Articles

Longer answers to the questions people ask about learning a language, and why Lumessa works the way it does. Written by the founder, and updated when something changes.

Before you start

• If translation apps are this good, why learn Polish for your partner’s family? Translation apps are enough for a holiday, a form or a first hello. For family you will sit with again and again, the author found live translation stilted, and thinks a translation leaves out much of what a language carries.
• Is Polish hard to learn? An honest answer. Yes, for English speakers: the US State Department puts Polish in its hard group, at about 44 weeks against 30 for French or Spanish. The difficulty sits in a few places, and the figure measures a professional level of speaking and listening.

Learning for someone

• How to learn Polish to talk to your partner’s family Learn the alphabet and its sounds first, then the most common words, the words you meet at the family table, and the words of the culture.
• Why can I understand a language but not speak it? Because understanding and speaking are two different skills. Listening supplies the word, but speaking makes you find it yourself, so practise from meaning to word, in whole phrases, out loud.

Learning more than one language

• Can you learn Spanish and Italian at the same time? Yes, with a clear strategy: give each language its own sound, its own culture and its own space, and consider starting one first.

Remembering what you learn

• Why do I keep forgetting new words in a language? Usually because you have seen them too few times, at the wrong moments. Words stay when you recall them at growing intervals, tie them to your life and keep running into them.

Choosing what to learn

• How many words do you need to have a conversation? About 2,000 to 3,000 of the most common words are enough to follow everyday talk in English. The number depends on what you want to do, and the right words matter as much as the count.