Bringing up a Multilingual Child

Back on track about how it is actually to bring up a child in a multilingual family, in our case Russian-Hindi-English-a little bit Punjabi... now that's enough I think.

Russian language 

Long before my little A was born I decided that I would speak only Russian and would make it a language of communication at least between two of us. I have been speaking Russian with him since then, mixing it with English words here and there on the way (like ешь it - eat this).
However communication alone will not suffice for him to learn my mother tongue. Written word is also very important so that he sees the Russian language around, its usage, and understands that this language has equal rights with others. For that purpose I always keep a calendar on the wall which is usually given by my parents every year.
Little A has his own backpack, gifted by my Lebanese friend, in which we store all the books. Every day little A brings  this precious bag of books, and we start reading, he comments, points at the pictures, asks to turn the page or not to...
My parents provided many books for A, so we don't have lack of Cyrillic written words.Some of them were gifted by our friend from Moscow, who also has an Indian husband and two kids. So she knows how it is raising children in a mixed family. She brought most popular children authors of all times A. Barto  (А. Барто), S. Marshak (С. Маршак) and K.Tchukovsky (К.Чуковский).

S. Marshak poems and tales for children

Agniya Barto, poems for children. (Агния Барто, Стихи для детей)

"Hare", one of the most known short poems by A. Barto.

                                             

"Elephant" ("Слон")

He loves seeing pictures in the book by K. Tchukovsky (К. Чуковский) "Wash'em clean" "Мойдодыр" - it's a book about a boy who was so dirty that all his belongings ran away from him.. so in order to gain them back he had to take a good bath :D

He absolutely loves a little book  called Сорока-сорока (Magpie-magpie). This is a folklore nursery rhyme which you say to a child while making circles on his palm, and then press each finger tip as the story goes... He tries to do this with my hand too :)

 I read him this alphabet book too, and he repeats A, О, У vowels :)

There are as well folktales, fairy tales, poems available for little A, and many good reads are with my parents, and  I can't wait to introduce my little boy to them.

I show him Russian cartoons from time to time too, like Domovyonok Kuzya (a Hob?), so he hears the speech not only from me. Many of my friends who live in India say that it is difficult to inculcate your language when the environment is not there. But as soon as I don't have an option of staying in my country, I shall use other means in order to make it happen. I need to put an effort.
So as you see his exposure to Russian language is limited to my speech, books, cartoons, and Skype with his grand parents. I am not going to overburden him with it, but just wanting to lit up interest in his mother's tongue. My D however is learning Russian now and is on his second year at the University, so I expect a little help from him too :)

English language

English makes a big entry in our day to day communication.
Among the books introduced to A is his favourite Little Red Riding Hood, which I purchased in the bookstore because of its illustrations. It was long before little A was born, but I knew it right there then that it was going to be for my baby.

This one is an old Indian edition of short stories found among many old books my in-laws keep with them. The stories are too long for my A, and have slightly strange plots to my liking.

 Moreover his exposure to English language will increase when he goes to school, as mostly all the playschool programs here are in English, just like the one I used to work for. Hence I don't have much worry for this language, he will definitely learn it.

Hindi language.

Absolutely everywhere. Speech at home and outside, children's TV channels ...BUT little A has no Hindi books as of now, only newspapers, in which he likes to point at the words written in Devanagari. Beside,s of course, little A will be learning it at school.

Punjabi language

Exposure is very limited to occasional conversations by my in-laws. D doesn't speak Punjabi at home, but only when it is required. However this language is taught in many schools here in UT.
I know I take sides - I wrote the most about Russian :P ))) However aiming to bring my A up with the knowledge of three languages I would not like to enforce any of them but implement in such a way that he enjoys this unique opportunity and uses it later in life effortlessly.
Until Little A starts speaking we won;t get to know which one of the languages he would prefer, but just recently he started trying to say the word "bird" in Russian (ptica "птица").. Yey!!! I win! lol

Have a nice day! Just one more day left, and we can enjoy our weekend :)

Little bit of gardening

  Indian Sunny Days were marked by  a bit hectic week for both, me and my husband. For me, because I simply got too tired in my office, for my husband - he got a new opportunity! All this happened so suddenly and fast, so I think we still didn't realize this great change. I am very glad that he will have now more prospects and will be able to implement some of his dreams :)

 We have small pieces of land in front and behind our house, so this is where we grow some plants. About three weeks back, it was Sunday, me, my husband and our papa (my father-in-law) decided finally to do something about our garden development. We went to the nursery and after a while purchased there some flowers. My father-in-law planted all of them into pots and put on the wall. There were many other plants, so different: tall, short, blossoming, cacti, small palm trees!

  I liked this one very much, as I knew it would give pretty flowers later. Here they are:

 Aren't they sweet and tender?

 The name of the flower below I don't know too. It looks like white butterflies sat on it:

  However our gardening wasn't over. Week later we planted some seeds, which my parents gave from home - kidney beans and fennel! They gave sprouts just four days back, but turned already into a small plant so fast! I really feel so proud, as Kazakhstan plants are growing in India now :) Some of the kidney beans ("rajma" in hindi) are wavy, another ones will be a bush type.

  Fennel gave tiny leaves so far and I will take the pictures when it becomes a bit taller.
  I am expecting to have a good harvest later on! My husband loves rajma a lot, so we will have our own ;)

***Have a nice weekend everyone!***

How the story began - removing the distances

    I think I should have done this post in the very beginning as it's actually explains why I'm here in India. 

   It started in the spring a little more than two years ago, when I was still doing my graduation in Moscow, Russia. I was using well known social network to keep in touch with my cousins, who all live abroad. I had already enough people in my friend list when I got one more friend request which I accepted. One click changed whole my life later.

    The friend whom I added was a boy from India. We began exchanging messages. A long line, or better, column of our chatting then followed. The boy was very communicative and wanted to know more about me.  He used to call me “Friend” in all our talks, I in turn was not sounding very interested in our conversations, that time I was too occupied with my diploma project and state examination.

  Once, when we were chatting for almost one month, I deleted him from a friend list. I had a reason which appeared to be so silly later on. Some voice inside me said that time: "Come on, send him a friend request back. May be you offended him with your sudden decision". I followed the advice my inner voice gave. I guess that The Indian boy listened to his inner voice too when he accepted my request, though this situation could put an end to our then-friendship.

   When my graduation was done and I had a diploma in my hands, I could dedicate more time to our talks, and indeed, we started having longer chats filled with cheerful, happy messages, with smiles representing our moods. We got to know a lot more about each other.

 He asked my mobile number and called me once. That was I guess the first time I was talking to someone over the phone in English. As far as I remember that day I couldn't say much because my heart started beating so vigorously when I got a call. I said the boy about it, he was surprised. After that he kept calling me for a few more times, sometimes when I was in the company of my friends and I wasn’t comfortable to talk in front of them. 

 I understood that I meant something to him when he expressed a concern. He was afraid that when I would be back to my country I would forget him and we would never chat again. He was so wrong about it! My entire existence was already full of him that throwing him out of my thoughts was not possible at all. 

 I became really crazy for him so much that I started learning Hindi language, I didn't really know for what purpose, but I was doing it with so much passion which I could never expect from myself.