What it really takes...

Last Christmas I was in a large bookstore with my kids. I always scope out the language book section. I never find anything new and am always surprised how similar language instruction is to the books in the self help section. Everything is a magic bullet. If I were feeling optimist the teacher side of me would perhaps think the range of books and their assorted pedagogies were speaking to various learning styles. In reality you can spend a lot of money on books that are confusing at best or at worst completely useless. My son was looking at a book with the seductive title “Learn Russian in your car 5 minutes a Day”
“Hey mom! Look at this one. That’s not true…to learn Russian you need REAL Russians!”
Yes it really does take real Russians. I have wonderful real Russians now and they are invaluable teachers and friends but two years ago the question is was where to find them. And if I did find them would they be interested in speaking with me.

When I returned from our schools mission trip in 2008 I came across an article in the Boston paper about learning languages online. Apparently there were websites, free websites, where the idea was that you could pair up with native speakers and learn the language. What an amazing idea. I set the article aside for a few days. Being a high school teacher had made me wary of social networking internet sites. Most of the people in the article were pretty young and “facebook” and “MySpace” savvy, which I at the time was not. I was very apprehensive about getting on some website with a bunch of people who might turn out to be predators or worse -tragically hip.
I finally got my courage up and clicked over to the website from the article. Of course you could not tour the site without signing up. It was free so I figured what was the worst that could happen. I chose a screen name. A lame one, I might add. Set a password and began to look around. Here is how it worked. On the front page of the website you use a pull down menu to choose the language you speak and the one you want to learn. After a search, the site pulls up all the native Russian speakers who want to learn English. The first face looking back at me was exactly what I feared -tragically hip 20 something. It was exciting and interesting but I was not sure exactly what I was doing. I began to look for native speakers to contact. The site allowed me to filter my search by language and age. I had no desire to work with anyone under 30. I suppose it was an arbitrary rule but I figured if I was going to contact people in another country I needed some rules for myself. Right now this was the only one I had.
I look in the right corner. A pull down menu is available to sort the list. One option is age; low to high and high to low. I choose high to low. Again one of the first members to pop up has obviously lied about her age. There is a young person in the photo but her birth date is listed as 1922. I press on and scan down. No…. nope… sketchy looking…. oh double no! Some have photos some don’t. I was beginning to rethink my criteria. I decide a photo, any photo is important. As I look at a few profiles I determine the person needs to be at least between the ages of 36-46. I want to find women first, men I was a bit suspicious, at least at first. I scroll down until I find this one face that is so compelling at first I pass. The age is right 47 but it is a man. He lives in Moscow says he is in a relationship. (There is no “married” option in the personal information section) I pass over him. No men, not yet. I scroll down and find a woman my age who is working in Ireland. Perfect. I send out a little note; “Hello, I am an American learning Russian.”I hear from her for about two weeks and then never again. I try not to take it personally because I am still not sure what I am doing or how this will help me. The next day I send out about four more short notes, still choosing carefully. But that face from the other day, “Mr. Moscow” something pulls me back to his profile. I go back and this time I study his photo. I am looking for some good reason not to send a note. I can’t find one. He has bright eyes and a great smile. He says in his profile that he wants to learn English to “develop his potentialities” Ok I’ll bite: I notice he is a beginner like me. I pull up the online translator to say hello. I send the message and wait.

It is a little silly and perhaps redundant at this point to recount with detail first emails and contact. Leonid contacted me first on March 16 and then a few weeks later I was contacted by a guy named Andrey a few weeks later. So now I was writing to someone in Moscow and now this Andrey person in someplace called Uzbekistan. While other Russian speakers have come in and out of my email inbox but these two have stuck by me for close to 2 years. And what they have had to put up with I owe them big time. That being said these two men could not be more different. I should also say that it was fully my intention to be communicating with Russian women. I explained this to my husband frequently at the beginning. “I do email women my age, they never email me back.” Later another Russian contact informs me that still Russian women do not have the kind of free time men have. I do end up with two wonderful women to correspond with but that comes later. To this day my contact list of native speakers is filled with my “boyfriends”.
What is perhaps most interesting to me and perhaps is more of reflection of me than of them. For example sarcasm does not translate well. Also I learned online translation tools in general cannot be relied upon. For the first few weeks Leonid thinks I am a man. He also thinks I am dying. In my profile on the website I wrote that it was my goal to learn Russian “before I die”. He takes this as an introduction to my sense of humor or impending mortality. As far as the gender confusion, this is the online translators fault. This is a little pop up program on the website that allows instant translation. I find it very frustrating. It never translates the phrase I want or the one I am familiar with. I feel like I am being deceitful. But at this point I don’t have much of a choice. It is clear that the English skills on the other end of the conversation need a little work so I have no choice but to rely on this piece of technology. The program assumes the masculine gender so it is not until his daughter sees the email and points out to her father that the person he is corresponding with is in fact a woman.
By this time we have established a very good rapport and friendly conversation. But it is all in English. I cannot write in Russian. I do know some phrases and want to learn more but the stupid translator is the only way I can write using Cyrillic text. I downloaded some Cyrillic fonts but these do not paste correctly into any messages I send because they are really no more than a font. Apparently there is a difference between a font and a keyboard, but what do I know. I think it took Andrey the better part of a week to explain this to me. Every time we send each other a message though the website I get a notification by email. Bouncing back and forth between email and the website is pretty time consuming. So I present my Russian friend with a proposition. What if we were to correspond directly by email? It takes a little time but eventually we decide to give it a try.
It is here that we both come to realization that the Cold War may be over but that perhaps my Internet provider has not been informed of this fact. Private email will be fast and more convenient and as it turns out there is so much more you can share over email. Photos, music, films can all be shared faster through private email. Later the most valuable files I will send will be my exercises in Russian. We begin by sending family photos. He is able to send me a few pictures of his wife and daughter and what appears to be a favorite fishing spot in Southern Russia. I am so thrilled to get these photos I immediately try to pass on some of my own. The email is bounced back as undeliverable. A few phone calls that I swear have now qualified me for and unwarranted wiretap, it is clear that in no way is my internet provider, (the one I am paying for) will let me communicated with a “.ru” domain name.
Chris is looking a little bewildered at all this. Why all the fuss to communicate with people I hardly know? I ask him if he ever had a pen pal as a child. He replies “No”, and I point out he never had a dog before either. Five years ago we adopted a wonderful Labrador retriever whom he adores…now. At the time he had every reason in the world for not taking this poor creature into our home. He reminds me these are people not pets. I know this of course but I am curious person and I did have pen pals many, many pen pals when I was younger. I want to know about the world, the whole world. And now I have the opportunity to peer into and learn about a language and a culture closed off to me until 1992. What started off as messages on a language chat board have now become full weekly conversations over skype or by phone. My husband has learned to say hello in Russian, he is very pleased with himself. Considering that most of the native speakers are programmers or some form of engineer minded individual, sometimes they actually want to speak to Chris and at least ask him about his job. It is also very quickly clear to me that some of the most important conversations I want to have with people are far off in the future because those conversations will have to take place in Russian. I have a lot of work to do, and now I have a real motivation to learn as fast as I can.