forgotten Russian - how to restore it?

[Anna Frajlich-Zajac]

It is my (not only personal) experience that the language returns, or  
becomes functional, when the child (a person) realizes
that it is a real  toll, not an abstract exercise.

AF
_




On Mar 14, 2011, at 10:22 AM, Helen Halva wrote:

> I have no true research to support this, but anecdotal experiences  
> support the theory that (as with the boy cited earlier with  
> "repka") subconscious language "knowledge" is retained and merely  
> needs to be summoned somehow. I think that immersing the child in  
> the linguistic medium, for example  in another family situation  
> where Russian is spoken, via movies, etc. or whatever might be  
> possible, will aid in that gradual process of recalling "lost"  
> language capabilities. I doubt that this would work with children  
> who were removed from the home language before developing active  
> language skills, say before the age of 3 or so, but for an older  
> child who left at 7 or older, I think this would be worth the  
> effort to test.
> HH
>
> On 3/14/2011 10:01 AM, Alina Israeli wrote:
>> For several years I worked with Russian orphans here in Washington  
>> DC. at their pre-adoption stage. Those were "unadoptable"  
>> children, i.e. too old or with health problems (many of them had  
>> unoperated cleft lip). The youngest were 5-6 that usually had  
>> older siblings. Most were 9-14, a few were 16.
>>
>> One summer they would not know a word of English and would need me  
>> as interpreter, the next summer their English would be excellent  
>> and they could not remember practically any Russian. Some none at  
>> all. The only family where a year later Russian was still in use  
>> was a family that adopted three children from Kazakhstan (they  
>> already had one of their own), one Russian and two Kazakhs.
>>
>> Something interesting is going on at the cognitive level and I  
>> suggested to my colleagues who do language acquisition to study  
>> such cases (similar cases were observed in Scandinavia). Their  
>> reply was: who is going to fund a research that studied forgetting  
>> the language instead of acquiring one?
>>
>> But I think studying those mechanisms would be very useful for our  
>> understanding of language function.
>>
>> (One similar testimony I had quite recently from a prospective  
>> student, she was adopted at age 12 as was her girl-friend from the  
>> same orphanage; and six month later they were discussing that they  
>> did not remember any Russian. In high school she took it as a  
>> foreign language. Her pronunciation is obviously better than that  
>> of her peers. but that's about all. )
>>
>> AI
>>
>> Mar 14, 2011, � 2:10 AM, Emily Saunders �������(�):
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> Alina Israeli
>> Associate Professor of Russian
>> LFS, American University
>> 4400 Massachusetts Ave.
>> Washington DC 20016
>> (202) 885-2387     fax (202) 885-1076
>> aisrael at american.edu
>>
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