Mr. Na and I have been learning Russian little by little everyday since he got out of school last week. We spend about 30 minutes a day listening to the Pimsleur Russian Language Course that I downloaded for free from Net Library.

Back in 2002, Pa and I enrolled in a Russian Language class at a local community college, where, every Tuesday night, we sat in class for two hours, learning the basics by a wonderful Muscovite named Lolita. We took the class for almost two years and retained enough of the language to get through our trip; but since then, I’ve fallen out of practice and have forgotten the majority of the material. Listening to the Pimsleur Course has been a great review for me and the words are slowly starting to find their way back into my head. The only downside is that I don’t have the corresponding workbook for the lessons–and part of the challenge in learning Russian is the ability to read Cyrillic. Luckily, though, I’ve kept all of my flash cards and books from Lolita’s course and I’m doing a read review as well.

Mr. Na doesn’t remember any Russian words at all–not even unconsciously. But kids, in general, are little sponges when it comes to learning a language, so I know he’ll start to pick up a few of the phrases taught by the course. One phrase he already knows is “nee ochen horoshow”, which means “not very good”. It’s cute the way he’s already incorporated it into his daily repertoire, too:

MA: “Do you like the peas and carrots?”
NA: “Nee Ochen Horoshow.”
MA: “How do those shoes fit?”
NA: “Nee Ochen Horoshow”
MA: “Do you like learning Russian?”
NA: “Nee Ochen Horoshow”

As we’ve been going through the course this week, I encountered a word that I think Mr. Na was saying when we first brought him home—yet, at the time, I thought he was saying something completely different.

The Russian word for “here” is “zdeese” which almost sounds like “what’s this” smushed together. At the time, we thought one of Na’s first words was “what’s this?” because we would pick up random objects and tell them when they were and then he’d do the same–almost, in a cute way, quizzing us. He walked around, pointing at objects and said, “’stiss” and we’d tell him what they were; but now I wonder if his use of “stiss” was more of a “here” than a question of “what is it?” Either way, though, he picked up English words with the greatest of ease. Every day, I’d keep track of new words he’d learned by writing them down. By the time I got to 250 words (in 6 months), I stopped logging. But I’ve kept the pieces of paper and recently showed it to Mr. Na who fixated on the fact that “pooh pooh” was one of his first words (What can I say; he’s 6…pooh pooh is funny to a 6 year-old).

You might be wondering why I’ve chosen to learn Russian over Ukrainian. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, they are definitely two very distinct languages (think Spanish vs. Portuguese). It’s only been since 1991 that Ukrainian has become the official language, and most people speak both–with Russian, actually, still being the dominant. This is especially true in the eastern part of the country where Ukrainians have stronger ties to Russia and are resistant to making Ukrainian the primary language.

So, for now, Mr. Na and I work though a little bit of Russian everyday, with the hopes that we’ll be able to understand the majority of people while we’re there. Hopefully, by the time we leave on July 20th, we’ll be able to speak Russian “ochen horoshow” instead of “nee ochen horoshow”!