Lost in Translation

Spending a few years abroad as a family when your children are young can have many benefits, not least the fact that it opens their eyes on interacting with people from different cultures.  Children are chameleons, let's face it, and if exposed young enough can slip easily from one set of social norms to another without blinking an eye.

This is mostly a good thing, and even when it might not be, you often you don't even notice they are doing it until it's pointed out by helpful family and friends when you return home for visits.  Examples of this might be American accents (the result of attending a school with a high proportion of American students or teachers), or taking their shoes off the moment they walk into someone's home (it's the height of rudeness in Russia to leave your shoes on in a house).

Some of the habits they adapt might rankle a little.  The accent, I have to admit, is one of those.  My kids are British, not American - I would probably prefer them to sound more like me although as long as they're polite, courteous, confident and well-informed I'll go with whatever is on offer.  Another one I wasn't keen on - and I know this is going to sound ridiculous - is the Russian way of singing 'Happy Birthday', which is as follows:

Happy Birthday to you...
Cha - cha - cha
Happy Birthday to you...
Cha - cha - cha
Happy Birthday dear whomever...
Cha - cha - cha
Happy Birthday to you!
(Cha - cha - cha)

The 'cha - cha - cha' is spoken, in case you hadn't picked up on that.  And I'm sorry, but for the love of god, why?  Every time, it drove me crazy...  But I digress; I was talking about some of the ways your kids are affected by living away from their home country.  Which not so neatly leads me into this conversation I had with my older son this morning, when it became clear that some things I had taken for granted about the English language were not, actually, immediately clear to my kids...

Me:  "They had snow in Moscow this morning, apparently."  (True fact, btw)

Boy #1: "Really?  I hope we get lots of snow here this winter - enough to go all the way over the door."

Me:  "I think that's unlikely, I'm afraid.  England doesn't get much snow, especially not where we live.  And to be honest, I sort of hope we don't, they're not really equipped for it here."

Boy #1:  "But they must be!  What about in the hills?"

Me:  "Well - they're not that high.  And it's very damp and not that cold, so there isn't a lot of snow."

Boy #1:  "What about the panninis, though?  They must have snow."

Me:  "The what?"

Boy #1:  "The panninis.  You know.  And scaffolding pike.  There must be snow up there..."

Aha...

Me: "Do you mean The Pennines, Boy #1?  And Scafell Pike?"

Boy #1:  "Yes!  The Panninis!  That's what I meant!"

So now, the Pennines are the Panninis*.  Just in case you didn't know.


*with apologies to any readers based in the North of England

English for the non-Brit...

My dad sent me this* (click on it to increase the size to make it easier to read). It's hilarious if you live somewhere as an expat or indeed interact with people of virtually any nationality other than British. We - the Brits - tend to use our Mother Tongue in what I will (politely) call a very subtle manner, and that can make conversation with us difficult, as a non-British person talking to you often has no idea of the unwritten translation of what we are actually saying.

So in the interests of spreading light-heartedness and furthering British/non-British communication, I forwarded the picture above to a number of my friends here in Moscow.

They thought it was hilarious - but then one or two of them started to pay attention to what I was saying. One morning this week I bumped into a friend (a Canadian) who said to me "I loved that English -Eu translation you sent out. But I have to admit that when we all had dinner yesterday evening and you said to someone 'That's - interesting...' I nearly lost it..."

Ah.

Curses.

* I would credit it if I knew where it came from originally.

'I said, "do you speaka my language?"...

... and he just smiled, and gave me a vegemite sandwich.'*

Sometimes that's how I feel here in Russia; totally clueless when it comes to the language. Unlike my polyglot husband who annoyingly speaks 6 languages - including Russian - well, I'm not gifted in this area, but I do like to at least make the effort in whatever country I'm visiting. So I am trying with the Russian. At least, I'm trying very hard during my two one-on-one lessons of one and half hours every week, but for the life of me, I just can't seem to find the time in between to do my homework.

It's shocking really; here I am, 43 years old, and still not getting round to learning my vocabulary. The next thing I'll be confessing to is a liking for beans on toast at midnight and that every 3 years I re-read Jilly Cooper's finest novels. (Actually, no, that's not me. Although a certain blogger related to me by blood did confess to that very thing this evening.)

I know I have improved since arriving here; I can now listen to the radio and understand, oh, one word in 30 rather than none at all, which I suppose is something. And I even had a conversation yesterday with a purely Russian-speaking nanny where I made the sort of 'la plume de ma tante' statement you read in a text book and assume is nonsense and never relevant in real life. Until, that is you actually find yourself needing to say 'the dog is watching television through the window.' (Don't ask). Being able to do that is nice of course, but is hardly going to help if I need to explain to the traffic police why I crossed the white line in the middle of the road or to ask the security guards on the compound gate to let a particular car in to deliver my British style sausages... (Watch this space for how that goes. The possibilities for confusion are endless...)

This helplessness in reading and speaking Russian is having one beneficial side-effect, however. It means that I have been an awful lot more sympathetic to my older son's initial struggles with reading. Where previously I might have become frustrated at his inability to sound out words that seem so obvious to me, now - as someone who is struggling to read cyrillic at anything more than a slow crawl - I find myself much more understanding than I might otherwise have been. For example. This:

поттй муммй

reads 'Potty Mummy'. Not as a direct translation, you understand, just as the transposition of letters from one alphabet to another. Of course I have moved on from that point, but it's very confusing when you pronounce a 'B' as a 'V', a 'P' as an 'R', an 'X' as 'CH' (as in the end of 'loch'), and 'H' as 'N'. And those are just some of the letters that look similar; I won't bore you with the list of those that look like nursery school doodles (or is that just my handwriting?). And honestly; 33 letters in an alphabet? Is that really necessary?

So I'm a bit crap at Russian, to be honest. This is of course not helped by the fact that I am fast discovering - as we move further into the study of this language - that my school education was sorely lacking in the basics. Either that, or I've lost everything I ever knew on how to parse a sentence. (I prefer to blame my O-level English teacher for failing to give me the knowledge in the first place than to admit the latter). And when my teacher Ludmilla starts to explain how to use words correctly based on genetive, accusitive and dative cases, well, I'm afraid that my brain starts - ever so quietly - to steam. 'Can-not-compute' it tells me. 'Too-much-information. Need-diet-coke-now...'

This leaves me in an interesting position. Do I admit to her that not only does she need to teach me the fundamentals of Russian, but she needs to give me a refresher course in the English language too? Or do I just quietly go on line, order myself a text book, and add to the list of things that I never get round to doing as 'Basic English Grammar for Idiots and Women with Post Baby-Brain' sits next to my Russian notes, gathering dust reproachfully until I take it back to England with me and give it the church bazaar, still in it's wrapper?

Vegemite sandwich, anyone?

*Men at Work - in case you were wondering.