OT: Russian Language Lessons

[Kazan' Tiger 1]

Interesting! Every occasion I attended everyone used кушать whether adult to adult or with children. Of course it was always with friends and family. I never ate with any one we were вы terms with. Probably explains a lot.

We always use the verb кушать for eating. Maybe it's a local thing. I never heard anyone use есть in Kazan' to say they eat.

У Нины есть дети. "Nina eats children" would be Нина ест детей, because children are animate. Although now that I think about it, if they were eaten they wouldn't be animate for long.

I hate the verb есть in the sense of "to eat"... i always forget how to conjugate it.

Кушать is like kid-speak. It's a familiar term for eating. So it's what moms use for their kids, wives for their husbands, etc. Anybody who has ever lived with a babushka has been chased around by one going "Куши! Куши!" and has nightmares about it. Generally if you need to address someone на вы, you wouldn't use кушать. Whereas есть is just the general verb for eating and turns into cъесть (ate everything on your plate ) наесться (ate too much) etc.

[eekee 182]

yeah, if you're on close terms with someone i'd imagine they'd use кушать. If Alla used to есть with you, it might means she was mad.

And Russian moms will ALWAYS use кушать for their kids, ESPECIALLY the male ones, no matter how old they get! Sons never lose their ребенок status and their moms will always be concerned that they кушает enough.

Interesting! Every occasion I attended everyone used кушать whether adult to adult or with children. Of course it was always with friends and family. I never ate with any one we were вы terms with. Probably explains a lot.

We always use the verb кушать for eating. Maybe it's a local thing. I never heard anyone use есть in Kazan' to say they eat.

У Нины есть дети. "Nina eats children" would be Нина ест детей, because children are animate. Although now that I think about it, if they were eaten they wouldn't be animate for long.

I hate the verb есть in the sense of "to eat"... i always forget how to conjugate it.

Кушать is like kid-speak. It's a familiar term for eating. So it's what moms use for their kids, wives for their husbands, etc. Anybody who has ever lived with a babushka has been chased around by one going "Куши! Куши!" and has nightmares about it. Generally if you need to address someone на вы, you wouldn't use кушать. Whereas есть is just the general verb for eating and turns into cъесть (ate everything on your plate ) наесться (ate too much) etc.

Edited March 5, 2008 by eekee

[Kazan' Tiger 1]

100% agree!

yeah, if you're on close terms with someone i'd imagine they'd use кушать. If Alla used to есть with you, it might means she was mad.

And Russian moms will ALWAYS use кушать for their kids, ESPECIALLY the male ones, no matter how old they get!

Interesting! Every occasion I attended everyone used кушать whether adult to adult or with children. Of course it was always with friends and family. I never ate with any one we were вы terms with. Probably explains a lot.

We always use the verb кушать for eating. Maybe it's a local thing. I never heard anyone use есть in Kazan' to say they eat.

У Нины есть дети. "Nina eats children" would be Нина ест детей, because children are animate. Although now that I think about it, if they were eaten they wouldn't be animate for long.

I hate the verb есть in the sense of "to eat"... i always forget how to conjugate it.

Кушать is like kid-speak. It's a familiar term for eating. So it's what moms use for their kids, wives for their husbands, etc. Anybody who has ever lived with a babushka has been chased around by one going "Куши! Куши!" and has nightmares about it. Generally if you need to address someone на вы, you wouldn't use кушать. Whereas есть is just the general verb for eating and turns into cъесть (ate everything on your plate ) наесться (ate too much) etc.

[slim 1,533]

I realize the enthusiasm and excitement for learning spoken and written Russian, but to be quite honest, I think spending thousands of dollars on it is a bit overboard.

Spending a few hundred bucks may be justified, but learning it to the point of being able to write college papers simply to "better understand your wife and her culture" is a waste of money.

If you're going to move to Russia someday or consider working in a Russian field, sure, it's money well spent. But for the average "I found this chick on the internet and now she's moving here to marry me" VJ relationship, it's unnecessary. I think this is what seanconneryii was alluding to in the other thread. When you live in the U.S., and are going to for the remainder of your lives, learning Russian to the degree that your savvy at identifying tenses and case endings is way overkill.

Now, that said, I envy all of you for being more knowledgeable than I. However, I think after a year or two of being married, you may not be able to straight up identify all of the above, but you will at least be able to understand most of it... for free.

[eekee 182]

I realize the enthusiasm and excitement for learning spoken and written Russian, but to be quite honest, I think spending thousands of dollars on it is a bit overboard.

Spending a few hundred bucks may be justified, but learning it to the point of being able to write college papers simply to "better understand your wife and her culture" is a waste of money.

If you're going to move to Russia someday or consider working in a Russian field, sure, it's money well spent. But for the average "I found this chick on the internet and now she's moving here to marry me" VJ relationship, it's unnecessary. I think this is what seanconneryii was alluding to in the other thread. When you live in the U.S., and are going to for the remainder of your lives, learning Russian to the degree that your savvy at identifying tenses and case endings is way overkill.

Now, that said, I envy all of you for being more knowledgeable than I. However, I think after a year or two of being married, you may not be able to straight up identify all of the above, but you will at least be able to understand most of it... for free.

As I said earlier, i think that you if want your kids to be completely bilingual, it's very hard when one parent doesn't speak the language. I didn't grow up bilingual myself for this very reason, even though my mom's a native speaker of Belarusian. A lot of kids don't see why they should have to function in two languages if dad only has to speak in english.

[slim 1,533]

A lot of kids don't see why they should have to function in two languages if dad only has to speak in english.

And that's where dad has to be functional in the other language as well. Sure, he may not be fluent to the point the kids could be, but he can at least acknowledge and relate to mom in the "foreign" language. There's really no need for schooling to do that. Only a few years of "happiness" together.

crawl a little bit faster means working through tenses and the like. When I took German in college it was the same way. There are a boatload of rules of the road you have to learn before you can really even get to the point of understanding simple sentences.

Not really. Understanding words and phrases will enable you to "decode" the combinations. You will "learn" the rules eventually based on how you group them in your mind based on the "English" way that you remember them.

Remember the target is communication, not fluency. If you're strictly trying to communicate more effectively with your S/O then knowing specialized words and phrases is going to be way more important than knowing conjugations and tenses because you're really only going to use a few simple ones all the time. The rest you'll kind of just pick up by hearing.

Basically, all I'm trying to say is don't stress the language issue too much. Within a year or two you'll understand WAY more Russian than you give yourself credit for now.

[eekee 182]

A lot of kids don't see why they should have to function in two languages if dad only has to speak in english.

And that's where dad has to be functional in the other language as well. Sure, he may not be fluent to the point the kids could be, but he can at least acknowledge and relate to mom in the "foreign" language. There's really no need for schooling to do that. Only a few years of "happiness" together.

crawl a little bit faster means working through tenses and the like. When I took German in college it was the same way. There are a boatload of rules of the road you have to learn before you can really even get to the point of understanding simple sentences.

Not really. Understanding words and phrases will enable you to "decode" the combinations. You will "learn" the rules eventually based on how you group them in your mind based on the "English" way that you remember them.

Remember the target is communication, not fluency. If you're strictly trying to communicate more effectively with your S/O then knowing specialized words and phrases is going to be way more important than knowing conjugations and tenses because you're really only going to use a few simple ones all the time. The rest you'll kind of just pick up by hearing.

Basically, all I'm trying to say is don't stress the language issue too much. Within a year or two you'll understand WAY more Russian than you give yourself credit for now.

From the Russians I know who live in their US, it's incredibly hard to keep the kids motivated to continue to speak the language. A lof of parents will speak to the kids in Russian, and the kids will reply in English. And that's with both parents being Russian and speaking entirely in Russian at home. It's something that seems to be really hard to motivate kids to do, and if dad can only say phrases like, "I love you" and "Look at my helicopter!", I'd imagine it's even tougher. And hearing improper Russian would also confuse a child as to what is correct.

If you only know phrases, it's hard to produce any "original" sentences. You may think you're saying something correctly, but you're probably just using a ton of calques from English and your SO understands you, but it's not correct. There just isn't a way of getting around formally learning the rules if you want to actually be able to communicate in any sort of meaningful way.

For some people the target is communication on a very basic level, but for me it definitely is fluency. My study of Russian predates my relationship, not the other way around.

[slim 1,533]

It's something that seems to be really hard to motivate kids to do, and if dad can only say phrases like, "I love you" and "Look at my helicopter!", I'd imagine it's even tougher. And hearing improper Russian would also confuse a child as to what is correct.

There just isn't a way of getting around formally learning the rules if you want to actually be able to communicate in any sort of meaningful way.

For some people the target is communication on a very basic level, but for me it definitely is fluency. My study of Russian predates my relationship, not the other way around.

Which is why your communications focus is different from mine and uses a different approach. To actually have a meaningful sort of communication the only requirement is the two people involved understand the intent of the other. Me saying "I love you" or "Look at my helcopter!" is fine for me and my wife. Now that her sister is here, sure, it's not working so well to communicate with her. (That's a completely different issue... probably not one for VJ ears, I'm sure.) However, utilizing what I've learned to use with my wife, it is possible to communicate with her sister. Not to the same degree of meaningfulness, sure, but basic communication works just fine.

As far as getting the kids to use both, the only thing I can really see is to teach it from an early age and then use it as much as possible.

[Kazan' Tiger 1]

I know the feeling Kirk. Although Alla accepts my level of Russian communication as acceptable. She is in the minority. Her mother is always saying, "Teach Jeffery more!" My future MIL & FIL would like to speak to me on occasion sans interpreter. Further, as Alla has a young son, I sometimes worry what would happen if Alla were out and unreachable. If he were to have an issue and, in a panic, only be able to communicate his needs in Russian, I need to understand quickly if this a life or death situation or just some minor mishap. This is my motivation to increase my knowledge to far, far beyond Как дела? "Хорошо!"

Now that her sister is here, sure, it's not working so well to communicate with her. (That's a completely different issue... probably not one for VJ ears, I'm sure.) However, utilizing what I've learned to use with my wife, it is possible to communicate with her sister. Not to the same degree of meaningfulness, sure, but basic communication works just fine.

Which is exactly why I'd like to have more than just a passing acquaintance with the language. I don't want to be able to just communicate with the wife (which we do pretty well even with my limited amount of pidgin Russian anyway), but I'd like to be able to communicate with her family. Again, I have no interest in being able to write dissertations or even read Pushkin in the original. But I do want to be able to hold a conversation with her family.

I think everyone just needs to decide on their priorities. Slim, it sounds like you and the wife are comfortable with your level of understanding, so that works for you. Nadya is probably comfortable with my level of understanding, but I'm not. And I gotta be honest...I'm really enjoy learning the language, just because of the mental workout I'm getting. So the money and time I'm spending isn't even an issue.

[russ 1]

Rosetta Stone might be good to augment books and instruction, but for that function it is way over-priced.

Rosetta stone is an overpriced rip off. Use this course http://languagegeek.net/2007/09/22/a-torre...ussian-courses/

It is free, and covers grammar correctly early on. Plenty of audio.

[visaveteran1 33]

Too much learning going on, me thinks. When the Russian wife arrives in the USA with anything less than fluent skills in English, she's gotta start learning serious American style English. She, by default, is the key student...her future life depends on success as the student of English. It's a tall order.

I think it just mucks things up to add in the husband (or wife) also becoming a student of Russian at the same time. The wife needs to focus on English and her well-meaning but perhaps misguided husband is screwing around with Russian and distracting her from speaking and, indeed, thinking in English.

It's simply a matter of priority and survival. There are 365 days a year...in the USA how many of those days does she NEED to speak Russian (except on phone calls to the motherland)? Answer: zero. Of course, I'm excluding trips back top Russia...blah blah blah. But the key is only one student per family.

I wasted a lot of my life learning things I never needed...enough is enough.

But for you guys bound and determined to become Русские люди...happy trails.

[eekee 182]

Too much learning going on, me thinks. When the Russian wife arrives in the USA with anything less than fluent skills in English, she's gotta start learning serious American style English. She, by default, is the key student...her future life depends on success as the student of English. It's a tall order.

I think it just mucks things up to add in the husband (or wife) also becoming a student of Russian at the same time. The wife needs to focus on English and her well-meaning but perhaps misguided husband is screwing around with Russian and distracting her from speaking and, indeed, thinking in English.

It's simply a matter of priority and survival. There are 365 days a year...in the USA how many of those days does she NEED to speak Russian (except on phone calls to the motherland)? Answer: zero. Of course, I'm excluding trips back top Russia...blah blah blah. But the key is only one student per family.

I wasted a lot of my life learning things I never needed...enough is enough.

But for you guys bound and determined to become Русские люди...happy trails.

We work on both languages at the same time and it works quite well, i think. Besides, learning a new language is mind-expanding.

[visaveteran1 33]

I just don't know why learning has to be mutually exclusive. One person can only absorb so much of a language a day. For me, the limit of my learning--balls to the walls--is less than a couple hours a day. After that I just can't absorb any more.

She will be immersed in the language from the moment she steps off the airplane. Will less than a few hours a day (and let's be realistic, probably less than a three hours a week once we settle into a routine) really interfere with the 40+ hours per week of total immersion that she'll be experiencing? I don't think so.

I could be wrong. Certainly when she arrives we'll see how things go. If she's completely adverse to helping me learn because she's got language learning of her own to do, then I'll respect that and back off. I suspect she'll actually welcome the opportunity to switch over to her native language for a few hours a week, but I could be wrong.

So yeah...of course the priority is English. That's a no-brainer. But I don't see why that's such a big deal. Of those 365 days a year you mentioned, how many of those days do you spend in front of a television or surfing the net or playing computer games? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I could be speaking 3 languages by now if I'd utilized my time better.

Learning is never wasted. You may have learned skills you never needed, but the process of learning those skills almost certainly helped you in other areas of your life.

You make some good points and I hear you...but remember there's a big difference in your wife speaking native Russian to another native Russian and teaching you and listening to your struggling novice Russian. I think she'll appreciate the effort but maybe she'll find it tiring and distracting as well... switching from student to teacher. But you're right, time will tell and you can make adjustments as you go. And you may be gifted and a natural at picking it up.

[eekee 182]

You make some good points and I hear you...but remember there's a big difference in your wife speaking native Russian to another native Russian and teaching you and listening to your struggling novice Russian. I think she'll appreciate the effort but maybe she'll find it tiring and distracting as well... switching from student to teacher. But you're right, time will tell and you can make adjustments as you go. And you may be gifted and a natural at picking it up.

My guy really likes speaking Russian to me. But I'm 2 months away from a Bachelors in Russian, so my situation is different--we don't work on the basics but focus on making my russian more idiomatic. It seems like most of the people here who are serious about learning Russian don't expect their SO to teach them everything, but take classes/have a private tutor/etc.

Edited March 10, 2008 by eekee

[russ 1]

so my situation is different--we don't work on the basics but focus on making my russian more idiomatic. It seems like most of the people here who are serious about learning Russian don't expect their SO to teach them everything, but take classes/have a private tutor/etc.

No one's situation is the same. In our case, my wife has no time to teach me Russian. She hates it. Both of us speak English fluently, her Russian is native while mine is good enough, my French is good, her German could use some help.

It comes down to this: If you have learned another language, another is not a big deal (you know what is involved, and it doesn't bother you.) If not, don't bother. You probably won't like what you need to do.

At this point, my Russian is horrible. It improves when I'm actually there, since I will be speaking it all of the time. In that way, it is about the same as my French - it gets better when I actually use it. I can understand 95% of what people say, and read with decent comprehension. I understand what my wife is saying on the phone (drives her crazy), but at the same time it bothered her when I spoke French and she couldn't understand what I was saying.

Expecting your spouse to teach you is a tall order. It probably won't happen.