Какой ваш родной язык?

     I was thinking Tuesday morning about my language lessons and decided that it would make a good post. This thing that's been giving me so much trouble would really help put into perspective, for some people, one of the things that missionaries face on a daily basis. I also realized that I never properly explained what all goes into my lessons and what I'm getting out of it. I've said many times to people that I'm done with complaining about it. That's not what this post it. I just wanted to show you a little of what I'm learning and going through. I promised myself that I wouldn't complain about it any more. Complaining doesn't make me understand it more. Studying and practice does.

     First off, my tutor. Nadia goes to Big City Church. She teaches Russian to the kids at Kiev Christian Academy. I mentioned the school a while ago. But for those who don't know, it's a school here that serves the missionary community by providing 1st through 12th grade schooling to missionary kids. I go on Mondays and Thursdays (possibly changing that soon) at 4:30 PM. I take a 25-30 minute ride on the marshrutka to get to the school. That same drive would only be about 20 minutes if I drove myself.
     Anyways, I had been studying some basics of the Russian language before I got here in July. But I wasn't very diligent in the work. I knew the alphabet along with a few words and phrases. It turns out that learning the alphabet was a great idea and helped moved me ahead in my learning. It's amazing how much confidence you have from being able to read. After the English camp in August, I started taking lessons with Nadia.
     Each lesson is different from the other. We started with just using a textbook. It covers the basics of grammar rules along with a lot of vocabulary. We worked through this for about nine lessons before adding in something new. Since Nadia is a teacher at KCA, she has access to other books for lessons. We started using (what I guess is) a children's book with simple, short stories. The upside of this is that I get context with the vocabulary and I get to see grammar rules put into action.
     When we started using these stories, it helped put into perspective how the students in English club learn. There, David provides an article with vocabulary and questions. In the stories I read, there was no vocabulary except everything I didn't understand. I would read a paragraph and then go back and try to translate. If there was a word I didn't know, Nadia would explain it. We only did it once, but each story is accompanied by a series of questions. Same deal there, I needed to translate and comprehend. But then I have to reply with my answer in Russian. To do that, I needed to form my answer in English in my head and translate before speaking.
     A few weeks ago, we started reading from the Gospel of Mark as part of the lessons. This is the part I really like. I can't say enjoy yet because it's a lot of hard work. But this part has helped me greatly at church and even at the sushi dinners. Words like forgiveness, sin, baptized, church, Sabbath, and righteous are now in the list of words I recognize if spoken.
     Hearing and comprehending is enormously more difficult for me than reading and deciphering the meaning. When I'm listening to a conversation in Russian, I can sometimes follow what is being said just from context. The problem happens when I start focusing on the words I do recognize. I miss the next five words and, with it, possibly an important word or phrase. That's been getting better. I imagine it's what other people learning a new language experience. The comprehension without thinking comes later after much practice. Already, I do understand a lot of words without having to say in my head, "Wait, that word sounds like ... and that usually means ... which means they are talking about ..." At some point, with different difficulties and lengths of time for each word, I just understand what a word means and I don't need to go through the time-wasting process of thinking about it. All it takes is time and practice.
     Last week I had dinner with the Eides at their house. It was a good time to just relax and have fun in a home atmosphere. Later in the evening, a friend of theirs stopped by. He's a young Ukrainian and speaks to them mostly in Russian. Listening to them talk, I could understand a few words here and there but I was still lost most of the time. But, for me, it was most encouraging that an American can learn to communicate effectively in Russian. I first met Jon and Tracy back in 2003 on another missions trip here. I can't remember much about their language skills from then other than that I was impressed how Jon could talk with anybody he wanted here without a translator.
     The upside of the language lessons, besides understanding people here, is that Slavic languages share a lot of commonality. I'm far from an expert on the subject of languages. These are just some of my observations. When I was in Poland, the signs used a large number of Latin letters. But the language itself has many words that sound similar or the same as Ukrainian or Russian. But if I sounded out the word and thought about it a little, chances are, I could have understood a lot more than I thought I would.
     For example, the Polish word for "thank-you" is "Dziękuję (Jenkoo-yeah)." It sounds very similar to the Ukrainian word for "thank you" which is "Дякую (DYAH-koo-yoo)." The Polish currency is called Zloty while the Russian word for the adjective form of "gold" is "золотой (zah-lah-toy)."
     The advantage of this commonality is that people from one country can, with little difficulty, understand what someone from another country is saying. One of my friends, on a vacation a few years ago, found that speaking Ukrainian instead of Russian to a Bosnian man made the language barrier more porous.
     For the native-English speakers reading this, we don't have a great corollary to this. The closest example I can use is Latin. German, French, Spanish, and English all have their roots in Latin. If you listen to a person speaking one of these languages, chances are you'll hear some familiar words. German is probably the closest. Obviously there are going to be big differences. But with a little effort, you might just be able to get the context of a conversation just by listening for key words.
     Changing tracks now slight, I've added the occasional word, here and there, in Russian to hopefully teach you a little bit of what I'm learning. The phrase I used for my title translates to, "What is your native language?" For pronunciation, this is roughly what it should sound like. Kak-OY vash rad-NOY yaz-EEK? To which you reply, "Мой родной язык..." or "Moy rad-NOY yaz-EEK..." Insert "Angleeskee" or your applicable language for the ellipsis. No one has ever asked me this question outside of my lessons. But I have heard язык in conversation and understood that they were talking about languages.
     And now for something completely different. I'd like to do another Q&A post in coming weeks. If you have any questions about life here, lessons (English or Russian), or anything in general post it in the comments or email me. I'll collect the questions and put them all together in one place like last time.
     That's all I have for now. I started this post yesterday and got about half-way through before I needed to go do some other things (residency paperwork and English club). But I had time this morning to finish it off before I need to get back to studying. So that's what I'll be doing now. But after lunch. Have a great week. Also, don't forget, I've been adding pictures to my Ukraine album. Browse through if you haven't seen it lately. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the newest photos.