Resolutions and Russian

One of my resolutions for 2021 was to learn some Russian language. That's the language Oleg's family prominently speaks, and I thought maybe it was as good a time as any to at least have a few words and phrases under my belt in case we'd ever meet face to face. Originally, they were to visit the U.S. for his graduation, but that isn't going to happen with the pandemic. 

In grade school--and I went to a kindergarten through eighth-grade school--we had modules, one as our first period and the other the last period of the day. These modules were classes outside of the curriculum and not graded or not as I remember. They included topics ranging from knitting to rocket science, meaning silly to intellectual. Of course, my mother insisted one of our classes had to be intellectual, and that's how I ended up taking German. My other class was Euchre. I LOVED it. But, if you knew my mother, the former teacher, schooling was not for learning card games. I most likely threw a huge fit, or my dad intervened to get me the pick of at least one module class.

I was not interested in learning German. That's my excuse for why I didn't embrace or excel in this class, but somehow by the time my education was complete, I had ten years of German on my transcripts. Four years of high school language garnered me enough written knowledge to pass the first-year college exam to be enrolled in second year German my freshman year. What a mistake! I remember the first day vividly. 

We sat in a small room around a large rectangular table. I had trouble finding the building, and the only seat left was next to the teacher, who spoke not ONE word of English the entire class. He started with the opposite side of the table, and each student had to read a passage and translate it. 

Now, in high school, this was mostly what we did in class every single day. The difference was that we were given the first half of class to translate it. If there were five pages, we were supposed to be translating all five pages. We, however, figured out what passage we would be assigned, translated that, and goofed off the rest of our time period. Half the time, we only looked up a few words because the teacher would fill it in for us if we stumbled. 

Example Passage: Der Hund sprang über den Mond. (The dog jumped over the moon.)

Me: "The dog, uh, hmm, uh, something over?"

Him: "jumped over the moon."

Me: "The dog jumped over the moon."

See? Yeah, kids who didn't give a shit weren't going to put forth the effort when the teacher did the work for us, and while I was a good girl in terms of never making waves or causing trouble, I could be led astray by others--and here I shall blame my friend, Kelly, although she was way smarter and probably didn't need the time in the first place.

Either way, I learned enough to read and translate to spring ahead to second-year German, but I had no idea if I'd be able to muck my way through what we were reading that first day in college. Luckily, for me, by the time it came to my turn, I stumbled my way through the German reading aloud part, and the bell rang for the end of class. That was also the first time I did something on my own without first consulting my mother. I immediately dropped that class and put myself in German I, which was not an easy feat for a freshman because I had to track down the professor to get his signature, and he, of course, had to grill me until I was practically in tears. I think I flat out told the man I was a fraud. 

Whatever. I went back to the beginning and learned more in those four years than I did in the seven years prior. 

But still, not enough to travel to Germany and converse with the locals, which had been my mother's reasoning for us to learn a language. She would take us to Europe, where I would speak German, my brother would speak Spanish, and she would handle the French. We never made that trip, although I did travel to Germany the summer before my eighth-grade year, but that's another story...

Now, Darcy, who has attempted a few Russian phrases here and there, informed me that Russian was one of the hardest languages to learn. I did not let that scare me because: 

1. Oleg's family isn't going to be here in five months like originally planned, thus no pressure.
2. I didn't really have to learn this language, and no one is holding me accountable.

Big difference! Or maybe I've gotten smarter over the years. I'm going with the latter. I embrace learning now. I didn't back then. Sigh. Oleg put me on to the app Duolingo, and I began over fifty days ago. I know that because Duolingo keeps track of my daily streak. So far, I've only missed one day of studying, but I had earned enough points on the app for a missed day, which is really cheating, although not in the app. 

After a couple of weeks of NOT learning the alphabet, I hunted for more apps that would start me out doing just that because, in the Russian language, there are 33 letters instead of 26, and less than ten of those coincide with the English language. I'm so far on free apps only because the pay features are a big investment. If I go that route, I want to make sure I'm on the best app.

I learned the Russian alphabet, and as my German, I'm pretty decent at translating the sentences I've learned, not so great with the pronunciation. I need another person, and I will have an upcoming opportunity with Oleg soon.

But what I'm most proud of is that I'm to the point where I see an X in the English language, and my brain has trouble deciding whether to pronounce it as a "kh" like in Russian or the "ex" as in English and the other night I dreamed in Russian. Letters were popping up in my dreams, and I was scrambling not to think of them in Russian. Also, I've almost memorized the Russian keyboard, which I have on my phone and Ipad! Look at me! 

Then, just as I got to feeling great about all of this, my German crept into my Russian. What? Seriously! Suddenly, this week my brain is also giving me German words besides the Russian words as if reminding me I did learn more than I thought possible. Now, I'm throwing in German words with the Russian words. What the what???

Yep. So, I'm leaving my brain to the biomedical research module in some grade school because obviously, this organ needs to be studied.