This weekend, I had two completely different experiences that made me think about what it means to be Russian-speaking.
I went to visit New Baby Cousin on Saturday. As we were leaving, Mr. B asked his exhausted new parents,”So, how are you guys planning to raise him with the whole Russian thing? I know it’s important to you. “ Like me, marrying a Russian speaker was very important to both of them. But, also like me, they don’t speak Russian to each other, because honestly, it’s easier to speak English. Mr. B and I speak English almost exclusively unless we’re talking about someone or something and we don’t want them to understand.
Mr. B and I grew up being drilled Russian, Russian, Russian, don’t forget Russian, always speak Russian at home. But I don’t speak Russian to my parents or to New Baby Cousin or to Baby Cousin’s parents. Only, actually, to my mother-in-law, out of respect. Why? For me (and I suspect for Mr. B) speaking Russian feels like we’re our parents, because we essentially learned Russian from them, outside of the context of television shows, books, and movies that we could co-opt as our own slice of the language. All the slang we know, we picked up from our parents and random young Russians, and it feels strange to use it, like we’re parroting what we learned in elementary school.
In Russian, I still feel like I’m five, even though I’m pretty fluent in it, can read, can write, and even worked on projects at work with the Russian Ministry of Finances representatives. When I speak Russian, I feel like I’m playing dress-up in my mom’s fancy clothes. It feels ridiculous and strange, like I’ll be discovered and outed at any minute. So when we talk to our cousins or hang out with other Russian Jews, it’s all in English, because, otherwise, we feel like we’re at a fake dress-up tea party. We know we all can’t express ourselves truly the way we want in Russian, even though we know all the words. “Kofe” means coffee but Kofe means drinking it dark with dessert cake in your aunt’s kitchen in a high-rise in Yaroslavl while “coffee” means a cappuccino in a Starbucks.
English, however, is my language. No one owns the fact that I learned the word douchebag somewhere online or in 10th grade, or that I read about tessaracts in a strange, strange book. I romped and roamed all over English on my own without any hand-holding or screaming matches for me to read books in English. It’s fresh, it’s new, and I can concoct whatever I want with it. I don’t have a limited set of cultural and linguistic frameworks.I can make up new words like sealrus (seal plus walrus) or come up with flexible nicknames for friends.
So, for kids, you have to literally make yourself into someone else to teach your baby to speak normal Russian, not a problem for our parents, for whom Russian was extremely natural. I left feeling worried and uneasy about our future unborn children. Because, if I’m so selfish that I can’t switch to Russian when I specifically made it a priority to marry a Russian speaker so our children wouldn’t end up monolingual, what the hell is wrong with me?
Then, yesterday, Mr. B and I went to a birthday party. The friends are Russian and came here, on average, about 5 years ago. So, they’ve lived most of their adult lives in Russia and in Russian. We talk to them 100% in Russian, joke with them in Russian, and think with them in Russian. Because, I think, we know that there’s no possibility to switch into English. Not because they can’t speak it-they are excellent English speakers-but because it would be awkward. I know that if I switch to English with them, the conversation becomes strained and awkward. And, the weird thing is that, when I speak Russian with them, it doesn’t feel forced and strained like it does for family, who know we can express ourselves better in English.
And at this point, some of them can, too. Mr. B’s mom says, “I can’t read books in Russian anymore because I have to switch my mindest completely. It’s not hard, but there is an adjustment.” A normal sentence for any given family member is, “Ya poyehala na shopping, i zaparkavala mashinu okolo Macy’s.” I went shopping, and parked my car near Macy’s. Because it’s easier to say shopping than “kupit novoiu odezhdu” because shopping is shorter and has a specific American context that modern Russian doesn’t cover. When my aunt from Russia was here last year, we had to constantly correct ourselves because we forget that she doesn’t know Runglish words like draivat’ (to drive), uploadat’ (to upload, which the Russian verb povesit’ -literally, to hang up, doesn’t quite cover) and turka (turkey).
What does this tell me about being a Russian speaker? That, despite having Russian drilled into me since being born and feeling good about the fact that I can speak it, it’s still somewhat of a foreign concept, and one that I will have to consciously, strenuously, and painfully work on to inculcate into my kids, who, it’s not even guaranteed, will be good at it because instead of at least five years in a Russian-only environment, they’ll have zero. I think I’ll have to look to Ben Yehuda for this one.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
very good. enjoyed this, even though still feel bad about my child not speaking any Russian! And I am very comfortable speaking it, as I only moved in 2000….
But yet. somehow, it feels weird speaking russian to her.
Why do you feel weird speaking Russian to her? Because your husband doesn’t speak it? Or because you’ve kind of switched over mentally yourself?
I have the same strange juvenile feelings when I speak Romanian. And strangely enough, there’s also the coffee thing. Whereas קפה means any coffee at all, “kafea” (don’t ask me how it’s spelled in Romanian) is only black cooked coffee at mom’s.
I didn’t know you spoke Romanian also. And yes I agree, the juvenile feeling is present.
This is great, Vicki. It’s so true too! I definitely have these same worries about whether my kids will feel Russian at all (even if I marry someone else Russian). We’re just going to have to have a lot of trips to the grandparents’ houses I guess.
I think the best solution is a combination of that, plus boning up on my Russian myself. I think when we decide to have kids, we’ll transition eventually over to Russian, first halfway, then completely, and also get stuff like Russian TV and radio to force ourselves to think in Russian.
So I started to type this huge comment and decided I’ll turn it into a blog post on my brand-spanking-new English-language blog. (I’ve had — and abandoned — a Russian one for more years than I can count.)
Here’s the post: http://jam-packedlife.blogspot.com/2010/04/language-issues.html
Thanks! It’s great.
With this post you expressed how I feel quite often…almost. I married a Jew, but not a Russian speaking one. It was was a self-directed ‘must’ for me to marry a Jew, preferably an American one. In fact, I had turned down a proposal from a fellow Russian Jew who was truly my best friend because he was not Jewish enough for me. I spoke to my son in Russian almost exclusively until his sister was born 4 years after him. I still do speak Russian to him a fair bit. But it is an effort for me and I am a lot lazier when it comes to talking to my daughter, but I try. My son has always been able to ‘get’ me and my background more so than my daughter does or probably ever will because of his ability to communicate in Russian. He does not speak well, although when it is truly necessary he does rise to the occasion, like he did when we spent 2 weeks in Ukraine last August. He understands spoken Russian virtually 100%. He and I will occasionally watch a Russian movie together. He can write and read Russian (the credit goes to his Russian nanny that was with us from the time he was 2 until he was in 2nd grade) but painfully slowly. My daughter tries and sometimes she succeeds in communicating in Russian, especially when it is critical that her Dad does not know what she’s saying. He in turn, after 15 years of being married to me, understands enough to be rather dangerous… As far as the Grandparents are concerned, they only speak Russian to my son. My nieces and nephew, know one word – “shuba”, as in the yummy truly Russian concoction of potatoes, beets and herring. So what is the point of teaching your kid Russian? There is only one – Russian language can be just one more thing your kid would know. The ability to use another language is supposed to aide in learning more languages. The bottom line – it can not hurt and it is effortless enough to accomplish…and it can be fun.
That’s really interesting. Why did you decide that being Jewish was more important for you than being a Russian speaker? Just curious. I completely understand on the effort part-I’m even lazy speaking it now and I can imagine it will be much, much harder with kids. It’s great that your son understand Russian and that your daughter at least knows the elements. Do your parents speak Russian to your daughter?
So, I guess for me, the main reason I want my kids to know Russian is to be able to talk to my parents, even though they speak fluent English, to know enough to understand all family functions, conducted in Russian, and, I guess, to feel Russian themselves. Because I know my kids will be completely American and it will be an immense struggle for me to get them to feel otherwise, when they should. I love the fact that, even though I’m American, I can see the world with a kind of third set of eyes, my Russian perspective, which makes it feel like I’m literally putting on 3D glasses. For example, I heard someone on NPR yesterday talking about adopting from Kazakhstan and how he himself was of Jewish European ancestry. This guy may be really intelligent, but he has no real knowledge of the concept of Kazakhstan, what the Central Asian republics are, and of the interplay between Russian Jews and Kazakhs. He’ll never be able to watch Gift to Stalin with that context. I will, and I want my kids to, too. That’s the most important thing I want to be able to give them.
I have always had a very strong Jewish identity, even when I was a kid in the USSR. That identity only got stronger since my parents brought me to the US. When I was younger and single I found that most (Jewish) Russian speakers that I had met felt that they were Russian first, then American, and only then may be Jewish. That always bothered me. I even turned down marriage proposal from a wonderful man who adored me and was my best friend because he was not Jewish enough… My Mother used to say “what does that mean?” and I could not quite put my finger on it at the time. He did not understand why I needed to go to Friday night services (at that time I identified mostly with the Reform movement), why I went to the JCC and the UJF events to meet other young Jews – to him people were people, as he often pointed out. He also did not seem to ‘get’ my desire to go to Israel as often as I could find the means to do it, or at all. I always was focused on marrying a Jew only, but preferably an American one. I also knew that would present it’s own set of challenges from the family perspective, but I was prepared to deal with those and still do 15 years after marrying my husband.
My parents speak English to my daughter – it is just so much easier that way. She is very funny when she tries to speak Russian because she translates every phrase or sentence from English literally. In addition to that, since her vocabulary is not vast, she gets stuck and thus her Russian speech becomes liberally peppered with “kak skazat’ (insert the word she needs to translate) po-russski?”. Communicating like that takes more patience than anyone can come up with most of the time. But like I said, we try.
I love your reference to Gift to Stalin. It does make me so happy to know that my son likes to watch movies like that one and understands them beyond the language. He is also quite pleased with himself for being able to do so. I guess with him I got what you hope to accomplish with your kids. And I have no doubt that you will.
Good post… My kids don’t speak Russian (I married an American). In some ways I regret that decision not to teach them, but it’d be way to hard to do.
It’s always much harder when one partner doesn’t speak the language. I’d love for my kids to be fluent in Hebrew, but what they’ll get, they’ll get in snippets from me. Hopefully it’ll be enough.
Russian – it will be a very hard work. I know that. I have been there and I can’t say I did a superb job, not bad but could be better
You come from work, you are tired, you don’t want to constantly fight with your 9-years old to read couple pages from Pushkin…Grandparents and lots of time with them; Russian teacher, may be summer trips to Russia. Takes time, efforts and money…. But don’t get discouraged. Any extra knowledge will give your kids an edge in modern world or at least would give them this 3D vision. Even that makes it worthwhile. Russian language, Hebrew and Jewish education to let them know who they are and where they come from and your parents will be happy…. OK, may be just me – your Dad is very hard to please 
Yeah, but there’s a huge difference in that A) My formative years were spent speaking Russian and B) I have an aptitude for languages that means I pick up and remember stuff very easily (not the case with, say, math). My kids will definitely not have the first (should I prohibit English-speaking friends from coming to visit them until they are five?) and I don’t know if they’ll have the second.