Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Language, Garden Tools, and Breakfast

One of the questions I'm frequently asked is "do your kids really understand both English and Russian?" The short answer is yes! They are bilingual. Growing up in an international family led to this (not just living overseas.) Are my children equally proficient in oral comprehension and writing/reading abilities? No. Having bilingual kids has been an interesting adventure for this missionary mom--one where I feel I'm more an observer than anyone who's pulling the strings.

When we were expecting our first child, I heard someone say that children learn best in bilingual families when one parent always speaks one language, and the other always speaks a 2nd language. This is the way it turned out in our family--not because we decided beforehand to do this, but because once I held my pudgy baby boy in my arms for the first time, it was only natural to speak to him in my native tongue--English. The same goes for my husband who spoke to our son in Russian exclusively. My husband and I together however, always speak Russian to each other.

Language acquisition is a fascinating thing to watch, and as our boy grew and began saying a few words, he interestingly spoke a mix of both languages. All his choices seemed logical to me. For example, instead of saying "give me that" or "gimme" which is a complicated 2 syllables, he (and in fact all of our children) said the Russian "dai," which is an easy 1 syllable. "I want to go over there" was the simplified Russian "too-da."

By the time my son was a preschooler all the foreigners oohed and ahhed over his language ability. What we had to acquire through hours spent pouring over grammar books, my son learned through osmosis and daily interaction (and his accent was better.) He did however, refuse to translate for people. He gave them a look, when they asked him what a word meant in the other language as if to say "don't you know yourself?" Maybe that was more to do with his personality than anything else. He also refused to speak a foreign language with a foreigner. He seemed to instinctively know who was Russian and who was a native English speaker. In our circle of international friends and colleagues, he refused to greet a Russian with "hi!" or an American with "privet!"

As a preschooler, I taught my son his English letters and he was reading by 5. I spent hours reading to him and his siblings story books and nursery rhymes, and singing children's songs in English. Although my husband always spoke to the children in Russian, he rarely read to them and they didn't sing songs. However my children seemed to understand everything in both languages and I felt confident calling them bilingual.

When my eldest was 6 we hired a tutor to teach him his Russian letters (so he wouldn't hear the pronunciation through my American accent.) We completely dropped our English reading at that time so that we wouldn't confuse him. Within 2 months he was reading proficiently for his age, and we felt confident in sending him to Russian school in the fall.

School was a huge wake-up call for us. All my pride in having bilingual children was squashed within days of the start of 1st grade! The teacher said he simply didn't have the vocabulary the other kids had. "You must read read read to him in Russian!" she said. "That's his father's job." I protested weakly. He didn't know the Russian fairy tales or nursery rhymes that were constantly referenced, even in math class! Well, you could say, that's just a cultural difference, nothing to do with language. But the difference is that the language in Russian fairy tales and nursery rhymes is different than every day language. It is what is used to teach Russian kids literacy. A child who doesn't know these things is considered to not know much at all. The Russians also teach their preschoolers to memorize nursery rhymes, and expect the children at any given moment, to be able to recite one. My son, of course, could recite none. Another minus.

The entire class was sent to the school psychologist for diagnostic testing. My son's test scores were quite low. Alarmed, I attended a parents' meeting to discuss the results. The psychologist gave an example of the kind of tests the kids completed. "I will tell you four words," she said, "and you should say one word that describes that entire group." I expected her to say "cat, dog, bird, cow" and we would call out "animals!" Instead she quoted four words that I had never heard before in my life. "And what are they all?" she asked. "That's right! Garden tools for your summer home!" Well, we had no garden or summer home and I doubted my son knew even one of those words.

I didn't run out and buy my son a spade, but we did get some books of Russian fairy tales. As my son struggles through the intricacies of Russian grammar, we left his English studies in the dust. As a result he speaks English better than Russian but reads and writes better in Russian. Then there's my four year-old, who, in an act of defiance stopped speaking Russian a year ago. But that's a story for this blog for a different day.

Many people have noted humorously that our family speaks a blend of Russian and English. This we don't notice ourselves. I think that I am speaking just English with my kids, and my husband thinks he speaks just Russian. But since we all know both languages (more or less) there are certain words that make more sense in one language than in another. For example my husband will call out to the kids in English "toys away!" in the evenings and the kids and I will all refer to sweet and condensed milk (a favorite pancake topping here) as the easy Russian word "sgushonka." In this way being bilingual has really enriched our family's spoken interactions, especially at the breakfast table.

And so as we continue to wade these waters of living in a bilingual home and having bilingual children, I am still learning alongside my kids. It's been an adventure and a challenge, and I've spent lots of time praying for guidance. Are my children bilingual? The long answer I tried to describe in this blog. The short answer, I can say with a smile, is yes--yes they are!