forgotten Russian - how to restore it?

[Marsha Shisman]

I had a similar situation with my daughter.  My husband died when she was 4 years old.  At the age of 7 she did not remember her father at all.  At the age of 8 the grandmother brought the record with a song that my husband liked very much and he was dancing with my daughter very often when she was 2-3 years old.

As soon as my daughter heard that music - she started screaming and crying - she suddenly remembered her dad, she remembers the dancing, etc.

MS

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Emily Saunders
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 2:11 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] forgotten Russian - how to restore it?

I had an odd experience with a young boy in a summer camp for typical
U.S. kids aged 5-10.  He'd been adopted at the age of 2 (and was about
5 or 6 at the time of our camp) and had completely forgotten all of
his Russian.  We looked for glimmers of understanding with certain
basic vocabulary words (????, ????, ?????, ??????), but nothing until
we introduced to the kids a simplified version of the fairy-tale ?????
(Repka).  While the presenter was telling the story started to
interrupt with corrections -- not ??????/sobaka but ?????/zhuchka, not
????? but ?????? and so on.  I'll bet you that she has childhood
rhymes and stories kicking around in her memory banks that could be
triggered.

Emily Saunders

13.03.2011, ? 11:10, Katya Burvikova ???????(?):

> Dear Seelangers,
>
> I have a young student who is trying to learn Russian. She was
> adopted from
> Russia at the age of 8, she is 14 now. Her Russian is absolutely
> gone, all she
> remembers are few basic words like hleb, maslo and oy. I noticed
> that some
> things she would say automatically - for exmple, we didn't learn
> construction "U
> menya net..." and Genitive case yet but she said "u menya net
> akvariuma" using
> the right ending. Has anyone had  students with same problem and how
> did you
> make them remembering forgotten things? Are there any know
> strategies to take
> out things from lingsuitical subconscious?
>
> Thank you!
>
> Katya Burvikova
>
>
>
>
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