Ukraine from the language-learner’s perspective

This may just be the most dangerous blog post I’ve ever written. –Not that it’s dangerous in the same way Akhmatova’s or Mandelstam’s poetry in the Stalinist era was dangerous. It’s just that usually I talk about very benign topics to which no one has any emotional reactions (except maybe when I talk about dill), and Ukraine is… tricky.

First, on the whole, from the perspective of an American in Russia:

No one is telling me the truth. Russian, British, and American news sources are all reporting vastly different things, and rather than sweating over which one is the least biased, I’ve landed on the decision that they’ve all got their own agendas, and the fact is that I cannot fully believe any of them. Why? Because all of them claim, “Ukraine wants x,” or, “The Ukrainian people want y.” But who is Ukraine, anyway? This isn’t 1984; people all have their own opinions. Any article that claims to represent the feelings of the whole country is just kidding itself, and I don’t need to bother myself trying to figure out if it’s true.

That’s interesting. That’s journalism. That’s politics. What I’m really interested in is the connection between the situation in Ukraine and language, specifically the Russian language.

Prepositions

The Russian language has two prepositions roughly equivalent to the English “to,” namely, в and на.

В is used for enclosed spaces… it’s the preposition used to refer to stores, churches, pretty much all buildings. It’s also used for countries, because while the whole country is not under some kind of ceiling, there are specific boundaries/borders which define the space.

На is used for open spaces… it is used when talking about going to the market, to the beach, etc. And interestingly enough, it is also used when talking about Ukraine.

I asked one of my professors about this in class at the beginning of the semester. Why do people refer to Ukraine using на? Isn’t it kind of weird, politically, now that Ukraine is its own sovereign entity, with borders just like any other country?

She explained to me that Украина (Ukraine) is pretty much straight from the Russian у края (by the edge). The word “край” (edge) always takes на, because an edge is not an enclosed space. Therefore, it is proper to say на in reference to Ukraine. It is not a political question, but a linguistic one.

This consideration does elucidate an idea about Ukraine inherent to the Russian language: it is more an edge than it is an enclosed territory. And every time a Russian talks about Ukraine, that is blatantly obvious.

Cultural Identity

On a less technical note, something I’ve realized since being here is how much of the Russian culture is tied up in its language. From Pushkin to Lenin, all that is considered genuinely Russian was delivered in that very language: the French speech and literature of the Imperial Court is considered to be separate from what is truly Russia, just because it was French.

Even for Americans, it’s hard to think of something being written or spoken in French and being representative of Russia, and much more of something being written or spoken in Russian-the-language and not being representative of Russia-the-country. For example, Nabokov was not actually particularly Russian. He left the country at the age of 17, and all of his writing was done elsewhere. Still, we consider him Russian, just because he wrote in that language.

Lest you protest that it is the same for other languages, think: what other great empires have connected their language so closely to the source country? When literature is written in English in India or South Africa, that literature is not considered British. When literature is written in French in North Africa or Canada, it is not tied to France-the-country. When literature was written in Latin anywhere in the ancient world, it did not mark itself forever as Italian.

Russian is different. You couldn’t have Russia-the-country without the Russian-the-language. And the argument goes, you can’t have the language without the country.

That’s one of the reasons this Ukraine/Crimea situation is so difficult for Russians. If they speak Russian, especially since they’re right next-door, they must be (inherently, essentially) Russian. After all, 20 years ago the border between Russia and Ukraine didn’t really mean anything. The gift of Crimea to Ukraine in the 50s definitely didn’t mean anything. By reabsorbing the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, Russia would only be offering integrity to those people whose life’s blood and cultural thought is Russian.

My conclusion? The Ukraine question goes deeper than economics. It’s intriguing to see it happening from this side of the line, to talk to people from Russia and Ukraine about what’s going on… specifically, to talk about it in Russian. I wonder if the conversations would go any differently in English?

how language learning is going

You may remember, one of the things I was most excited about and one of the things I was most terrified about was language acquisition. It deserved both of those.

I love the Russian language. I appreciate the way it sounds. I enjoy making up words based on patterns of word-formation I’ve observed… and then having them be real and correct words. I’m even starting to like the weird varieties of syntax and intonation.

But all of that said, the Russian language is hard. Listening takes a lot of energy, especially when you’re listening to an educated person who is going to play with syntax for stylistic/poetic purposes. Speaking takes even more energy, because syntax isn’t worth beans if you can’t put the words in the right cases and, even more importantly, put the stresses on the correct syllables.

I’ve now been in Russia for almost exactly half of my semester. We arrived 8 weeks and 2 days ago. We leave 8 weeks and 1 day from now. So how are things going with this wonderful and treacherous attempt?

Well, when I got here, it was hard for me to put sentences together. As one of my friends on the program put it, I “would say a word or two and then motion the rest of the sentence, and kind of hope that people understood.” Also, it was very hard for me to listen to Russian selectively. If I didn’t understand every word in the sentence, I got so caught up in trying to figure out the ones I didn’t know that I couldn’t have told you which words were actually important to understanding the meaning. Reading was hard for the same reason.

Now, halfway through, I have a few milestones to point to and say, “Yes, I have improved.”

1. Yesterday, I pulled off a complex unreal conditional sentence, and I realized that I wasn’t translating from English to Russian in my head.
2. Several people have told me that I speak “almost without an accent.” Granted, all three of these instances were after 2-3 fairly simple sentences, the vocabulary for which I felt comfortable enough with to speak at a normal pace with normal intonation (nothing to break the rhythm of a sentence like pausing for 10 seconds to say “um” and try to remember the next word). But still.
3. My first week at church, I understood about 20% of the sermon. This week, I’d say I was up to 85%.
4. AND I know my numbers well enough to follow along when we’re flipping to 15 different passages in the space of 3 minutes!
5. There were three whole sentences in my last essay on which my tutor made zero corrections.
6. I have yet to successfully give directions to someone, but I have successfully told several people how I really don’t know my own way around, and they should ask someone else.
7. I have complained at a restaurant, and they understood me and fixed it.
8. I can now understand about 23% of what Nastya says, as opposed to maybe 6% in the beginning. (But even Andrei and Natasha say they sometimes don’t understand her, she talks so fast.)
9. I’m pretty comfortably at a 2^nd grade reading level. I made it about 100 pages into my host sister’s book from 3^rd grade, and I need a dictionary occasionally, but not too often.
10. I have attended a девичник (girls-only social gathering), which included such things as casual conversation, Pictionary Telephone, and a role-playing/improv game. I participated in everything, and even landed the lead role in the role-play for my team… and didn’t feel half as scared as I did two months ago when just walking into a café and ordering tea.

On a more formal level: classes are going well. I’m getting good marks. I’m getting to the point where I know most of the vocabulary my teachers use on a regular basis, and I have to work harder to learn new things, which is good.

Except in Politics. If I learn anything there, it’s new. I take notes and then go home and translate them, because I don’t know any of the vocabulary. I have a midterm for that tomorrow. As I write this, I ought to be either studying or sleeping, but I’m sure I’ll be okay…?

what learning Russian is teaching me about English

Learning a new language is a pretty straightforward way to expand your mind. Different languages have different ways of expressing things, different words for the same concepts, or the same words for different concepts… sometimes you’ll find a word for an idea a word for which does not exist in your own language. There. You are one concept richer.

But beyond vocabulary and syntax, learning Russian has convinced me of one thing: English is far more of a mixed language than I ever realized, and maybe that’s why literary culture in English-speaking civilization is declining.

Allow me to explain. Russian is almost entirely a Slavic language. Yes, there are some words borrowed from English or French, but the grand majority of Russian words came from Slavic roots. From a language-learning perspective, I’m glad about this, because there’s less vocabulary to memorize, and because word formation is very logical and predictable if you know the root word. From a culture-learning perspective, I’m also glad about this, because the smaller vocabulary and more closely connected words lend themselves to be repeated more often.

For example, take the root хран. It in itself is not a word, but it forms into сохранить, хранение, and other words. So this one root pops up when I’m talking about saving a file to my phone (сохранить), when I’m talking about salvation in the religious sense (also сохранить), when I’m talking about a museum curator (хранитель), or when I’m talking about a locker (камера хранения). These meanings begin to build up on each other, and between poems, articles, conversations, road signs, lectures… the cross-referential potential is enormous. I haven’t even tried to memorize any Russian poetry (yet), but I can’t hear or see a word with the stem тревож/г without being instantly sent back to Pushkin’s На холмах Грузии.

This ability to cross-reference based on even a single word, more even than vocabulary acquisition, is why I think it’s important for English readers to be familiar with Latin, Greek, French, and German. If I don’t know where my words came from and cannot identify where else they are used, will I ever really know what they mean beyond the instinct of having grown up with them?

But, of course, to ask someone to know all of these languages and their accompanying literary traditions… is ridiculous. It just isn’t going to happen. At this point the English anthology alone is too vast to come close to familiarity with it, let alone adding all of the classical world plus German and French. Our lexicon now is gigantic, and the same idea has 5 potential root words (all from different originating languages).

The English language has expanded to the point where cross-referential and even analytical value has to be on the sentence-level; it is rare that a word in itself is sufficient to carry any weight. I'm enjoying studying a language that is deeper in the specifics.

fun with Russian language, part 1

They say a woman wears 20% of her wardrobe 80% of the time. With the amount of clothes that I brought, this would mean rotating the same three shirts all semester, so right now at least that’s a false proportion. However, at the beginning of my study abroad, it might be accurate to my vocabulary usage. So. For anyone looking to live in Russia, here are the words I find most useful to life:

1. да. Especially when talking to a 10-year-old, this is probably the only word you'll be able to get in edgewise. Also, you usually want to say it 3-4 times in a row, very quickly, so make sure you know it.
2. можно. Need to order food? Need to ask permission? Need to ask anything? This is an all-purpose word. That actually gets used for all purposes, so it's okay.
3. интересно. Start all of your observation-statements with this word.
4. ну. Start all of your any-kind-of-sentences with this word. It buys you time.
5. вот. Your quintessential illiterate-caveman word. But why point and grunt when you can point and вот?
6. пожалуйста. To avoid actually sounding like a caveman. This is like a magic politeness pill that makes anything you say socially amenable.
7. достаточно. When your Russian babushka is feeding you more than you can handle, when you need to be done with something, when you’re just happy… this word.
8. минуточку. I am not actually sure this is the proper word, but it is very effective to buy you time while you run into the other room, finish chewing, or whatever. Without being rude.
9. извините. Knowing a word is more than knowing when you can use it. It’s just as important to know when you can’t, otherwise you get people staring at you, bug-eyed, when you use this word as often as Americans use the word “sorry.” Hint: even other Americans think we say “sorry” too much.
10. глаголы движения. I've taken it easy on you so far, okay? Just know your verbs of motion. You do actually need them.

If you know these words, you’ll be fine for at least a few minutes. If you don’t know these words, you might not be fine ever.

morientation

(Credit for my incredibly clever title goes to Sam.)

YES, we got to St. Petersburg, and then we had more more more orientation.

After a bus ride, we arrived sort of near the dorm, where we are staying for this first weekend. There was an accident or two, which caused a traffic jam, so we walked the last few hundred yards, dragging our bags through slush. We had an hour to regain cognizant thought (hah!), and then our first Russian dinner. I felt surprisingly confident, walking into a cafeteria/buffet hybrid called “Marketplace,” going up front and ordering exactly what I wanted. I came out with the best bowl of borscht I’ve ever eaten, a little meat-filled pastry, and a bottle of pineapple juice. Okay, so maybe I goofed on the juice (I meant to get orange), but it was still really yummy.

After dinner, I took a surprisingly nice shower. Then I stayed up for a while in the teensy tiny dorm room just processing. Trying to check email. Trying to remember the Russian words for things like “bed.” 

Sleep felt nice, although I woke up a bunch of times. Adjustment is rough. I had lots of nightmares that seemed more like night terrors, they were so relevant… e.g. getting into different situations where I didn’t know the right words, running into people in Russia who I was glad to not have to see this semester…

I’ll skip all of the boring stuff, like my very dairyful breakfast (yogurt and some soft cheese-stuff, purchased in the dorm convenience store) and more talking sessions.

At 1ish, we were divided into small groups and sent off with various tutors. I went with Stephanie, her tutor, and Katie (a student who is here for the whole academic year. Yes, there are multitudes of Katies everywhere). We walked around while the tutor jabbered at us in Russian about the city. I think I absorbed about 40-50% of it. Could have been worse. We took a bus to another part of town, and to return we took the metro WOW THE METRO I LOVE IT. Lunch was good, some vegetable soup and a ham & cheese filled pastry. We talked in “Russish,” switching between Stephanie’s and my broken Russian and the tutor’s perfect British English (she has not a hint of Russian accent).

After some more sessions, we were free. I started to feel kind of sick to my stomach again (was it something I ate? something I didn’t eat? lack of good sleep?), but ate dinner anyway. That was an experience. We went to a place called Biblioteka, where the waitress responded to us in English, gave us English menus, and sat us in a back room with only one table. The wall was painted like an American flag. Yep. So not much incidental contact with Russians or Russianness, as we have been encouraged to seek out, and also not much incentive to speak Russian the whole time. But I did get to interact with the waitress a little bit in Russian, which went well. The problem with sitting alone in a back room is that nobody comes to check on you ever, so you have to go hunt down somebody to ask “Где можно заказать?” (Where can I order?) and “Можно взять домой со мной?” (Can I take this home with me? –but I’m sure there’s a better way to ask for a take out box.


I think I will have more success with Russian-practice when I’m living with my host family. In fact, I’m certain of it. Lots of incidental and non-incidental contact.