Grammatical mistakes

[Josh Wilson]

An interesting story to share: 

My wife is Russian and my daughter is growing up in Russia in a mixed
household. She is mostly exposed to Russian, of course, but is also picking
up some English from me. 

Once when she was about a year and half, she ran to greet her mother and
grandmother at the door, shouting "Mommy, mommy!" It was the first time that
she had used the English variant and her mother was very proud and commended
her for it. Sensing the praise, she turned to her grandmother and said
"Babi, babi!"

When everyone laughed, she completed the list with "Papi, Papi!" and "Dedi,
Dedi!" 

It was amazing to hear her creatively declining nouns at such a young age -
and into forms that she had obviously never heard anyone else use before.

Also interesting is that she continued using these mutant forms for a few
months - but then gradually stopped probably because she never heard them
from anyone else. 



Josh Wilson
Assistant Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor in Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
SRAS.org 
jwilson at sras.org



-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of John Schillinger
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 12:43 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Grammatical mistakes

How about Russian children?  For example, do they make grammatical  
mistakes in verb endings by analogy with familiar
patterns, as do our young grandchildren, such as "I goed" (I went), or  
"I buyed a toy,or  "I wakeded up my brother?"



John Schillinger
Emeritus Prof. of Russian
American University

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