How do you say...

"How's it going in Moscow with the language barrier, Lindsey?"

If you were to ask me to stand up in a room full of strangers and belt out a show tune I'd be all over it. Yes, please, no alcohol need be applied.

Or, hell, apply it. If I'm singing in front of strangers I'm probably at Karaoke night in a bar and yes, I would like a gin and tonic, THANK YOU.

But if you ask me to repeat a foreign word or phrase I get real shy. Hard pass. I will fuck it up. Or at least, the fear that I will fuck it up is enough to make me throw up my hands, shake my head, and apologize to whomever is trying to wake up the language center of my brain.

Now that I think on it, I have a long list of people to apologize to on behalf of this part of my brain:

I'm sorry, Ms. Rizzo, two different Ms. W's, the teacher whom I only remember as being my least favorite, and the teacher from 8th grade whose name I also can't remember who seemed justifiably appalled at how much French I hadn't learned since Kindergarten. I'm sorry I couldn't do more than memorize flashcards and never learned to write or speak in complete sentences. I'm sorry the only phrase I mastered was, "Puis-je parler anglais?" I am also appalled at me.

I'm sorry, Ms. Okun.  I chose to start over with a completely different language with a completely different alphabet because it sounded easier than suffering the humiliation of being the stupidest person in 9th year French. My heart wasn't in it. Anyway, when was I going to need to know Russian? What were the goddamned odds?

I'm sorry, college Italian teacher. I tried to get back to my romance language roots and finally realized that the foreign languages just aren't for me. It also didn't help that, by the weirdest coincidence, the Romanian siblings who were in my high school Russian class were also in my college Italian class and kicked serious ass at learning both. Absolutely no one I know who is me was intimidated by that at all.

Failing in a classroom setting like that is bad enough, but what's really embarrassing is when I'm trying to communicate with Russian speakers here in Moscow.

First of all, they usually have more English than I do Russian. I have to be very careful not to offend them. Not because I can't speak their language. No. It's far worse than just my limited vocabulary and foreign language "stage fright."

You see, when I don't know what to say in Russian I have a ridiculous instinct to mimic their accented English back to them ("See? I sound like you! I'm trying!!") Then I'm too busy concentrating on not being an asshole to think about the few words and phrases I might've had any chance of remembering. Then, to add insult to injury, I remember what I should have said only after the interaction is over.

Another fun thing my brain does is it hangs on to the small selection of words I can say and it just keeps shuffling them on repeat so that I'm never thinking in complete or comprehensive sentences, but if I said them at a non-Russian speaker they'd be really impressed. (Like that episode of The IT Crowd when Jen says she can speak Italian )

Other times my brain just quilts scraps of phrases together from ANY of the languages I've ever tried to learn into some kind of Franken-language remix.

"Excusez-moi, come si dice что нибудь по-anglais?"

So I have a hard time.

Bear all this in mind and imagine my sweaty panic when I was approached by two administrators at Simon's school about leading a Speaking Club with some Russian parents who want to work on their English. It was only my second day sitting in the Tortoise Room to help Simon get adjusted and I wasn't prepared for it to come up so soon. I'd been saying before we left that it would be nice to meet other people, perhaps other parents from school to do this exact thing, but in my mind my role in it was far more passive.

I did my best to tell them that, while I've never engaged in this kind of group learning, I do need to practice my Russian and get better at it. I was hoping for just this sort of thing, but I've never done it. I would do what I could.

Turns out what I can do is type awkwardly on Google Translate until it shows me words I might be able to read aloud.

Russian is a fun language where one eight-syllable word takes the place of three or four English ones. It would take me longer to try to pronounce one of those words properly than it would to rephrase my question or just drop it altogether.

The one very nice mother who showed up to Speaking Club last week was very patient as she corrected my accented Russian (French is my default accent at all times. It's a problem.). I helped her with plenty of stuff too, but it was clear one of us had a better understanding of their non-native language and it obviously wasn't me. 

Using Google Translate felt like cheating at first, but as our mini-meeting went on I could tell my grey matter was getting a fun work out. Thinking of a phrase, typing the phrase, re-wording the phrase, reading the Russian, pronouncing it, pronouncing it again, pronouncing it again and somehow worse than the first time I said it, and then refusing to embarrass myself any further and just resorting to nodding my head while my new acquaintance repeated it several more times as if I was actually absorbing this knowledge and filing it away for later. Exhausting, but still fun.

This week we plan to have questions prepared for each other to save time.

Here are a few of mine:

Question #1: Вам нравится караоке?

Question #2: Aimez-vous le karaoké?

Question #3: Ti piace il karaoke?




I got Trouble, my friends...