Re: Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry cries into its vodka over demise of Russian abroad

On 23 Sep, 12:26, "J. Anderson" <anderso...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Dmitry" <dmitrijsfedot...@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:9c4d340e-cdef-4cda-8385-d5ed955898bf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I know of opposite cases as well, of children who curse their parents for
not having taught them their own language. Or like one young man (Finnish
mother, foreign father) put it: 'My mother robbed me of half of my
personal
background by not speaking Finnish to me.'

Child's personal background doesn't necessarily have to be the same of
their parents'.

Many people on SCB would disagree. They are here for the very reason that
they have recognized their background. Even if their actual link to the
Baltics is two or three generations away, they still take an interest in
their parents' or grandparents' old country.

And it is good. I particularly respect Peteris and Gintai for making
that move to settle in the land of their parents. All I'm saying that
it doesn't have to be this way. Every individual should be able to
decide whether they want to keep the identity of their parents or to
have their own (or any mixture of those).

'We' have recently had an astronaut up in space by the name of Timothy
Kopra. His father's parents were from Finland and moved to the States
already in 1914, but despite all the years that have elapsed since then, Mr
Kopra treasures his Finnish background and, when in space, had a telephone
conversation with the president of Finland.

But of course there are also emigrants who seem to be in a hurry to wipe out
all traces of a foreign background. A former colleague of mine,
Swedish-speaker from Finland and living in New York, married a
Finnish-speaking girl over there. They had a son and decided that they would
only speak English at home. I wonder if young Nicholas will ever know that
he actually comes from a famous and respected family back in old Finland.

An opposite example: when I was living in Hamburg I got to know a
German-Finnish family where the mother consistently spoke Finnish to her
children. Sebastian, their son, later moved to Finland and became the
secretary of international affairs for the Social Democratic parliament
group. In that capacity he caught the attention of Mr Lipponen, our former
PM and presently a consultant for Nord Stream, the infamous gas pipe
project. Now the young man is Head of Nord Stream's EU Representation. So
the value of retaining your ties to the old country is not only sentimental,
there may also be a career waiting for you somewhere.

It pays to

I totally agree. There are plenty of benefits. D, when he was
younger, wanted to work in UN (a dream, but a good one) and thought
that his knowledge of Russian can be a benefit... I probably am in
minority in my approach. I never made a decission on whether to
communicate with my children in Russian or English, I just went with
the flow. And the "flow" was - all three of us were learning new
tools together. Their mother was fluent in English (and Latvian), but
kept Russian as the main communication tool within a family.
Eventually it became 3 against 1 and we developed a compromised
version - our own "house dialect". It was mainly Yorkshire English
with some Russian words and phrases (some Russian words were changed
to fit English sentence structure and grammar). It was probably one
of the most short lived dialects, but it was part of our identity at
the time -))

Friend of mine (from Ukraine, living in England) always speaks to her
child in Russian and Ukrainian. The boy speaks Russian to her and his
dad, but always switches to English when speaking to me.

All of my friends from Greek-Cypriot background speak English to their
parents. They can speak Greek, but find English an easier tool for
communication.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Bear Slayers Day
    ... on translation from Finnish into English. ... translator deal with the Russian proper names that show up in forms like ... The point was made that Finnish and English have standardized ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: Bear Slayers Day
    ... on translation from Finnish into English. ... translator deal with the Russian proper names that show up in forms like ... The point was made that Finnish and English have standardized ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: Russian as lingua franca at Finnish construction sites
    ... there are more jobs in construction ... ago that the workers were all communicating in bad Russian. ... Finnish and Russian on a bulletin board that I pass daily. ... to a far greater robability than English, a language I have yet to have ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: English as a creole.
    ... but I translated four novels from it into Finnish ... quite enthusiastic about Slavic languages. ... It's about "friendship" between a Russian and Finnish soldier (if you ... Which languages do you speak almost as well as English? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: question about womens names
    ... >> English has none, sadly. ... Russian? ... > (mother of child's spouse) together can be called "svaty". ...
    (alt.usage.english)