On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

For those of you that did not grow up playing the high stakes game of chubby bunny – let me explain it to you. The goal is to see who can stuff the most campfire-sized marshmallows in their mouth (none of these puny hot cocoa impostors) and still say the words, “Chubby Bunny” coherently.

Also, choking and/or dying from said choking is an automatic disqualifier. So, pretty strict rules. Choking is, of course, a constant risk when you are recklessly shoving sticky clouds of sugar and gelatin down your gullet with no place else for them to go but down the hatch once your cheeks are chocked, chipmunk-style, full to the brim and you refuse to open your mouth and let them pour out the front door. That is, if you are playing to win, of course. Strong epiglottal control is a must if you want to win and ALSO not choke to death. And, after each new marshmallow shoved in, you must then, intelligibly articulate the words, “Chubby Bunny”. At a certain point in the game, the words, “Chubby Bunny” start to sound more like “Chuh-ree Ruh-ee”.  Last (wo)man standing (and breathing) and saying “Chubby Bunny” wins.

It’s a good time.

I recommend it.

It also is an apt description of how my brain felt when I arrived in Riga, Latvia on Sunday morning and instructed my neurons to greet my wonderful homestay host in Russian. When I opened my mouth, I had to squeeze these slavic words around the piles of Italian, German, French and Spanish marshmallows that I had just spent 3 months enthusiastically stuffing into it. 

I’m happy to report, the words came out. I will not comment on the grace or beauty with which they did or did not flow, but words in Russian were said. I’m still in the game. 

There is a certain point in the game of Chubby Bunny where dignity becomes a “nice-to-have”. 

Luckily, I’m fine with that. It is often my willingness to look ridiculous and fail miserably that allows me to continue where others with a higher bar of self-respect might opt to retreat. That’s my secret superpower. I have no problem looking or sounding like an idiot. I’m actually very good at it. Not to brag TOO much, but, generally speaking, I do “stumbling fool” very well. It is not rare that I do something and my wonderfully respectable husband just drops his head in surrender, shaking it in disbelief. There is love and affection in that headshake and I feel it. He will say things like, “All class, babe.” or “That’s my girl.” These comments are what is known in the biz as “sarcastic”. 

I also happen to think that comfort being uncomfortable, and unearned confidence on display while flailing in disastrous attempts that end in failure, all conducted in plain view of others is a very useful set of skills when it comes to language learning. Language learning is a practice in constant humiliation – that is, if you are capable of feeling humiliated. Luckily (and, sometimes, for my husband, unfortunately), I am not. 

And so, I have stumbled into my Russian studies with the grace, enthusiasm and slobber of an aging St. Bernard, still sure it can catch any squirrel that runs by as it trips delightingly over its own big clunky paws.

But, hey, I’m still making Russian words come out of my mouth. I mean, sometimes.

I can be found, every once in a while, watching polyglot youtube videos. To all those that I’ve seen where people, when asked what language they learned was the hardest and they replied, “German”, to them I say – Нет (Nyet = Nope). 

Of course, it is a very subjective topic and statement and depends on so many factors. I mean, languages are, generally speaking, so equally learnable that BABIES are their primary students. And babies crush it every time – with every language. There are no expecting parents that speak Russian, German, Arabic, Chinese or any other famously “hard” language that worries if their baby will be able to learn their native language. They are all quite learnable – and, within some levels of degree, equally so. It depends on so many factors – of course, the main one being what native language you are coming from. For me, Italian felt so easy, having already learned French and Spanish (or, enough of them to have a solid base). There were some native Chinese speakers in my Italian class and they really struggled, even just to read. Understandable!  It’s all relative and in a sea of so many factors. 

In terms of the factors in the sea in which I find myself, I started studying Russian 27 years ago in college. In 2 weeks in Italy, starting from “zero”, I think my Italian has either come to equal or may have even surpassed my Russian-speaking and comprehension ability. While that is exciting on the Italian front, I must say, on the Russian front, not as exciting. One might even use the words “crushingly disheartening”. I wouldn’t use those words, of course. They would be way too dramatic and extreme. But ONE might use them. 

Okay – for context, first of all, of those 27 years, I studied exactly never for 20 of those years. And, in the 7 or 8 after that, I never really engaged in deeply rigorous, focused and intensive study.

But, I am definitely getting my rear end lovingly handed to me as I work on developing my Russian, especially after the ease with which I cruised through my 2 weeks in Italy. 

And that’s absolutely fine, of course. That is part of the fun (to me anyways) of learning a language. No matter where you are is a great place to be, and it is always clear where to go next. Forward. 

For me, Russian feels, at the same time, really easy and really challenging.

There are lots of things about Russian that are really nice, as a learner. You don’t have to mess with articles (i.e., “the”, “a”). German will rake you over the coals with articles. There are three different genders for every “the” in German and you just have to somehow magically know which one goes with which noun. There are some guidelines that make it easier to make an educated guess, but, like so many things in language, you just have to build enough of a feel for it, that, like a native speaker, eventually you just have the feel for which form of “the” goes with any particular noun. In Russian – you are free of these pesky little linguistic opening acts! We all came to the show for the noun anyways – right? Makes sense, let’s skip the preamble and get to it! This is why any native Russian speaker speaking English might sound a bit funny to us when they leave it out. “I will put pizza on table.” I can’t imagine how difficult it is to wrap your head around the concept of “the” if you grew up not having to bother with it at all. 

So, as a learner of Russian, there are definitely lots of free rides, a lot of ways where Russian can actually feel kinda “easy”. Anyplace you see me cruising through Russian, those are the easy parts.

Then there is the rest of it.

The rest of it that I have basically put off learning or mastering on any level since I first started studying it lo those many years ago. This is where, to my brain, Russian becomes a game of mental twister. I think my brain might have a bad case of frozen shoulder – cause it does not want to do any twistin’.  

When I arrived in Riga at school, it became immediately clear that my current level in Russian is very difficult to pin down. If you ask me a question that I have answered many times in the past, listen, you’re gonna be impressed. It will flow out like chocolate in a Willy Wonka waterfall. Dang – this girl speaks Russian! 

Now get 2 millimeters adjacent to the questions I am used to responding to, throw in a few verbs of motion, try and get me to use the correct perfective form of a verb and turn the adjectives and nouns into the correct cases, and we’re in trouble, and quick. 

Or, if you want to see the blood run out of my face, take the easy route and just toss out any one of a couple hundred thousand pieces of vocabulary that I don’t know. You will amazed at how easily you can stump me. In Italian or French or Spanish and, even German, when presented with words I didn’t yet know,  I seemed to be able to take a thousand little clues and piece them together. Maybe they were context clues, phonetic clues or clues from magic language fairies floating in the air. No matter what, they were enough for me to take a wild guess and a solid percentage of the time, end up being right. In Russian, we can be chatting away in a lovely linguistic flow and then you, innocently, ask the simplest question with a word I don’t know. Game over. Full stop. There will be no comprehension or verbal gymnastics. This is pure “brick wall” territory. If Russian sentences were walls built out of word bricks, I would have had to get my broken nose fixed a LOT of times from running right into them, over and over and over.

The most dizzying part is, in class, when I tell my teacher I don’t know a word – she graciously goes to describe to me the meaning of that word. Lovely. Unfortunately, she does it using 10 other words that I also don’t know. So, this has been a problem. 

The point is, I am glad I got a taste of that humble pie when I was leaving Italy to remind me that the 3 months ahead of me might pose a greater degree of challenge than the first 3 months. In that way, I have hit the ground running.

I don’t need to worry – ahead of me, I only have Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. What could go wrong?

I could always give myself a little break during my quick stops in Istanbul, Turkey (just added a weekend there!) and India to toss in a little taste of Turkish or Hindi in case I am interested in heating up the linguistic hot water I am already waist deep in. Those are supposed to be really easy languages for English speakers. (Please reference aforementioned “sarcasm”.)

But, alas, I remain a glutton for this kind of punishment. Call it a passion. Call it an obsession. Call it a problem. I’m having a blast. It hurts so good. But, it definitely does hurt. 

So, I have been shaking my little linguistic tailfeathers as fast as I can to expand my vocabulary in Russian -and I am happy to report, today, that my teacher only had to use 4 different examples to try and get me to understand what the word предложение means – so that’s progress. At least we got there! Incidentally, part of the issue is that, in Russian, there are a lot of words that can mean A LOT of different (though somewhat adjacent) things. This is not an entirely uncommon quality of a language, but Russian really crushes it. 

Then there are Russian verbs of motion. I have tremendous respect for how many ways Russians have to describe coming and going. I actually love that about the language and find it infinitely fascinating. It also may cause my brain to melt into a sticky, useless, goo and has led me to actual tears – not because I was sad or anything, just because my brain was leaking out of my eyes. After a few days and some efforts on the part of the school to find the right class for me, my brain is now staying in solid form.  I’ll keep you posted if I lose any future brain cells to liquefication.

Because I know you want to know more about Russian verbs of motion, let’s discuss. For example, in Russian, if you want to say that you went somewhere, we actually need MUCH more information before we can begin building any kind of sentence. 

Did you go by foot? 

Did you go by car? 

Did you go by boat? 

Did you go by plane? 

In English, these are secondary pieces of information. You can just say, “I went there BY…car, boat, plane, etc…” Or, we are happy to just jump right into assumption territory. If you say (while in the USA, for example), that you went to France – we are going to assume you did not walk there, or swim there. No need to even think about it at all.

Not so in Russian. 

Each situation gets its very own, completely separate verb! 

But WAIT! We are not done collecting sufficient information. 

We also need to know if you are talking about going there in terms of going from point A to B. Or did you go there and come back? Depending on which one, we also have another verb to use.

Now we need to know if you are talking about the process or frequency of having gone there, or if you are more focused on the result of having gone there. That will change the verb again. 

Wait – are you talking about the fact that you went there, but as a stop along the way to somewhere else? Different verb. 

Or, are you trying to communicate that the fact that you went there is more about the fact that you were busy going through something? Different verb. 

Of course, to a native speaker, they never have to think about any of this – it’s just what it is. It’s just what sounds natural and normal. Easy.

But, for my little brain, well, still working on it.

But, I am really excited, because, on this trip, I finally feel like I am. In all of my years of studying Russian, I have mostly been casual and never really put in the effort to really understand it. 

I am almost there and hopeful that this means I might actually start to use these verbs correctly.

Then there is the way Russian handles “perfective” and “imperfective” forms. For those that are not language nerds, these are two fancy words for describing past tense. In English, we handle these distinctions, not the simplest way, but simple enough. A “perfective” past tense refers to an action that has been fully completed. In English, we would say, “I wrote the letter.” We hear that and know that you are done writing it. It happened in the past and you are done now. The “imperfective” form refers to a past that is more focused on the process. In English, we would say, “I was writing the letter…”. We now know, in the past you, well, you were writing the letter…but we don’t know the result. Each language handles this distinction in their own way. We also might say, “I used to write.” So, we’ve got a few ways to do it – not the simplest, but not the most complicated.

In Spanish, French and Italian, as far as I am concerned, they are pretty nice about the whole situation, for the most part (though not without any pain). Verbs have a specific ending for each form. Every once in awhile, there is an irregular form, but, it’s pretty consistent. 

Russian? Nope. Well, the good news, you don’t have to worry about changing the ending of the verbs. So that’s nice. No, in Russian they just have a completely new verb for the two different forms! For every verb you learn, you have to learn it’s partner verb. Cool. Nice. Awesome.

For some people, this might be simple enough. 

And, I think, after my 2 weeks of classes here, I am en route to that. But, for the 20+ years that I have been in the realm of knowing and/or studying Russian, I have not yet fully wrapped my head around all of this. So when I arrived here in Riga, my Russian brain was in a state of chaos. The clean up is in process, and I have hope.

One of my favorite parts about learning languages is when I spend all of this time wrestling with things like this and then start speaking English again and find myself amazed that I can easily navigate all the crazy idiosyncrasies of our language without any effort at all! You may not realize it, but you are doing linguistic gymnastics every day, surfing nuanced waves of English all the time like a BOSS, while all those folks working hard to master English from scratch are busy trying to crack the code just like I am with Russian right now.  

I think, actually, there is a very good reason that I have found it, relatively-speaking, more difficult to progress, on this trip, in the languages that I already had studied for a while versus the ones in which I was a beginner. I have definitely progressed faster in German and Italian than I have in French, Spanish or Russian – each of which I arrived already with an A2 or B1/B2 level. And that is this. I am better at the process of language learning now than when I started studying each of these languages in high school or college. LIke anything else, the actual process of learning a language is a skill – and, I have sorted through a lot of crappy ways to do it over the years. Now, I’ve got my process down pretty well. So, while I had a strong base in Spanish, French and Russian when I left for this trip – I also had an ocean of deeply ingrained bad habits and a less effective set of internalized routines for how my brain was used to acquiring that particular language that have stood in the way of just free and open learning. That’s been kind of a fascinating (and occasionally painful) thing to witness unfolding. 

It’s all part of the weird and whacky fun for a lover of language-learning. If you have stuck with this post this far, you must at least not be allergic to it. There were some legit grammar words in this post. Don’t worry. There won’t be anymore.

I have cheated writing this blog post in the middle of a week when I should be, at best, writing, reading, speaking or listening to Russian and, at the very least, NOT spending hours writing in English. 

That said, over the last 8 days here in Riga, I have so many blog posts accumulating in my brain, I needed to start the process of getting them out.

There is so much to say about my time here in Latvia, in Riga – including this – hey, I’m in Latvia! I don’t know that I ever expected to say that. I am having an amazing time and I’ll look forward to doing my best to describe it in another post before I leave at the end of this week. 

For now, time to go try and shove a few more marshmallows in my mouth.

“Chuh-ree Ruh-ee.”