Mother Tongue: 1/2 CUP of sibling rivalry and 1TBSP of vinegar

Is what it takes to get your 8 year old to say something in your mother tongue

Every time I get Maya to speak Russian (not very often, and only in 20-25-second bursts), I discover how much she forgot.

“Maya, let’s speak Russian….”

“Nooooo….”

“One minute.”

“No.”

“30 seconds.”

“20, like last time.”

“Let’s do 25.”

“Nooo!”

“Please? You can do 25… lets talk about Shiloh…”

“Ok…..”

I press the timer.

“Kavo ona bolshe vsex lubit?”  ‘Who does she love the most?’

“Ummm….. Ya, Yannai, mama ….”

Beep…

It was the right answer except that she should have said “menya, Yannaya, mamu….” (“me, Yannai, mom”) using accusative case and not nominative. Is she forgetting her grammar? Do I care if she does? It turns out I do.

Language attrition is a real thing. Adults’ proficiency in their native language can diminish if they don’t live in their language community (I know that my Russian is not on par with that of adults living in Russia - I’m ok with that). But an even lesser-known fact is that kids can completely forget a language they once knew.

If a child stops using the language before the age of 12 (that’s approximately when the native language proficiency is stabilized, it’s possible for them to completely forget it.)

Last week I talked about raising multilingual kids on

Sri Juneja

’s Substack Readable Moments (Sri writes about picture books, which is my second favorite thing after languages). I assured people that language attrition can be prevented if we’re consistent in speaking that language with our kids and if we read with them regularly.

Only I myself wasn’t doing any of those things. But then our home language situation has always been kind of messy. When Maya was a baby we lived in England and I spoke to her in Hebrew at home. Then it was Hebrew and Russian, and at one point she could speak both (plus English which she got from preschool). But then we moved to Israel, and I promoted English into our home language precisely because I didn’t want her to lose it. Russian was still somewhere in the background (and that’s what I still mostly speak to her older brother), but less and less so.

The rest of my family speaks Russian, so in theory, Maya still has that language in her life, but in practice, she communicates with her cousins in Hebrew and with the adults mostly in gestures. Pointing to the floor and stomping her foot means her uncle has to crouch so she can climb on his back. She uses about five Russian words for things that can’t be effectively communicated with gestures (Yesho! ‘Again!’) but I wouldn’t call it ‘speaking Russian.’

Of course, I knew it could happen. I just didn’t know it would bother me this much.

And now I want her to start speaking Russian again.

Bilingualism was never my area of research when I was in academia, but I know very well that speaking in occasional coerced 20-25-second bursts will not get us very far. The only thing it will achieve is to increase the level of resistance that she already feels toward this language.

To begin with, I need to start speaking Russian with her more regularly. But it’s easier said than done. I said that it’s the most natural thing for me to speak Russian to my babies, but the reality on the ground is far messier than this. Some visceral part of me longs to speak Russian to them, but the rest of me is used to speaking English to them and is very comfy there.

After a couple of minutes of Russian, I start worrying that:

1) Maya will forget her English (because I’m the only person who speaks English to her in her daily life.

2) I’ll forget my English because she’s the only person I speak English to regularly in my daily life.

I mean, chill out, woman, it’s just speaking.

Whenever I speak Russian to her, something is missing. Whenever I speak English to her, something is missing. That’s what happens when your sense of self is split between several languages: it’s hard to fit it back into just one.

It’s a good idea to attach the language to something or someone: a person, a place, or an activity. For example, when one parent consistently speaks one language to a child and the other parent consistently speaks another language, it’s called an OPOL (one parent one language) approach. But I’m just one person so that won’t work.

Another problem, of course, is my conflicted relationship with this language. Not because of the war (although it didn’t help) but because I want to distance myself from the great Russian supremacism that infused my formative years.

I have been watching Navalny’s wife’s speech this past week and telling myself look how many brave beautiful people speak this language. And it’s not like you didn’t know that: some of your closest friends are also Russian speakers (and most of them just like you despise much of what this country represents).

But it didn’t help. Like Maya, I’d rather not be caught speaking Russian outside. So at first, I decided I’d speak Russian to her at home and English outside.

Officially, it’s called a time-and-place strategy. For example, you can decide to speak Spanish on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and Vietnamese on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Or Russian outside and English at home, as in my case.

In theory, it could work very well in our case. But in practice, all it did was make me realize how rarely we go outside, causing a lot of unnecessary mom guilt.

So instead, I’ve settled on speaking Russian only on weekends (Fridays and Saturdays here in Israel.)

Maya doesn’t protest so much anymore but still doesn't speak it.

Except in special circumstances:

Like the other night when we were having a family dinner together. I was making an effort to speak Russian because it was Friday.

"Can you bring me some vinegar?" Maya asked her brother in English. (Because we're the kind of multilingual people who like to chug spoonfuls of apple cider vinegar from time to time.)

"Sama prinesi." Yannai said in Russian. ( "Get it yourself")

"I hate you."

"Maya doesn't know how to speak Russian."

"I do!"

"Then say it in Russian."

"I don't want to."

"Then you don't know!"

"I do!"

Now, I do want her to say things in Russian, but I don't want her to necessarily say “I hate you” to her brother in Russian. Or in English for that matter. But especially not in Russian.

Words that have the same meaning in different languages might vary in how they are used, and in the emotional weight that they carry. "Hate" is not a very loaded word in English. You can use it to mean you really hate someone, but you can also say "I hate you" as a joke to a friend.

You can never use the Russian equivalent (“Ya tebya nenavizhu”) in the same way. Nenavizhu is a very very loaded word that implies a lot of actual burning hatred.

Maya doesn’t know this word and I wasn't going to intervene and teach it to her at that particular moment. That would sort of conflict with my moral parenting standards.

She did still want the vinegar though.

"Mama, can you bring me a spoon of vinegar?"

"Can you say it in Russian?" I don't usually do that but I decided to ride the train that Yannai just started...

"Ummm.. how do you say ‘vinegar’?"

"Uksus."

"Prinesi pozhalushta uksus..."

And what do you think I did? I got up and went to get her a spoon of vinegar.

That one time when we did go outside with some friends to go and pick lemons from a nearby lemon tree

p.s. Updated project goals:

1. Learn 12 languages by the end of the year.

2. Get Maya to speak Russian by the time I turn 83

p.p.s. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this sort of thing. Please let me know in the comments if you feel comfortable:

1. Do you have a child who stopped speaking a language they once knew? Did you try to get them to speak again?

2. I’m considering bribing as my language revival strategy. Does one packet of Doritos per sentence seem reasonable?

3. Have you experienced language attrition yourself (in your native language or another language you were once fluent in)? Would a packet of Doritos motivate you to start speaking it again?

4. Do you also like apple cider vinegar?