Citizens of Former Soviet Republics View the Russian Language as a Remnant of the Soviet Union

[Ronald Kephart]

On 4/2/08 11:06 AM, "Robert Lawless" <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:

> At any rate, I certainly and almost inevitably encountered hostility when
> using Russian with these people. Robert.
> 
I was pretty fluent in Russian in 1968, when I hitch-hiked through Slovenia
and what was then Czechoslovakia (Bratislava to Prague). Of course I had to
use Russian, but interestingly people seemed at that time to be genuinely
amazed that a USAniac knew anything at all in any Slavic language and they
were very willing to let me try Russian on them and to use it in return if
they could. For some years afterwards I even carried on a good deal of
correspondence with some of the people I met, nearly always in Russian, the
only thing we shared. Of course at that time most had studied Russian in
school.

By the way, Italians seemed happy to accommodate to my Spanish; French, not
so much.

In Paris (Bois de Bologne), I found myself camped between a group of
Argentine boy scouts and a troop of Czech girl scouts. Naturally, they
wanted to interact. For several hours I acted as interpreter between them,
one of the most exhausting linguistic experiences I've ever had.

Ron