Friday, February 25, 2011

I no longer speak any laguange fluently

Today after classes there was a meeting that one of my professors arranged so that the international students in the Russian as a Second Language department could meet some Russians and so that Russians who were interested could meet some foreigners.  Four of us from my program were there, as well as a rather large group of Brits, a few Hungarians,a couple of Germans, a Frenchman, a Finn, a Korean girl, and probably a few others who I'm not remembering.

Several of the Russians know English and so do the Germans and, of course, the Brits, but we all tried to speak in Russian with each other.  One of the Russian boys actually joked that after a few hours talking with foreigners, he couldn't speak Russian anymore because he was picking up our bad habits.  It was actually really funny because I was speaking in Russian as much as I could, while the Germans would switch between Russian and English. One German girl had an entire conversation with a Russian in English as I stood nearby interjecting in Russian.

Although I was using English on and off in the group of students, I was mostly just saying a word here or there, or translating for the British kids who just got here yesterday and haven't yet gotten used to how fast Russians speak. They also had a bit of trouble remembering how to say things. Made me feel very accomplished that I could help.

After the meeting, which was informal and in a room at the university, several of us (foreigners and Russians) went to a cafe and had tea.  After that, I tagged along back to the dorm with 3 Russians, a Finn, and one of the German girls.  I mostly went along because living so far from the center I hate going home early and then feeling left out but being too lazy to commute all the way back into town.

So at the dorm I continued to hang out with people for an hour or two (only speaking Russian), then I came home and talked to my host mom for about 2 hours.  After all that Russian, when I tried to talk to friends online in English it came out very stilted with lots of spelling errors. I don't even want to imagine how bad my French would be. And my Russian is still at a pretty low level too.  Don't let the fluency of this post fool you: I've gone back and edited it. I NO LONGER HAVE A NATIVE LANGUAGE!

I mean, I guess it's kind of cool that I was able to accomplish that in a single day (that is, completely switch to my Russian brain), but it's quite frustrating to only be able to express oneself like a 4-year-old with a thick accent.

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