This is a part of my heritage that it really bothers me that I'm losing. I was fluent at one time, but anymore a simple conversation in the grocery store is over my head.
Growing up, my parents sent us to Russian school once a week for like 2 hours. I don't think they started until we were roughly school-aged, but regardless it was completely insufficient. Not to mention the fact that in the earlier years we would spend most of that time screwing around with our cousins like little wildebeests. In later years most of that time was devoted to religious studies and not language (once the priest took over as teacher). When we visited Russia when I was 14, I couldn't even ask for the bathroom. I could manage hello, goodbye, thank you and please. I only learned what I did by spending a year as an exchange student, and it was darned tough. But at this point with no one to practice with, I've lost most of it.
Anyway, my point is, I am not fluent enough to converse with a child in a natural way... anything I attempted would be more like baby talk, and we all know that's not a good way to teach language. I want my children to grow up knowing another language, and it's much easier to do that from the beginning. So other than enrolling them in a once-a-week type program, what can I do as small children to encourage them to learn the basics?
but it has not always been this good. it ebbs and flows depending on how much spanish interaction I get. Anyway, i say that to say that even when I was speaking pretty much 99% English, I made it a point to say whatever i could to ds in spanish, even if it was spanglish (as in, "traiga me un sandwich"
. Later, when we lived with my IL's who are spanish speaking, ds acclimated EXTREMELY fast to responding to spanish, and his first words turned out to be in spanish. And after a few weeks of living with them, my spanish was back to normal (which is decently close to fluent) So even though i may have been speaking more Spanish all along, i think whatever spanish he heard did make an impact.
Probably the best thing you can do for him, though, is immerse the two fo you in russian speaking activities. (we go to a spanish only speaking congregation for our bible meetings, for example) You could play Russian music for him, you could buy bilingual/all Russian dvds for him to watch as he gets older. Hire a russian speaking mother's helper a couple days a week. even if its a young kid, pay them to speak just russian to your dc.
Read children's books to them! My Hebrew improved dramatically when I started reading children's books. Watch videos for children in Russian too. There's also Kids Stuff Russian by Therese Slevin Pirz (see www.bilingualkids.com), which is a phrase book for parents of how to say things in Russian ("parent talk"). It may be too basic for your, though, so you may want to see if your local library can get it for you interlibrary loan before you buy it (it's pricy!).
Maybe you can get a computer program for yourself like Rosetta Stone to refresh your memory. Then you can (as someone suggested) read books in Russian.
I am bummed because my dh never taught our kids his language. He is bilingual himself and grew up speaking English and Tamil equally well, and was schooled in English. But still. Now my 8yo wants to learn Tamil but it won't be natural for her, like if she had learned it from babyhood. I'm not sure dh will even teach her because he's mentally tired and stressed from work, and it takes a lot for him to do things like that.
When I was younger I was reasonably bilingual (English & French), but the French dropped off when I stopped using it. I find I can still read French even if I can't converse, so I've been gathering children's books to read to DD now that her English is fairly understandable. She's only three, so I think I should be catching her early enough to teach her my family's language.
I may use the same approach to get my German, Spanish, and Russian up to par; I have genealogy documents that need translating!
Is your Russian at all recoverable? Do you still have some basics? If so, get some kids shows (like Ulitsa sezam) or cartoons (like Cheburashka) and watch them together. As you watch, you should be able to pick up some vocabulary, so the next step would be to USE that vocabulary. Watch the cartoon, and then start with simple things like "Kto eto?" "Chto eto?". Then a little more complex, "Chto on delyaet?" "Kuda on idyot?" "Chto on khochet?" and things like that. The thing to be aware of is that watching TV (or DVDs as the case may be) is NOT enough to learn to use a language. You can learn vocab, but language must be USED actively in order to foster proficiency. Start off with simple stuff is just fine. Try to work your way up--this should be great motivation for you to improve your own Russian! And once you are again able to form coherent sentences and thoughts, find to some Russian speakers! Have you tried meetup.com? There may well be a local group of Russian speakers there who are interested in various social events. Where we live there is even a Parents of Russian speaking children group which organizes Russian language play dates. People use speak of peer pressure negatively, but sometimes it can be a great way for kids to learn--they do indeed learn a lot from each other and Russian speaking friends could go a long way towards motivating your kids to speak and use the language.
Ah, if you're interested, I just recalled that there is actually a pedagogical book called something like "Teaching Russian through Cartoons" (seriously!). It might be something to look into
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