Wordeaters

Much to the little bugs' delight, we've recently acquired an iPad. I've been busy looking for apps they would enjoy and that would also be language related. I've found a few for French (details coming in a later post) but Russian-language apps are harder to come by.

The only Russian-language one that seems to have any success so far is Wordeaters (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordeaters/id490622258?mt=8).

This app involves dragging Russian words that float across the screen into the mouth of the head that has guessed the right meaning (or vice versa) and the word is eaten up. It's pure translating, but both Dragonfly and Bee play it from time to time, so it seems to be sufficiently entertaining and it certainly helps them work on their vocabulary and reading skills. The word is also read out so they hear the correct pronunciation.

The app also works with English-French, English-Spanish and English-Russian but we haven't tested these combinations.

Has anyone come across any other good apps for kids that use Russian?

The power of the community language

We went to lunch with some friends today. They are both Russian, live in London and have two children. They all speak Russian so it was great for our children's Russian to have an afternoon of playing in the language: although we have a few Russian friends, very few of them have children who won't automatically slip into English with other children (and many have children who don't speak Russian at all).

What was interesting was that they make a particular point about speaking Russian to their children: they forbid the use of English at home and also constantly remind each other to stick to Russian as otherwise they find that they slip into English. So even when everyone in the family speaks another language to start with, English creeps in and seems to gradually take over!

This highlights the challenge for bilingual and trilingual families: if English (or whatever the community language might be) tends to dominate when both parents speak the same other language, this is even more the case for families where each additional language is only spoken by one parent. So well done to all who manage to keep multiple languages going!

Overregularisation chuckles

Yesterday, Bee made us chuckle: Dragonfly was telling us about something that she couldn't do 'я не могла ...' (a ya ne mogla) and Bee, ever competitive, retorted that he could: 'а я могол' (a ya mogol). The correct form would have been 'а я мог' (a ya mog) but he was applying the rule that verbs in the past tense end in -ла (-la) in the feminine but in  -ел (-el) or  -ал (-al) in the masculine, so 'to see' (видеть - videt') becomes 'видела' (videla) in the feminine and 'видел' (videl) in the masculine. So могол was a fair attempt although it did sound funny. 

Last year, when I was reading up on language acquisition, I read that this phenomenon of children's language acquisition follows a U-shaped curve: First, children learn a few words and phrases wholesale so might correctly say something like 'I went to the shops' or 'I ate my dinner'. But then they start acquiring rules (e.g. that one adds -ed to a verb to create a past tense, as in 'jump - I jumped'). So then they apply this rule too widely, treating irregular words as if they are regular ('overregularising'), so might say the familiar child forms of 'I goed to the shops' and 'I eated my dinner'. And then they come out at the other end of the curve by working out that some verbs don't follow the rule they have acquired and learning how they function. 

So apart from making us chuckle, Bee's могол is encouraging: perhaps he is beginning to internalise the grammatical rules of Russian rather than simply repeating phrases. It will be interesting to see if these overregularisations increase as we progress to the bottom of the U.

Elka

It's Elka / Елка season in this house. A elka is a Christmas (or New Year) tree, but it also refers to a New Year show for kids with дед мороз (Grandfather Frost) and so on. 

Last weekend, Dragonfly and Bee took part in their Russian club's elka, and had to learn their lines, steps and songs. A bit like the school nativity play but with no nativity story - all on a wintry theme of snow, ice, Grandfather frost and his helper/ daughter Snegurochka ... so when we announced that they were going to a big one yesterday with their Babushka (grandma), they were worried that they hadn't rehearsed! 

But yesterday's one (kremlinelka.co.uk) was just a show (phew!), so no performing was needed. However, despite their nerves, last week's was much more fun, in particular for Dragonfly, who found the Kremlin Elka boooring. Bee was more positive. Judging by Bee's rather dodgy photography, seems to have involved people dressed up as animals. Perhaps 9-year-olds are too old for this sort of thing?

Christmas date challenges

Does anyone have any good vegan Christmas recipes? How about vegan + wheat-free, potato-free, tomato-free, aubergine-free and pepper-free?

Christmastime can be full of challenges (as well as fun, food and happy times!), and this year we're wrestling with a little Christmas date-food challenge.

This stems from the fact that, in the Orthodox Church (the main religion in Russia), Christmas is celebrated on 7th January. To complicate matters, 7th January is only really a religious feast day, not a gift-giving and tree-decorating occasion. The main gift-giving and tree-decorating occasion in Russia has traditionally (at least fairly recently) been New Year. This may be because in atheist Soviet times, no one celebrated Christmas at all, so all the tree and gift stuff was done at New Year (I don't know what happened before 1917). So 'Christmas trees' are called 'New Year trees' and 'Father Christmas' is 'Grandfather Frost' and so on.

In modern Russia, these date issues mainly seem to mean an excuse for extra celebrations: Christmas 25th December? Why not have a few drinks? New Year? Bring it on! Orthodox Christmas? More food and drink. And this continues until 'old New Year' (13th January) after which everything settles back down a little.

Now, we are celebrating Christmas (the 25th December one) with my Russian mother-in-law and sister-in-law this year. Mother-in-law is still firmly atheist despite being anti-Soviet in all other respects, but has nonetheless transferred all the tree decorating and gift giving to 25th December since emigrating (while still paying a little more attention to New Year celebrations than might otherwise be the case).

Sister-in-law, on the other hand, has converted to Orthodoxy and follows all the rules and rituals very closely. This includes a strict vegan fast in the weeks leading up to Christmas (7th January). However, she still loves tree-decorating and gifts, so the other days can't be ignored.

Thus, we have a temporary vegan to cater for over Christmas... combined with the fact that mother-in-law currently doesn't eat wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines or peppers. As we are spending around 5 days together around Christmas, this could make for some interesting cooking! Any ideas?

The influence of gendered language

Dragonfly and Bee go to Russian club every Friday after school. The festive season is upon us, so they are busy preparing their Christmas / New Year show (Новогодная елка). As usual, there are songs and mini plays to be learned and, this year, this has led to Dragonfly insisting that she didn't want to be a blizzard with the girls, she wanted to be ice with the boys.

Now this is something I notice quite often at this Russian club: in shows and songs etc. the children take on more overtly gendered roles than they would at English schools. So, for instance, last summer, her group danced a rock 'n' roll style routine in boy-girl pairs, and for one dance, when there were too many girls, they made a couple of girls sit out rather than have a girl take on the 'boy' part.

This year, Dragonfly is long past her pink girly phase, so she objects to these overtly feminine roles. Looking at the play with ice and blizzards, language is clearly guiding the role decisions: лед (ice) is a masculine word, while метель (blizzard) is feminine. So if a girl plays the role of ice, she will be 'speaking like a boy' (grammatically). Grammar influences choreography and the routine designed ends up gendered visually too: the blizzards are doing some feminine twirling around while ice is stomping about in masculine way.

Anyway, after the blizzard and ice grump last week, Dragonfly has come to terms with the twirling (and has learnt her part) so we'll be sticking with it and I don't have to discuss grammatical choreography with the teachers. Phew!

Is trilingualism all about language?

On Sunday, we went to visit our good friends who are also trilingual. He is Brazilian and she is Russian. They speak English to each other. When their first child was born, dad took the decision to speak English to him as he was worried that he wouldn't speak English well otherwise, and in order to avoid confusing him. Mum, on the other hand, spoke Russian.

This arrangement is still in place 10 years and two other children down the line, except that, progressively, Russian seems to be decreasing. During our visit, over 95% of the family conversation we heard was in English, with only a few small comments from mum in Russian. So, on first impressions, the family's trilingualism seems to be declining.

However, interestingly, nowadays mum speaks pretty good Portuguese (though dad's Russian has never really taken off!), so she is becoming trilingual although her children may not be at the moment. And they generally travel once a year to both Brazil and Russia and the children love these holidays. So they function well in those environments despite their lack of fluency and they have positive associations with these countries, which could provide a foundation for developing a later interest in the languages.

In addition, we were interested to see that, while our children may speak better Russian than theirs, in some respects their children have a far greater Russian influence in their lives: for instance, their Russian grandmother had just visited for a week from Russia and so their kitchen was full of traditional Russian foods (although the children didn't particularly want to eat them!). On the other hand, all our grandparents are here in London and are therefore fairly 'anglified' or, more accurately, internationalised when it comes to food: I can't remember the last time my mother-in-law cooked a Russian dish.

They have also recently moved house and have chosen a sparkling new-build. This is definitely a Brazilian influence: no cravings for period features in this family!

'Triculturalism' can take so many different forms - it will be interesting to see how this family continues to evolve: will language suddenly spring out of these influences at some point?

Purple mushrooms!

The hazards of living with a Russian include having purple mushrooms on the menu ...

After some slightly tentative early steps to recreate the походы за грибами (mushroom picking outings) of my husband's childhood, we have gradually built up a certain amount of mushrooming expertise over the years. We have several preferred woods within striking distance of London that we try to visit in the autumn and a selection of known mushroom (ceps, chanterelles and several less-known varieties) that we collect and eat on a regular basis. In particularly good years we have even produced dried and salted mushrooms (pickled without vinegar) for use later in the year like 'proper Russians'.

This year, however, was a terrible mushroom year. Or perhaps it was simply a very late or very early mushroom year, but the result was that, when we went out in search of mushrooms at our usual time, we found none. And the pressures of family life mean that we can't simply pop out every weekend to check on our fungi friends. Result? A frustrated and desperate mushroom picker who, on a walk in Epping Forest this weekend, decided that that anything that wasn't clearly poisonous was worth a go. Hence this evening's offering: several pale purple mushrooms (Wood Blewitts, apparently), one skinny bright purple one (an 'Amethyst Deceiver', I am told) and a floppy tattered orange one (simply a 'Deceiver'). The deceiving fungi sound pretty dodgy to me, so we've adopted our usual tactic in these circumstances: we cook the mushrooms - dear husband tries them - if he's alive and well tomorrow, others can try them too.

Update tomorrow.

Propisnye bukvy!

Much to my surprise, despite not being particularly known for beautiful handwriting in English, and despite writing in Russian exclusively in rather wobbly capitals until very recently, Dragonfly (aged 9) is now suddenly writing pretty impressive 'propisnye bukvy' (joined up writing) in her Russian club notebook, even managing the required slant for most of the letters. Wow! I didn't expect that! I wonder whether it will impact on her handwriting generally (if she keeps it up) - you can often recognise Russian people's handwriting by this characteristic slanting pattern.

Bee's Russian went on holiday to New Zealand

Yesterday, the children went to their Friday afternoon Russian club. My competitive Bee (aged 5), came out feeling rather despondent mainly because he hadn't won any of the games they had played. This prompted a Russian rejection moment: apparently Bee's Russian had flown away to New Zealand. But when asked when/whether it might return, we were informed that it would be back at midnight - at least it hadn't permanently emigrated.

This morning, we tried a fully Russian-speaking breakfast. We try to do this once a week or so to boost the amount of Russian spoken at home as Dad is out at work and not around so much when the bugs are awake ... but it turned out that Bee's Russian was still stuck on a plane. Luckily, as Bee told us that it was now hovering over Kent he was informed that it would most likely be back imminently, landing at the private airport in the garden - so we welcomed Bee's Russian back this morning and had a nice family chat. 

5 year old spelling

Yesterday, Bee (aged 5) sat with his dad and wrote a list of country names - can you recognise them?

We were debating whether his 'eea' endings for 'indeea' and 'ostraileea' are particularly elongated (eea instead of 'ia' or even 'ya') because of his dad's Russian pronunciation of these country names. We might try it again next week with me discussing the countries to see whether the spelling comes out different.