I love the wealth of traditions, cultural potential, weird and wonderful words/phrases this brings with it.
E.g. had to work out how to resolve the St. Nick.Father Christmas thing otherwise I'd go bankrupt. They have St. Nick on 6 Dec, presents on Xmas Eve from the angel (inlaws: POl. tradition), presents under the tree on Xmas morning from my family - where does FC fit in? So in our house FC is one with St. Nick now, on 6th Dec., and puts presents in stockings instead of under pillow as is traditional here, though he comes in through an open window because we haven't got a chimney haha.
WLT hear from anyone else with this combo, or about how anyone else reconciles/merges Xmas and other traditions.
Seasons greetings etc

I will point my Sis in your direction. Living in the UK with a Polish DH and 2 DS both speak a small bit of Polish. They have some lovely Christmas traditions, I love the Poppyseed cake [yum]

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Hallo, still there? I'm polish mum with british DH living in england (but we met in Poland, first child born in Poland). My 5 year old does notv want to speak any polish

Hej,

still here.
What is your system at home? OPOL or something else? Do you get back to PL much? (For your DC to get spoiled by babcia?? ). Do you have Polish stories? DVDs? CDs? Friends? What I mean is, do you have any fun things/people for your DC to use or at least hear Polish with? And what is DH's attitude to Polish - does he encourage it or prefer you not to use it when he's around?

My kids have about half and half books, DVDs etc i.e. half Enlgish, half Polish.
Their only "live" day-to-day contact with English is me, and as they spend all day at przedszkole (and before that zlobek) that's not much, but I try to be consistent and it definitely works.
How it will be in future I don't know but I am optimistic.

Write more mamusiu!

Ooo, slight hijack but you might be able to help.

We have a huge Polish population here and several times recently, someone has stopped me and asked me something in Polish and seemed surprised when I was unable to respond. My Grandfather was Polish and apparently I look like I am... anyway, would it be ridiculous to try to learn to speak Polish? DO any of you Brits speak it? I'm thinking from a Rosetta Stone type CD.

Sorry for barging in. I love the christmas & Easter traditions they have.

Hi there!

I (Brit mum in Poland) am pretty much fluent in Polish. Ever since I got married to a Pole my Mum, bless her cotton socks, has been valiantly battling away, using various courses, one-to-one tuition etc to try and learn. She has a pretty wide, if basic, passive vocabulary but is the shy type so never says much more than Thankyou, Hello and goodbye. But then she didn't start till nearly 60.

It's not as easy as say Fench or German, which are a bit closer to English in concepts, combinations of sounds, etc., but it's not totally alien. If you have a concept of the German or Latin case system that helps at least to know where they're coming from. It looks a bit daunting at first, too, but once you've got the hang of how certain letters or combinations of letters are pronounced, it's phonetic, so every time you get "sz" or "cz" or whatever together, it's always pronounced the same.

I think the fundamental thing in learning a language, unless you're just a passionate linguist for its own sake, is purpose - i.e. are you going to use it, will you have a goal in learning?
I have no experience of the available learning aids though so can't be much help there.
Good luck!!

Thanks Jessia, I won't be totally immersed but I do hear a lot of polish around here. I used to be good at languages but it was many years ago. I do still speak German, so I think that might help. In fact, when I was in Poland, as soon as people realised I didn't speak Polish, they spoke to me in German. Thankfully I understood well enough.

Might be worth a shot- will give it a whirl. Can't hurt, even if I fail!

czesc!
I was born in England and live here but both parents are Polish (now they are back in Wawa, and my brother moved there too with his Polish wife, 5 years ago, so my whole family are there). I spoke no English til I was 5 and went to school, and then we spoke Polish (mainly) at home, and I went to polish school on Saturdays, and Polish church and harcerze on Sundays, til I was 18.

Now, my Polish is getting rustier and rustier, as I only speak it to mama & tata once every couple of weeks when we Skype, and even then we speak in English when dh is there (he is English). DH talks about learning Polish but has never really got past the basics.
We have a 19month ds, and (I) would love it if he spoke Polish but not sure how realistic that is (though one of his first words was 'lampa' which made me smile, he's obsessed with lights!)I try to make an effort to speak to him in Polish but actually most of the time speak English as we're with english friends or with dh...
if anyone knows any good dvds for children in Polish - dobranocka type things - maybe that would be good? I've just found out one of the girls at ds' nursery is Polish so have asked her if she'll speak to him in polish when she can.
Any other tips??

It is just lovely to see you all on here - I'll be reading all tips at how to balance the pol/eng thing very eagerly!!

When it comes to Christmas - we never really celebrated the 6th Dec when I was growing up over here, and then just celebrated Wigilia, no pressies on Xmas day. Since I've been with dh, we've opened half presents on Christmas eve, half in the morning. I like the way you do it, Jessia, sounds like a really good compromise.
I really like the split Christmas, I feel like I get a bonus day now, with dh. Wigilia is still the best tho, so magical...

One year we went to poland for Wigilia, then got an early flight back to the UK on Christmas morning, in time to get to dh's family for lunch - it was a bit hectic but such fun!!! Don't think we'll try it again til dc's are a bit older though...

How have you decided on dc's names - spellings etc? We are expecting another baby in January and dh is a bit exasperated that I want names that I like both eng and pol versions of, given that our children are very very very likely to grow up here and only go to Pol to see family..
ds has a name that is very similar in Pol & English, but the eng version is on his birth cert, and his second name is also similar in both languages, but has the pol version on his bc..

Oh, and Superbunny - I know of lots of friends who have learned Polish as adults. Admittedly most of them learned when they moved to Poland with jobs, so I think it is easier when you are immersed in the culture. But tho it can be a difficult language to learn, it is definitely possible!!

When we save some money, dh is going on a class-based course because we think that'll be better than a CD/book combo - he's tried that before and got frustrated when he hasn't been able to ask questions about how things work (I am not good at explaning grammar, to me things just 'are' because I wasn't taught Polish in terms of grammatical rules!)

Hopefully once he's got to a moderate level, he'll be more able to continue on a self-taught basis, with me as conversation practice...

Apparently these kind of courses run all over the place now - lots in London of course, but I was surprised to find them here too - because there is a growing Polish population I guess. Could you try this?

Thanks Spiel - I suppose there may be Polish classes here. I'm in the US. Will have a think. I agree, would be so much easier to learn if you are immersed. Although when I was in Poland, I found people were not all that patient and, if I didn't understand, they shouted at me.

Spink maybe one thing to do for your DS would be to get DVDs of stories/characters he knows, but in Polish e.g. get babcia to send/bring them over, or order them from empik or merlin (online stores, equiv. of say Amazon).
We have Teletubbies (Teletubisie), there are def. things like Maisy (Mysia), Thomas the Tank Engine (Tomek i przyjaciele), Koala Brothers (Bracia Koala), Peppa Pig (Świnka Pepa), loads of CBeebies type stuff and equivalents, plus all the feature films for when he's older. It might be easier for him to start off with things he knows than trying to plunge him into stories for native Polish kids such as Reksio, Domisie etc., if he isn't used to hearing a lot of Polish.
And getting picture books for you to read to him and CDs of songs to sing as well is a must because rhyme and rhythm really help kids to remember things. If you want any recommendations just let me know, I'll be only too happy to oblige.

SuperBunny - go for it - if you like learning languages then you've definitely got something to get your teeth into here!

As for names, we live in PL and are not planning to move back, so we gave our DDs Polish names but ones we thought would be easy for Brits to get their tongues round (no formidable consonant clusters etc). So DD1 is Milena and DD2 Pola. I mean, how easy can you get?? But poor DD1 is always getting called "Meleena (!!)", "Maleena", and worst of all "Myleena" (not to mention spellings), while DD2 gets "Pole-a", "Poola". So We shorten Milena to Mila (Mee-la) and Pola to Polly and people seem able to cope with that.

Any Polish mums in Surrey?

I've recently moved to Leatherhead area (Surrey) and am looking for Polish mums to meet for coffee. (2 bi-lingual children 5 and 3 m)

Pozdr.

Ala72