Civil Defense: How Americans Learn Russian in Irkutsk. For everyone and about everything Americans are learning Russian

The editor of a popular Western publication, Susie Armitage, began to study Russian and soon realized that this was an occupation for the strong in spirit.

1. When you first see Cyrillic alphabet then you think: “Cool! I can handle!" and get ready for adventure.

2. In these early days, every tiny victory feels exciting. So you managed to read the word "bread" without breaking your head over it for five minutes, and you can already imagine how you read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the original.

3. But soon you realize that knowing the alphabet is one thing, but speaking Russian is completely different.

4. "Imagine being kicked in the stomach," says your teacher, explaining the "y" sound.

5. In just three weeks, you can already pronounce "hello" correctly.

6. And when it comes to "sh", "u" and "h", you think that they are not so different.

7. But now you confuse them in a conversation, and it turns out that the Russians do not understand you. "What other" box "?! Ahh, the box!

8. Then the baby "b" appears, which crawls into some words and changes them beyond recognition with its black magic.

9. And one day you will be looking for a store that sells "sofas, beds and tables" - because the word "furniture" is too hard to pronounce.

10. Your first attempts at translation will be absolutely, hopelessly wrong due to the peculiarities of Russian grammar.

11. And when you come to terms with the existence of one case, you will find that you need to learn five more.

12. You will have to remember that the TV is a “boy”, the newspaper is a “girl”, and the radio does not have a “sex”.

13. Then you come across verbs of motion. I remember when I asked the teacher after a couple of months of training how to say "go", he replied that we were not ready for this yet.

14. The teacher gives you the task to write a story about a walk around the city using the words "drive", "go", "exit", "go around", "pass" and "enter". I think I'd rather stay at home.

16. Gradually you will get used to using the imperative mood, because otherwise your speech will seem strange.

17. You will look down on friends who are learning Spanish or French (but secretly jealous of them).

18. One day you will certainly tell someone that you have been writing all evening yesterday. Although they actually wrote.

19. Or ask about the cost of a good circumcision, referring to education.

20. When you run out of vocabulary, you just start adding to English verbs ending with “-ovate” and pray to the gods of intercultural communication for it to work. At least from the "start" it rolls.

21. When you arrive in Russia, you will need to ask the bartender for a sprite or "Long Island" with the most exaggerated accent in order to be understood.

22. Get ready for your name to be brutally mutilated. But you still have to introduce yourself with the Russian version of your name, because otherwise no one will know how to address you. Especially lucky guys with names like Seth or Ruth.

23. Even if you study it for years, the Russian language will still be able to screw you over. For example, someone will notice that you misplace the stress on a word you use all the time.

24. But despite all headache, you'll still be glad you got involved with it all.

25. Because the Russian language is not called great and powerful for nothing. And now you just can't live without it.

According to researchw3techs, in March 2013, the Russian language took the 2nd place in terms of use on the Internet, and in the 20th century, the Russian language became one of the so-called world (global) languages. At the beginning of the last century, according to wikipedia, about 150 million people spoke Russian, and by 2000 the number of those who knew Russian had increased to about 350 million people. In the United States, the Russian language ranks 10th in terms of the number of speakers - over 700 thousand (0.24%) of Americans speak Russian.

The smallest number of Russian speakers lives in Wyoming (only 170 people, or 0.02% of all Russian speakers), and the most in New York State (218,765 people, or 30.98% of all Russian speakers) ). In 2009, State Governor David Paterson signed an amendment to the electoral law, according to which all documents related to the electoral process must be translated into Russian.

Russian is not the most common language in the US (closes the top 10), but it is one of the most difficult to learn. It is understandable why it is studied by Americans who married or married Russian-speaking immigrants. But why and why do those Americans learn Russian who chose it according to own will? ForumDaily spoke in Russian with 5 New Yorkers to find the answer to this question.

"They think it's still communism"

Name — Chase Winters

Age — 27

Activity— musician

Level— Advance

Study experience - 4 years

Chase writes songs in Russian and enjoys every opportunity to practice. Photo from personal archive

Chase knows the word “bore”, but does not understand what “stream of consciousness” means (after translation, he understands), writes and performs songs in Russian, also loves cover versions of popular Russian rock products: Zemfira, DDT, Spleen.

Writes his own songs in Russian. Talks to me without an interpreter. “I will speak Russian, I have almost no practice, it will be at least some,” he says.

Chase was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. 4 years ago, while working at a factory, I met a Russian company, heard Russian speech for the first time and fell in love with it. Listened to instructional videos YouTube, worked on the site masterrussian.com, bought a textbook of Russian grammar. Never worked with a teacher.

“The biggest problems are pronunciation, stress and cases,” he says. - They are hard to remember, they are not in English. It was also difficult with the prepositions “in” and “to”, I constantly confused them.” Also, at first, Chase was confused by the order of words in a sentence, the rules for its construction. For example, he had difficulty understanding how to ask, “What do you want to eat? (Are you hungry? What are your wishes for the menu?)”. There have been problems with participles and how they are used in colloquial speech. Now he can easily carry on any conversation.

Last year Chase toured Russia, playing and singing songs in Smolensk and Moscow, where he has many friends. He has been to Russia three times and wants more.

“You know, I would even go live there for a while… how long can I live there? 90 days? half a year? I have a multivisa, however, it ends. I'll get a new one. Friends (my group) are afraid to ride with me: they think it's still communism. And it's just a different culture. In my opinion, there people are even more honest. Earlier, at school, I tried to learn Spanish and Italian, but it did not work out. But I think breaking language barriers is a worthy mission. When I am retired and have mastered Russian enough to be able to speak fluently about whatever I want - science, for example - I will start learning Swedish. Well, it’s just that my good friend lives in Sweden, so.”

Laughing, Chase talks about how, after a year of studying Russian, he realized that he turned out to have poor taste in music.

“My friend Peter gave me Philip Kirkorov, Agutin, and said that this is Russian music. For a year I honestly got high from Philip Kirkorov. Then it turned out that in Russia there is Zemfira, Spleen and the Kino group - now this is my favorite group. Yolka is also pop, of course, but I like it.

In fact, I have seen as many as 60 Russian films - starting with the classics: “Operation Y”, “Cruel Romance”, “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”, “Prisoner of the Caucasus”. It was difficult for me to understand all the words in “ dog heart”- there is an old language. I also have a project in Russian, it’s called “Love Road, etc.,” but my friend from North Carolina came up with the name for it. I go on tour with him. Here, I will soon go to 7 states, the program is mixed, there are also songs in English. I also work with the Russian group "Letters to Nepal" (Novosibirsk).

Sometimes, when I hear a Russian text and can understand almost nothing, I am terribly disappointed: I worked so hard! I taught so hard! Well, by the way, most of all I worked on the alphabet, the pronunciation of each letter - that's probably why I read and write better than I speak.

Chase, however, does not always understand the content of Zemfira and DDT songs - but this is, in a way, a common story even for Russians. Not so long ago, he took part in 2 Russian festivals: "Rock Without Borders" and "Charity Rock Marathon" in Brooklyn.

Twenty is not the same as two hundred.

Name — Ben Sigelman

Age — 27

Activity — teacher, translator, tutor, Master of Slavonics

Level — Fluent

Study experience - 9 years

For Ben, one of the most difficult things in Russian is the “y” sound. Photo from personal archive

Ben Siegelman was born in New York and his native language is English. However, the roots are Russian-Jewish.

“I started learning Russian 8.5 years ago, on my own. However, it was difficult to follow this path. I also have a very close friend who was born in Yekaterinburg, so I already knew the Russian language and Russian culture very well. basic level before I started my studies. I even understood Cyrillic a little. At school, I took a course on the Cold War, where we watched documentaries. In these documentaries they often spoke Russian, and the language simply began to seem very beautiful to me. Therefore, when I had already entered the university, I decided to take a Russian language course, and I liked it wildly.

The sound "y" is probably the most difficult for almost all foreigners. I couldn't pronounce it correctly until my first trip to Russia. Before that, I just pronounced it like "and". And “you” is like “tee”. There were problems with the soft sign, I didn't pronounce it at all.

And I also have difficulties with stresses and types of verbs, they become less and less over time, but in Russian there is simply no such logic of using stresses as in Spanish, for example.

Ben recently graduated with a master's degree from New York University in Slavic studies. He also teaches Russian to students there.

“There are many funny stories related to the process of learning the Russian language. I was surprised by the existence of cases, because they simply do not exist in the English language. When I was studying in Russia, I wanted to pretend that I was not a foreigner, which, of course, did not work out. I was confident in myself, in my pronunciation. However, in practice everything was different. One case was in the specific market. I wanted to buy a collection of Blok's poems. I asked the seller how much it cost. He answered me that it costs 20 rubles, but for some reason I heard 200 - and offered 150. He was surprised and explained that he said 20, not 200, which was easy to agree to. I visit Russia quite often, 2 times a year, but I would like it to be not so far away.”

Brothers Karamazov and Cheburashka

Name— Grace Chen

Age — 24

Activity — Lecturer, Master in Research in Education, preparing for PHD

Level — Intermediate

Study experience - 5 years

Grace is a fan of Russian classics. Photo from personal archive

Grace speaks to me in English, but if you ask me to read or say something in Russian, she copes slowly but surely. She began studying Russian literature as a student high school, began with "War and Peace". The beauty and depth of reflection of human nature impressed her so much that she decided to study the language. She liked the sound and rhythm of that language just as much. Then there were "The Brothers Karamazov" with its beauty and, at the same time, the grotesqueness of human characters. With archaisms and strange expressions.

“Nothing helps to understand the peculiarities of human nature like the Russian classics,” says Grace. - I also watched a lot of Russian films, the first was "Tchaikovsky" - in translation, of course. I watched “The Cranes Are Flying”, “12” by Nikita Mikhalkov…”.

Over time, she began to listen to audio courses, learn to write, read, all on her own. There was no teacher, only books.

“Then I met the Russian-Jewish community, there was one little boy, he taught me a little. A little later, I took up the alphabet closely, which is why I still read now. I know the past tense quite well, I can name many objects in Russian if you show me pictures. I am good at understanding how prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of words. In general, the translation that is derived from grammar and pronunciation is terribly interesting. I tried to get as close to the language as possible, but languages, in general, do not come easy to me.

I know 4 in total: English, spoken Chinese (the language of my family), Spanish and Latin, which I hated in college. Now I need to learn French at work. However, in college I chose Russian to study, in the lessons we read Pushkin and Bulgakov, gradually began to translate, replenish vocabulary, study vocabulary; I went deeper into understanding the words.

I remember once they learned Cheburashka's song about a birthday - “Suddenly a magician will arrive in a blue helicopter” ... about a popsicle, I remember, it was - and it was a challenge, thanks to which I almost removed my accent. When I felt that I could say 3 words, I was completely happy.

In college, we devoted a lot of time to texts, literature, translation. This is excellent, but I did not have conversational practice and cultural communication. I would like to go to Brighton Beach sometime, listen to Russian, be surrounded by it. Learn a living language, live communication, feel this atmosphere.

To go to Petersburg, finally. The professor once explained to us the signs of friendship among Russians and compared them with the friendship of Americans. You are constantly in touch with each other, and our friendship is often limited to random meetings.

I had a million questions: what should we do with a soft sign? How not to get confused between Sh and Sh? However, the biggest problem was the accents. And the letter "Y". Pronouncing it is a huge problem for an American.”

Knowledge of the Russian language does not play a special role in Grace's professional success, and this a big problem: need 2 times more motivation and self-discipline to study. However, the desire to read literature in the original is a good incentive.

A keyboard with proverbs is a great way to remember new things. Photo from personal archive

“My friends say that Doctor Zhivago should only be read in Russian. For me, this is access to a different vision of the world. In addition, the experience of self-learning a language helps a lot in teaching - you are on personal experience you understand how to interest the student, how to explain what is worse understood. I have to teach conversational Chinese, the practice turned out to be useful. At least Russian phonetics is not so different from English.

Most of all, I am evoked by those Russian words that have no analogue in English. You read and think: why did people come up with such words? What prompted them to do so?

Let's say the word "bearded man" - why display a man with a beard in one word? What is the purpose? Or, for example, “Akademik” – what is it for at all?

There are words similar to English (“businessman”, for example), it is easier with them. Or, for example, something from clothes ... How is it in Russian? Cape. It looks like a trash bag, but without sleeves. Or Batman's cape. But this is an old word. I am terribly happy when I learn a new word, because it is not enough to learn it, you also need to understand how to insert it into a sentence. Well, the traditional problem: buying a textbook does not mean finding the time and energy to study it.

I once met a man in New York, his parents emigrated from Russia when he was 12. He collects Russian things and knows many Russian proverbs. I even pasted a few on my computer to teach them. But actually, I even know “bad” words in Russian, you just need to remember how they sound. It seems that some Russian students contributed more to my education than I did myself.”

great-grandfather's music

Name — David Tanzer

Age — 54

Activity - programmer

Level — beginner

Study experience - 25 years

David's love for Russian began with lullabies. Photo from personal archive

Dave's ancestors are from Eastern Europe, mostly from Russia, but there were also Jews from Czechoslovakia, Belarus and Lithuania. All of them emigrated to America at the turn of the last and the century before last, while speaking both Russian and Yiddish. Those from Russia fled the pogroms - and it turned out that it was thanks to early emigration that they did not suffer from the Holocaust.

“I remember how my grandfather read a Russian newspaper typed in Cyrillic, I was impressed, and my aunt and grandmother sang the Cossack Lullaby to me - even then I was amazed at the beauty of this language and this melody.

Only now I understood, to put it mildly, the ambiguity of Lermontov's verse. It contains even a drop, but a drop of outright nationalism (“The evil Chechen is crawling ashore”). However, the music was still compelling. However, she was older than poetry.

(The phrase about Chechnya became winged and was even mentioned in the Moscow State University course “Language and intercultural communication”- as an example of a text provoking ethnic discord - ed.)

In college I took a course in Russian history and literature. We read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov. I also read some of the socialist literature - it feels like it was in another life. All this prompted me to learn Russian in order to read literature in the original. And I found a tutor - Sergey from Jersey City, with whom I spent six months. As a teacher he was terrible: most time was engaged in complaining about the communists. I was extremely ambitious until a completely new alphabet, pronunciation, stress and elimination brought me back to reality. One soft sign what is it worth.

Actually, I gave it all up for a long time.

Then I had a girlfriend Natasha for a short time, who reminded me of Russia. Once she took me to a Russian store in Brighton and taught me all the names of the products (I don't remember them now). And the Russian language again fell asleep in me, and woke up as part of the music.

Once there was a period when every summer I went to festivals of Balkan music with my family. We got acquainted with Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian songs. I generally like Slavic languages, whole group. And then I turned to Russian music again. Her chords struck me with depth, returning to the experience of my ancestors, to the childhood feeling of my grandmother's lullaby.

Dave prefers Russian romance, folk songs and… jazz. And its goal is to come to a high-quality, authentic performance of Russian songs through understanding Russian, reading and pronunciation lessons.

Singing and repeating texts is a useful practice for any language learner. Teachers and polyglots even advise this method as a life hack: pronounce or sing aloud some foreign text. This is how Dave managed to earn good pronunciation, despite the fact that colloquial and grammar remain at the level beginner. Mastering the language so that it is more than part of the music is a long-term program for Dave at the moment.

“My way of learning a language is immersion in the environment. Walking around Brighton Beach, eavesdropping on random snippets of Russian dialogue. This is how children learn the language, and this is how I would like it to be. For example, not so long ago I was there and asked the waiters to pronounce the verses of the songs that I learned. I received a lot of material for further work on pronunciation. One day I will be able to make a quality program that includes pieces from both my jazz and Russian folk repertoire.”

Sometimes Dave attends the band's concerts Eastern Blockheads performing songs by Edita Piekha and other Russian music of the 60s.

There are websites and free events for people learning new languages, and recently Dave found meet up– meetings where carriers different languages share knowledge and cultural traditions.

“Funny incidents in the learning process? Yes myself meet up- a funny case! Who would have thought that it was there that I would make one of my best friends!”.

Seller in the subway and Elena Vaenga

Name asked not to be named

Age - 20 years

Activity - chocolate seller in New York subway cars on lines B and Q

Level — Advance

Study experience— 2 years

If on lines B and Q, you meet a girl selling chocolates in the car, speak to her in Russian. Photo by Trevor Kapp

One day, I think in September, a young girl wandering chaotically through subway cars with a huge box of cheap chocolate accidentally tripped over my foot. Turning around, looking at me and making a short pause, she said in Russian:

— Excuse me, do you understand Russian? Sorry, I accidentally.

The girl actually had an accent. However, it was a controlled accent - the accent of a person who knows how to deal with it and train pronunciation.

Her parents are Mexican, her native languages ​​are Spanish and English. She lives in Brooklyn and sells chocolates in train cars.

4 years ago she saw YouTube Elena Vaenga and fell in love with her work so much that she began to learn Russian. She learned all the songs of Vaenga, all their texts and moved on to the study of phonetics, vocabulary and phraseology.

She knows the difference between "bearing a child" and "being responsible." She never had a teacher, she learned all her knowledge from Russian lessons in YouTube. If she ever has money for college, she will study to be an interpreter.

She gladly gives her phone number, but for some reason she never picks up the phone. Perhaps because of the specific work. Or maybe for another reason. Those who use the B and Q lines often can meet her in the car during the day, during non-congested hours.

Alexander Genis: American Slavic studies are sensitive to political changes. As the director of the Russian School in Vermont told me last summer, “whenever Putin opens his mouth, we have five new students.” And all of them will have to master one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world. Russian language teachers at American universities tell our correspondent Vladimir Abarinov about how this happens.

Vladimir Abarinov: To learn a foreign language means to understand the way of life and the logic of its speakers. It's not easy when there's a cultural barrier. The teacher has to explain things that seem obvious to him and that he himself has never thought about. I talked about this with three of my acquaintances who teach Russian language and literature to American students.

One of them is Yulia Trubikhina. She teaches at New York's Hunter College. To begin with, I asked her what kind of people her students are, why they need the Russian language.

For various reasons, they enroll in Russian courses. We have a huge Russian population in New York. That is, some of them are children from Russian-speaking families. Some of them go to language classes because they need some foreign language anyway, and at first many of them hope for an easy grade. This almost never works. American non-Russian-speaking students choose Russian... well, I don't know why. Maybe because they always wanted to, maybe because it's interesting, maybe they read something in the news, maybe because Russian friends or a Russian girl or a young man. All the same, they need to take some foreign language. But those who sign up for literary and cultural courses - it happens to them in different ways. An interest in culture or literature may arise while you are studying the language. It depends on the teacher. If you like a teacher, then they go to literature and culture. And some people are really into it. So there are very different motivations.

Vladimir Abarinov: Diana Gratigny began teaching Russian to foreigners in her native Saratov. She currently teaches at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. The question is the same: who are its students, what explains their interest in the Russian language?

This is always a very interesting question, and I asked myself many times: why do they learn the language? Interest and motivation can be anything. But what happens to them in the process of learning the language and comprehending culture is the most interesting thing. All of them are clearly divided into two poles: those who do not accept the culture also experience difficulties in learning the language. Often there is a psychological background here - not some kind of own linguistic obstruction, but psychological difficulties. And there are those who fall in love from the first moment, and no matter what happens to them in Russia, they really like everything. Of course, something happens to everyone, they all fall into extreme situations, but this is where their character is tested. Anyway, many are the majority! - have a keen interest in the subject.

Vladimir Abarinov: The same question is answered by Elena Reznikova, a teacher at Union College in Schenectady, upstate New York.

Elena Reznikova: What motivates them? Well, in principle, many of them are engaged in either political science, or ecology, or international relations, so the Russian language is relevant and interesting for them. Some come to study Russian because they had some kind of grandparents or more distant ancestors from Russia. Someone is simply interested in Russian culture, the Russian language.

Vladimir Abarinov: The problems start with grammar.

Elena Reznikova: Well, of course, the very first thing that strikes students is grammar. Students in general are not prepared for this level. If they studied Latin in high school, or even just serious grammar in English they would certainly be ready for it. But when they have to comprehend all the subtleties of cases, declensions and conjugations, they start to panic a little. After that lesson, when all the secrets of the genitive case were revealed to them, all this many forms, they moaned for a whole week. And, of course, as soon as the cases ended, the perfect and imperfect form began.

Vladimir Abarinov: But in English, too, there is a perfect and imperfect form of the verb.

Elena Reznikova: Yes Yes Yes! They were quite surprised when they learned that there are equivalents in English. When I told them: do you know, for example, that there is a present perfect in English? They said: what are you? Give an example.

Vladimir Abarinov: What is a culture shock, Diana Gratigny understood in Saratov.

The first thing that comes to my mind at the moment is the story of a student from New York. It was an African American. She came to Russia 10 years ago and faced racism. But what kind of racism? People paid attention to her. She studied then in Saratov, and in a provincial city, even a large one, people paid attention to her appearance, she was very pretty and, apparently, in the cafe where they rested, some remarks were made, apparently, and a forbidden word in the USA the letter "n" was pronounced, and she suffered a lot about this. Here she failed. Very often with students, not only from America, we have to explain in the classroom ... We put aside all our materials and explain why people do not smile, or smile, but not the way they should, or not there, or vice versa - why are they puzzled by your smiles...

Vladimir Abarinov: Well, there are comic cases.

I had an American Mennonite family. Mom and dad learned Russian, and they had three adorable kids. And so they lived in Russia, because there are Mennonites in Russia too, they have a parish, and dad is a priest there. But I was interested: what exactly did they show the children when they arrived in Russia? They went to Moscow, as always, to Red Square and showed the children the mausoleum of Lenin, they were in the mausoleum. And they went to the cosmonautics museum and showed all these, you know, spaceships, devices, Gagarin and so on. In my opinion, a very strange choice for Mennonites. It seems to me that the parents remembered something from their childhood and wanted to see it for themselves. So. When my father and mother came to me to study Russian, my daughter entertained the children. She was then 10 years old, and she had a richly illustrated book, which was called "Russian History". And there, for children, in a popular way with many pictures, the whole Russian history was told up to the 60s of the 20th century. And there were Soviet posters dedicated to space. And before that there were posters dedicated to Lenin, the revolution and so on. And after one lesson, the eldest boy, he was about seven years old, approached his parents and said: “We are now watching Russian history. Do you know that Gagarin flew into space and flew to God himself? There was a pause. My parents looked at me, I looked at my parents. My child, of course, did not say anything of the sort, that is, it was the boy's own conclusion. The parents tried to open their mouths and explain that they probably didn’t see it after all, but then the youngest, who was four years old, entered the conversation, and he declared very solemnly: “And God was Lenin!”

Vladimir Abarinov: And here is what Yulia Trubikhina says about her students.

And strength American students, and their weakness is that they do not have a cultural context. This is a big problem. It seems that there is no general context left. Previously, at the very least, mass culture gave at least some general context. It turned out that with an increase in the number foreign students there is nothing in common at all, if you are afraid to joke, they will not understand. And the amazing equality is absolutely wonderful, the lack of hierarchy. I remember how, in a course on Russian culture, one girl cheerfully began an essay on Avvakum (and this, of course, is insanely difficult, we read some fragments from Avvakum) in this way: “As we say in Oklahoma ...”

Vladimir Abarinov: When reading literature, students first of all encounter unfamiliar realities.

Elena Reznikova: For example, we read Bulgakov. What concerned all this phantasmagorical reality of Moscow in the 1930s was very difficult to understand. The housing issue, all these communal apartments - I had to explain for a very long time. This whole currency situation...

Vladimir Abarinov: But it is much more difficult to comprehend the way of thinking and the logic of the actions of the characters.

Elena Reznikova: It was very difficult for the students to read Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky in itself torments the soul even to Russian readers, and such protected American teenagers, of course, have nothing to say. It was very difficult for them to understand all the suffering, all these throwing of the protagonist and the entire galaxy of characters. Katerina Ivanovna, in my opinion, exhausted everyone's soul with her costumed children, dinner parties and so on. Students asked a lot of questions: why are they all doing this? Why do they behave like this?

Vladimir Abarinov: With the understanding of poetry in general trouble.

One boy - it was Tsvetaeva's "Jealous Attempt" ... And so it is very difficult for them, but he does not notice the quotes interpolating the replica "Home for hire", and suggests that maybe Tsvetaeva wanted too much money from lover. House indeed. It was too expensive for her lover - so he did not want to mess with her. Probably so.

Vladimir Abarinov: Another great example of cultural differences.

We had a Korean student. She studied Russian at Literary Institute a few years, then went to Korea and became a translator. And she translated Russian fairy tales, in particular "Teremok", into Korean. The story was published, and she brought it as a gift. And then we set up an experiment. We gave our Korean students this fairy tale in Korean and asked them to translate it into Russian. Here it is very interesting to see how different cultural codes work. For example, in our fairy tale, the mouse ran across the field without any reason, just ran. They all run: a frog, a bunny - there is nothing to do. But in the Korean translation, they all fled with a purpose. The mouse was looking for grains, the frog was looking for juicy grass, someone was looking for something else - they all had a goal. That is, in Korean culture, no one can just run somewhere, there must be a goal. Further: when a bunny knocked on their door, that is, there were already two animals in the house, and to the request “Let me live with you,” they always answered the same thing: “Now we will consult.” And they began to consult, whether it was possible to let the next beast in or not. And when it came to the bear, the animals were divided. Strong animals - a wolf, a fox - said: "The bear is big, it will crush us." Because they knew. And the small animals believed that he would protect them. And since there were more of them, the mouse, the bunny and the frog won the vote and let the bear in, and then what happened happened. Of course, before us is a completely different tale. Adapted for understanding Koreans.

Vladimir Abarinov: Interestingly, does it happen that students force the teacher to see the situation from a new, unexpected angle?

Elena Reznikova: It seems to me that what foreigners notice is, most likely, the absurdity of what is described in literary work. A lot of situations, some idiosyncratic features of the characters, are completely insane, absurd, having no meaning in a normal, sane situation. That is, very often they contradict common sense. This is clearly seen in the example of Petrushevskaya's prose - her heroes.

Vladimir Abarinov: Yulia Trubikhina believes that traditional teaching methods do not work with modern students.

In general, modern students, they are just different. They generally don't read much, but they're completely visual. They find it difficult to focus on one thing for a long time. That's why studying proccess it turns out like television, with commercial breaks - before them you have to sing or dance. Figuratively speaking.

Vladimir Abarinov: And Diana Gratigny believes that all these torments are not in vain.

And this is the cross of the Russian language. And Russian literature, and Russia. They draw you in and suck you in so much ... It seems: oh well, I stayed here, left and that's it. But no. Here he takes it by the heart and holds it. And then they start rushing about: we want to come - and they come, and read out, and read out, and become translators, researchers. And it all starts with a completely innocent: I didn’t know anything, I decided to try.

ABARINOV

With us were teachers of Russian language and literature at American colleges Elena Reznikova, Yulia Trubikhina and Diana Gratigny.

If you're looking for a regular high school with the most Russian language for teenagers, don't look for it in New York or Alaska or some other area with a lot of immigrants from that country.

No - go to class 213 of the Robert Goddard School with in-depth study French (Robert Goddard French Immersion School) in Prince George's County (Maryland); today, for example, a rag doll "Aunt Motya" is jumping on the teacher's lap. Dani Sanders sings a joke song about this doll's misfortune; the four sons of the doll at the dinner table keep repeating:

“Right hand, left hand; right shoulder, left shoulder, ”- each time moving the called part of the body.

"Ah, ah, ah!" In this phrase English translation and the Russian original sound the same.

In 2010, according to a report by the Commission on Undergraduate and Pre-University Russian Language Education, which has tracked student enrollment in Russian classes since 1984, Sanders had 176 students studying Russian in eight classes. The Goddard school, the only one in this region, conducts classes according to a comprehensive program of teaching the Russian language. Of the nearly 300 schools in all grade levels that provided data, Goddard has the most extensive secondary education program in the country.

Quite often, children who continue the cultural tradition of their parents study in the most numerous classes of the Russian language. But not Goddard. In this school, 82% of the students are African American or Hispanic Americans - in class number 213 there is not a single student who is of Russian origin. Even Sanders herself is from Bulgaria.

In her class, 33 Cyrillic letters are pinned to the board with buttons. On another board are cards with numbers that Sanders drew with a thick felt-tip pen. Only the homework - "repeat the numbers, from 1 to 100" - is written in English: so that parents can help their children with homework.

“Language is easier to learn if you study at home and memorize the words,” says 12-year-old David Williams, a seventh-grade student. - I think that the more languages ​​I can speak, the more opportunities I will have to change the world. And all I want to do is change the world."

Unusual hobby

Interest in the Russian language is indeed unusual. According to a 2008 report from the American Council on Learning foreign languages(American Council on the Teaching of foreign languages), only 10% of respondents among secondary school students would choose to study Russian if they had such an opportunity.

The most popular foreign language - almost 40% of the respondents declared their desire to learn it - was French.

Founded in 1986, the Goddard School, which provides primary and secondary education, students learn both of these languages. Children are admitted to this school, according to a certain procedure, as early as kindergarten. Teaching here is conducted only in French, with the exception of two courses: English and the course of world languages.

Initially, the school management used the World Languages ​​course to introduce children to the richness and variety of non-traditional languages ​​such as Japanese and Swahili.

But then, ten years later, director Kona-Facia Nepay says, the management decided that the students should intensively learn one language. According to a survey of parents, Nepei says, 85% wanted their children to learn Russian.

Russian? At first glance, the choice is strange. cold war behind. Russian language programs across the country have been reduced, and some teachers believed that Russian language teaching nationwide would be frozen. But at Prince George's, the language was in a uniquely advantageous position.

“Parents think it will help their children get into Roosevelt,” says Nepei.

Eleanor Roosevelt High School, the district's best known and most selective high school, was at the time the only other school in Prince Jordes that included Russian as part of the curriculum. Parents of students at the Goddard School, according to the school administration, hoped to make it easier for their children to enter this school through knowledge of the Russian language. And often their expectations were justified.

Following instructions

This practice of admission advantage for children who speak Russian was put to an end five years ago, school staff say. However, the Russian language, meanwhile, firmly entered the cultural environment of the Roosevelt school, despite the fact that Chinese and Arabic, for example, are now just as important as Russian was before the collapse Soviet Union.

Despite everything, after a long period of declining interest in the Russian language, many educational establishments, teaching foreign languages, in the most last years restored - and even strengthened - their Russian language course, says John Schillinger, honorary professor an American university that collects materials from surveys about enrolling in training courses.

The most extensive programs exist in secondary schools, where enrollment typically grows due to the popularity of the Russian language teacher, Schillinger says. Before high school the language is usually taught in the form of an introductory course. The Russian language program at the Goddard school differs in scope and in the seriousness of its approach.

"It's not just 'occupy them with something for twenty minutes a day,'" says Schillinger. “They are taught from university-level textbooks, which suggests that this is a rich, intensive program.”

Make learning fun

In the Sanders class, such a rich program is implemented through the game.

Sanders points out one number after another on the blackboard as quickly as possible, and the students repeat them at lightning speed. When learning colors, students bring sets of colored pencils with them. They use puppets. They watch cartoons.

They sing songs about Aunt Mota, who is nervous that her children do not want to eat.

“Right foot, left foot,” the students sing.

Sanders hopes that by the end of school they will be able to speak Russian fluently and master the basics of writing.

“I want to be able to get to Russia, I like Russian architecture,” says thirteen-year-old seventh grader Eva McNabb. - This course is very fun. We learn a lot of words and expressions, and now we are starting to learn how to actively use them all together, in speech.

We are met by Kalinka. When she first started learning Russian, the teacher looked at her sternly and said: “What is your name? Kalin? No, you will be Kalinka. Now Kalin is a graduate student and teaches Russian for the first year at the oldest summer Russian school in the USA - at Middlebury College, Vermont, where we came with him for his lectures.

This school, which was opened after the Second World War in 1946, graduated from the current US Ambassador to Moscow, John Beyrle, many diplomats, as well as agents of the CIA and the FBI. In addition to Russian, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish are taught here. On the third day of their stay in the summer courses, all students take an oath: "Entering in language school, I undertake to abide by the School Bylaws and to use the language of the school, to the extent possible, as the sole language of communication. I understand that if I do not fulfill this vow, it may result in expulsion from school without a grade and a refund of my money.” This means that they cannot pronounce a word in English. From that moment on, everyone from the very junior courses for nine weeks forgets about their mother tongue and speak only the language they study. Even if they know only a couple of words on it.

Vitaly Komar in the library near the shelves with Russian literature

College Museum, which houses artifacts dating back to ancient egypt and ending with Andy Warhol

theater building

Director Sergei Kokovkin conducts a rehearsal of the play "Thunderstorm" by N. Ostrovsky. Students of different courses are on the stage (some have difficulty understanding what it is about)

Vitaly Komar demonstrates slides at a lecture

The collection of Vitaliy Komar contains many items of propaganda from different countries, some when compared are very similar

Vitaly Komar at a lecture shows items from his collection

Vitaly Komar at a lecture

Vitaly Komar talks about his work

Middlebury College Football Field

I'm going to Kalinka's lesson, she has first-year students. Adults 20-35 years old speak in syllables and with a strong accent: “Tell me, do you have brothers and sisters ... uh ... brothers and sisters ... brothers and sisters?” - every word correctly pronounced gives them pleasure. They sing “Let pedestrians run awkwardly through the puddles,” and I feel uncomfortable for the word “clumsy” - it does not fit in my mouth, “u” is too soft in it, “g” is too hard. “God,” I think, with difficulty pronouncing the words of the song myself, “what a difficult language we have!” First-year students are trying, they can find out the name of the interlocutor, where he is from, how old he is, who his family consists of, how old they are. In general, they already speak well, and this despite the fact that they learn the language from scratch for only three weeks. The ban on native speech gives a good result.

Kalinka has a strong accent, and I ask the school's deputy director, Tatyana Smorodinskaya, if it's not scary that they are taught to speak with the wrong pronunciation. She replies that a native speaker is much more important in the later stages. A foreign teacher who himself recently learned the language and remembers all the difficulties will be even better able to transfer the skill to another. “Besides,” adds Tatyana, “this is a conversation lesson, they also have phonetics with native speakers, reading, watching movies and much more.” She takes me around the territory - and I, who grew up in Russia and have never seen anything like this, look around with my mouth open. Here is an indoor hockey stadium, the local hockey team is considered one of the best among Middlebury-level colleges, here is a golf course, here is a weightlifting hall, a basketball court, here is a swimming pool, there is an American football field, a separate soccer field. “And there,” Tatyana waves her hand, “we have tennis courts.” If a student enrolls in a sports team, then only the coach who speaks the language being studied works with him.

In addition, the college has a huge library with books in all languages ​​studied, a video room, a museum with exhibits ranging from Ancient Egypt to the 20th century, many buildings, canteens and even its own cemetery.

The Russian School has its own Russian House, where they play the fool, Monopoly, drink tea with bagels, a theater group in which plays are staged by a playwright, director of the Theater Soviet army and the Moscow City Council Sergey Kokovkin, his own choir, where the folk ensemble "Golden Ples" teaches to sing.

Among the teachers of the Russian School in Literature are Oleg Proskurin, his students and students in Moscow were the editor-in-chief of the Book Review Alexander Gavrilov, the publisher of the magazine Ptyuch, and now the editor-in-chief of TimeOut Moscow Igor Shulinsky, poets Dmitry Vodennikov and Mikhail Kukin, literary critic Oleg Lekmanov and other famous representatives of Russian literature. Lessons are held periodically with guest lecturers. This time two guests arrived: Professor Ilya Vinitsky and the artist.

In the canteen, meals are organized by school. Russian language is everywhere. At lunch, I sit next to the third years. The young man sighs heavily and says to his girlfriend: “I love looking at the freshmen, they are so joyful, they love everything so much, and I’m a little tired.” — Is it difficult to learn Russian? I ask. “Why did you decide to teach him at all?” “I don’t know,” he says, “I just liked the way it sounds.” A survey of other students showed that they begin to study Russian mainly because they liked Russian culture: cinema (Tarkovsky is in the lead), literature (Chekhov, Tolstoy, Pushkin), art (for example, they went to St. Petersburg and went to the Hermitage). Someone works with Russia, and the language is needed for constant communication, I met an archaeologist, a representative of a charitable organization, a musician, and there are just those who have ancestors from Russia and want to keep in touch with their historical homeland. School teachers claim that they come to study Russian from the CIA and the FBI. Moreover, if the FBI often admits, then the CIA - never. By the way, photographs of students associated with special services are not allowed to be published. Therefore, the photo album at the end of the course comes out with white spots instead of photographs of those who already work as an agent or will someday work. But there are names under these white circles.

Education in Middlebury is expensive ($9,500 for 9 weeks with accommodation), but the college is a so-called "need-blind institution". This means that the decision to accept a student is made regardless of his financial situation. If the student passed the exams with dignity and was accepted, but he cannot pay the full amount, then the college gives him a grant depending on the financial capabilities of the student. Like many other American colleges and universities, Middlebury has a foundation built up over many years (and Middlebury was founded in 1800) which, despite big losses during a crisis, still allows you to accept students with significant discounts.

Well, the last chord. Evening at the director of the Russian School in honor of the invited lecturers. In the room, everyone is dying from the heat, trying to be at least somehow sideways at the fan. Why not install air conditioners? “Well, what are you,” the teachers unanimously answer, “the college is very concerned about the protection environment. Air conditioners are only in public spaces like libraries and lecture halls, and they are prohibited in private rooms and homes due to too high energy consumption. Middlebury is a very green college." The college even has its own waste recycling plant, with transparent walls, and they don’t give trays in the dining room, because then they take less food, and water is saved on washing dishes, and less detergent ends up in the drain.

And I thought that the absence of air conditioners in the rooms is another plus: students try to spend much more time in the library.

He was pleased with his visit to Middlebury, as he called the "greenhouses", he was pleased to see that even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the number of Americans who want to learn Russian does not decrease. “Middlebury, like most college campuses in America, is a kind of utopian “town of the sun” brought to life,” says. “Even the police have no right to operate on their territory without the permission of the leadership of the educational institution.

Far from the prose of life, the young inhabitants of such a greenhouse live an amazing life: they swim in luxurious pools, have access to any literature, dance, kiss, play sports, torment erudite teachers with questions, reflect on the variety of menus in the student canteen, and on books in the library ...

Many will later remember their student "term on campus" as a dream far from reality.