Admiring the stack of Russian books on my coffee table

This blog entry may only be interesting to my language-learning friends, but considering how many of them I know, I don’t think it will be a bad thing!

Last night, I told Sofia that I like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and she was like, “I have a whole library in the back! I have 20 volumes of Tolstoy!” And then she proceded to bring me every single volume of Tolstoy, as well as two volumes of Dostoevsky, and some Bulgakov to boot. To make a long story short, I now have about seven volumes of Russian classics in my room, and Sofia is expecting me to read them!

I took a crack at War and Peace last night and it turned out better than I expected. The first paragraph is still hilarious. (I remember getting a Quiz Bowl question about famous first lines—I nailed the War and Peace one: “Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, de поместья de la famille Buonaparte...”) Having read it twice, I can follow what’s going on without too much difficulty. (The fact that about 20% of the first few chapters is in French helps, too!) I made it through two chapters, right up to the point where Pierre shows up at the party and starts making everyone uncomfortable. Excellent.

One of the main reasons I was excited to come to Moldova was the chance to polish up my Russian. Those of you who studied at the Critical Languages Institute may remember the discussion of the “Terminal 2’s” among Russian language learners. Namely: People who study Russian at the college level seem to all graduate at an intermediate level. They can get along fine in Russophone environments, but they can’t speak Russian at a professional level. So, my language goal here is to boost from intermediate to professional in nine months. Seems doable.

I should also add here a brief note about the linguistic situation in Moldova. Basically, the national language is Moldovan/Romanian (the name of the language is a very political question...must tread lightly here). However, as many people have noted to me, you are better off using Russian if you don’t know the person you are conversing with. You are much more likely to run into a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Moldovan than a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Russian.

Furthermore, the region of Gagauzia is primarily Russophone. Most of the Gagauz here speak Russian as their language of daily communication, although older generations tend to speak Gagauz more often. (Thanks to my Friday class for explaining this to me!) This tendency is made stronger by the fact that there are many Bulgarians, Russians, and Ukrainians who live here, so they use Russian as a means of communicating with the Gagauz. This is a pretty standard pattern among minority communities in the former USSR. (Case-in-point: Russophone Armenian ethnic communities in Tbilisi, Georgia.)

So, I was overall incredibly lucky to come to a region in the former USSR where I could really develop my Russian skills!

Sofia, the woman I live with, speaks to me almost entirely in Russian. (She is working on her English, but is still in the beginning stages!) She is a German professor at the university, and she also speaks Gagauz. At home, we watch Russian television almost exclusively, which is fun! We have GTV, which is Gagauzian. The broadcast news in Moldovan, Gagauz, and Russian. (They also play Turkish music videos constantly, leading Sofia to jokingly call it “TTV” instead of GTV.) I feel much more connected to what is going on when I can watch news reports of events in Comrat in Russian! We also get “Rossiya,” which is the main Russian state channel. There are also some Moldovan channels that broadcast in Russian. It’s a good mix of shows.

The other professors in the kafedra (I guess this would be translated “department”) speak Russian basically all the time. They like the practice their English with me, but the German teachers generally don’t speak English, so they usually speak in Russian in order to be polite to them. Right now, I can understand what they are saying to me and follow conversations, but I tend to miss a lot of what they are saying to each other. I think quick conversations are one of the hardest things to follow, as a rule. Sometimes it gets depressing, but I am comforted by the fact that Feruz, our Fulbrighter from Uzbekistan at ASU, improved his English immensely while he was living in America. If Feruz can do it, so can I!

I had the chance to interview Olga Kagan, a pretty awesome Russian scholar at UCLA, and she told me the best way to improve my Russian is to get a big fat novel and read every day. I’ve taken her to heart! As far as reading practice goes, I’m still working away at Harry Potter. I finished 1-3 over the last school year, so I’m tackling the challenge of Book 5 right now. Let me tell you, Book 5 is no joke. I think it takes me 4-5 minutes a page. It’s a lot of fun, however, and the entertaining story keeps my attention. I think I’m going to have to split my time between War and Peace and Harry Potter, though. Prince Andrei is about to show up in the book. There’s nothing to keep you plugging through those Russian sentences like Prince Andrei. For those of you who haven’t read War and Peace, I just have to say that you are missing out.

So, my Russian study plan seems to be going fairly well. I’m hoping to start meeting with a Russian tutor. Christine, a Peace Corps volunteer here, told me there was a really good one in Hincesti, which is about 30 minutes away by bus, so it might be worth it.

Any other language acquisition suggestions?