When Arianna Dziadkowiec, 21, shared her first video in April, she didn’t anticipate a massive worldwide response.
Her videos – where she goes by "Ariannita La Gringa" and shares tips with Spanish speakers who are learning English – made her an instant sensation on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Her boyfriend, Gerardo Contreras, 26, who is from Merida, Venezuela, helps her formulate and record her videos.
Contreras moved to New Jersey in 2019 to learn English, but at the start of the pandemic, he moved to Kentucky, where he met Dziadkowiec.
The videos Dziadkowiec and Contreras create are geared toward all levels of learning. Many videos share tips for perfecting English pronunciations and phrases.
While they continue to make videos, Dziadkowiec is planning to graduate in a year from nursing school at the University of Cincinnati and Contreras will continue his job working with Amazon.
This conversation with Dziadkowiec has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
What inspired you to start making videos?
I have a lot of Latino and Hispanic friends and I wanted to really immerse myself in the culture and learn the language. They would always ask me questions because I am the only American friend they have who is a native speaker.
Especially my boyfriend’s brother, he’s always asking me how to say things. He would always send me videos of native Spanish speakers teaching English, but for me personally, since I’m learning Spanish, I love learning from a native Spanish speaker like my boyfriend. I don’t want to learn from an American. You want to get the most out of a language as you can.
I think starting an account as a native speaker can help so many more people, especially with slang because American slang is so different. I wanted to make sure the pronunciation is correct because some native Spanish speakers who are teaching English – their pronunciations can be a little bit off.
How quickly did your account go viral?
When I started my Instagram account in April, it took two or three weeks to reach 1,000 followers. Eventually, with the hashtags and the reels and posting every day consistently like it was my job, my account grew.
I was recording and editing consistently with the help of my boyfriend and I think during the first month and a half, we had one week where we had 50,000 people following me per day. There was one week in May where I gained 300,000 or 400,000 followers after that. Since then, it’s plateaued a bit, but I still get like 1,000 or 2,000 followers every day.
What did it feel like to go viral?
It was weird because I only went viral in Latin America and Spain. So it didn’t really change my life other than I started posting consistent videos every day.
I’m still at university – not doing anything extravagant, but it was really cool to go viral. I love editing videos and I love how my boyfriend helps me with the concepts of the videos.
It’s a weird feeling to be viral, but I don’t feel famous – I’m just like any other person. My friends are the same – it’s not like I have more people trying to be my friend.
How do you choose what to post?
Usually, my boyfriend or his friends naturally end up asking, “How do you say this?” And then we have our next video!
What’s next for you?
I’m still in university – I have one more year of nursing at UC and then I think I want to become a nurse and [run my accounts] as a side job to earn a bit of extra money.
I started collaborating with another American and he added me onto his English course, so we started posting once or twice a week on Telegram, which is a new app where you post three different videos: basic, advanced and native.
In a year or two, I want to move somewhere in Latin America with my boyfriend and start teaching English there as well. That would be such a cool opportunity to live in a different country and really immerse myself to become a native speaker of Spanish.
