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Roberto following up: I checked in with my dad’s siblings to make sure I had the details right about the language spoken at home. My aunt Martha, the youngest of the large family, said that she heard both growing up because all the older kids had learned English already. But she called her big sister, Alice (my dad was second oldest), who reported that when she went to elementary school, she didn’t even know how to ask to sharpen her pencil!!

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Many moons ago, I was a nanny in Paris. It helped to remember cognates and the fact that almost every English word ending in -ion has the same meaning in French. ex. Correction, multiplication, reflection, and etc.

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Interesting! It was the same in Indonesian, immunization/immunisasi, navigation/navigasi. I listen to a great Spanish podcast which pointed out that all Latin derived words that end in AL are the same in Spanish and English: banal, ethical, municipal, recital….cognates are cool!

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Thank you for sharing the instagram pages and especially the Coffee Break podcast. After a very first initial listen, both presenters seem to have Scottish/French accents, which is good news for me! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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