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Well I grew up in Chicago. My parents are from Poland and they're deaf and I grew up
learning Polish and American Sign and a little bit of Polish Sign because when they moved
of here, they only knew Polish Sign and so they were learning American Sign when I was
growing up. So it's quite a bit of a mix.
When I grew up, my parents had a friend who introduced them to a deaf immigrant school where they learned ASL. So every Saturdays, after Polish
school they would always take me over there and I'd be meeting all these deaf people from
a lot of backgrounds. There's a lot of Mexican immigrants and Polish immigrants. And then
on Sundays, I'd always go to the deaf church, Saint Francis Borgia, on the Northwest side
of Chicago. After the mass, there would be this big hallway where all the deaf people
would meet and there'd be groups of people from as young as when I was 5 to as old as
like 60 or 70. So I got to be in a lot of that.
Well, when I grew up, my dad had a hard time being able to understand letters. Since when you read a letter, they always use more
vast words than a simple word. So for him it's not that he learned all these broader
words in the language.So he always had me interpret it for him. What's hard about it
is that this long letter would fill the page and when I interpret it for him, it only would
take me about 10 seconds to say it. He got so confused as to why what I said, it is said
in this whole letter. This whole page. So when I took a linguistics class at
Columbia College Chicago, that's where I went, my teacher I asked him about that. He was telling me
how for my dad, when I interpret the letter for him, he's thinking then in ASL when I
interpret it and then if he still doesn't understand, I'll interpret it to him in Polish
and then in his mind he's translating it to Polish Sign because that's what he grew up
with originally. His first language was Polish Sign Language and then he learned Polish along
with that. So literally in his mind, he is quadratransliterating if that even makes sense.
So yeah, it took a lot of patience but it definitely helped me realize that a lot of
deaf immigrants really need to be emphasized on a lot and I'd really like to be an advocate
for that.