We are losing it: why do children of immigrants need Russian?

Фото: Depositphotos

Let me make a reservation right away: the phrase “Russian language” is very arbitrary. In its place could be: Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, and so on. We are talking, parents, about your native language, which remained native to you during immigration, but became a second language for your children.

“And my mother said that it was dirty, I wouldn’t like it very much, and we didn’t go there,” a girl of about six and her grandmother were sitting opposite me in the subway car of a train that was heading to Brighton. A young and youthful lady were discussing a foam party in Mexico.

- Well, why? - answered the grandmother. - Its up to yu, only you can decide whether you like it or not. Do you like it or didn’t you like it either?

Tell me why? What kind of “ap tu yu”? I understand that this girl goes to school and her English is most likely already better than her grandmother’s. The grandmother feels this too and tries to keep up with her granddaughter. But in fact, she is not just lagging behind - she has long been carried downstream and the distance between her and her granddaughter is only increasing and increasing... Here, on the contrary, you need to preserve your Russian, and not run after her English! No, of course, it’s good that an elderly woman is learning the language of the country where she immigrated. But it’s bad that she uses it to communicate with her granddaughter... Thus, she deprives her granddaughter of the opportunity to learn another, by the way, difficult language for free. And for herself - the opportunity to communicate with a loved one: how will she, with her very primitive English, understand her granddaughter when she becomes a teenager? But the girl is trying to make her grandmother understand her. Not yet. Even if her phrases are sometimes not a very beautiful translation or are not constructed according to the rules of the Russian language, but tracing paper - she constructs sentences in Russian the same way she would construct them in English. But for now it is “great and mighty.” Her grandmother stubbornly denies her the opportunity to speak Russian. Very little time will pass and this same elderly woman will raise her hands to the sky, indignant:

— He doesn’t want to speak Russian at all! Not at all!

What for? Why does she speak to you in your language? You yourself taught her to answer in the language that is closer to her.

The situation described above demonstrates in the best possible way, perhaps, the main reason for the loss of the native language: parents are afraid that the child will forget/fail to master Russian/Moldavian/Chinese... so much so that later they can fully communicate with him in it. They worry that they won’t master English well themselves; they hope that their children will help them learn. That’s why they puff themselves up and “speak” English. But you can’t learn a language just by communicating with a child; you need to study it purposefully. You can’t learn English, but you can easily lose Russian!

Parents are afraid, that’s why I hear gobbledygook on all sides on the beach and in the park like: “You like I don’t know like a strange person!”

Sometimes such a jumble, however, indicates a different situation - you have a small vocabulary in your native language. Having left your native language environment, you quickly lost the ability to compose sentences either in only one or only in another language. Since a sufficient vocabulary was not accumulated at home, the voids were filled with the simplest phrases in English. And no, this is not bilingualism at all, which I will write about below.

There is a more severe case of such a mishmash - this is Runglish, ridiculous and merciless. A language in which words are distorted, broken and take not bizarre, but even ugly forms. For some time now I have been writing down expressions in Ruinglish. For the fifth year in a row, the palm has been held by a question I heard in a supermarket:

“Did you eat what I did?”

Yes, sometimes it happens differently - mom and dad try, they speak only in their native language, but the child does not perceive it - either he doesn’t want to, or something else. Unknown. I am a mother myself and I know how difficult it is to raise bilingual or more multilingual children. But just because your child doesn't want to speak your native language doesn't mean you should give up immediately. He can’t speak your language, and you can’t speak his (in this case, English) at home - why not? Speak to him only in your language. Only. Answer, explain, ask... Let him stubbornly answer in English, don’t give up. Often, interest not only in the language, which is the main language for parents, but also in culture manifests itself in high school or college. So give your child the opportunity to gain vocabulary by this time. Believe me, all this is put aside somewhere, accumulated and patiently waiting in the wings.

Фото: Depositphotos

Pigs mewed: Meow, meow! Kittens grunted: Oink, oink, oink!

Sometimes parents deliberately cut off their native languages, explaining everything with just one phrase: “He just started getting confused!”

Yes, it is a frequent phenomenon: a child is born in a bilingual family, and after a while parents realize that he does not speak as well or in such quantity as his peers. Or speak, but confuse words. This situation is described immediately as a catastrophe: chef, everything is gone !!!

If only such parents knew how Nabokov spoke three languages ​​- Russian, English and French. And everyone was family. He wrote the famous “Lolita” in English, and then translated it into Russian himself and sometimes complained that he did not do it well enough. Those who read Lolita were now amazed or grinned - isn’t that good enough?

Do those parents know that representatives of the pre-revolutionary nobility in Russia knew 4-6 languages? From early childhood they spoke Russian with the servants, with their mother in French, with the Bonn in German, with the governess in English, at school they learned Greek and Latin, and so on. Note that we are not talking about two unfortunate languages, or even three. And yes, most likely, at first the unfortunate little nobleman also mercilessly confused his words and, oh, horror, addressed his mother in Russian, and addressed the servants in German. But something tells me that it was a) a short period of time, b) not fatal.

Out of sight, out of mind!

- He won't need it! - every time I hear such a phrase, I am surprised to the core. Are you the reincarnation of Nostradamus and know your child's future in advance? Otherwise, where does such confidence come from? Who and when gave you guarantees that your child will not become a translator from Ukrainian to English, or an intelligence officer (what the devil is not kidding), will not teach native Tajik in an American school for immigrants from Tajikistan, or write articles in Moldovan about life in the USA?

Look around. We live in a country where knowing 2-3 languages ​​is not something special, it’s the norm. The seller of the store where I buy fruits and vegetables easily switches from Uzbek to English, from English to Russian. With a couple of phrases, she manages to negotiate with the Mexican workers who bring her goods every morning. He will sing “in shalla” to a regular customer in a burqa when she once again talks about his son’s plans to get a good education... My hairdresser knows one of the Chinese dialects, French and English. And so on.

Now tell me who is more competitive in our difficult times - your child who understands Russian at the level - Seryozha, it's time to eat dumplings! Or a bilingual who switches to another language without problems? Why not give your child a tongue? It won't cost you anything, and it will protect your child, for example, from Alzheimer's. After all, this is exactly the conclusion that scientists have come to: foreign languages ​​are a kind of vaccination against senile dementia.

Plus, people who speak two languages ​​well concentrate better, are more attentive and observant. Bilinguals learn new languages ​​more easily - when you know two languages, learning a third is no longer a problem. They socialize more easily, their communication skills are better developed, and so on, on, on. Well, yes, of course, there is a minus - they usually start speaking later, or, oh, horror - they confuse the words. But still, against the backdrop of advantages and prospects, this minus pales, doesn’t it?

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