This post is available only in Russian. Please change the language at the top of the page.
This post is available only in Russian. Please change the language at the top of the page.
This post is available only in Russian. Please change the language at the top of the page.
Raising two bi-lingual daughters has been an interesting and rewarding challenge for our family. My wife is Russian, and we met in St. Petersburg, and spoke mainly Russian together during the 14 years that I lived there. Our daughters, Vanessa and Adriana, were also born in St. Petersburg, and accordingly spent the first years of their lives in a Russian-speaking environment. Vanessa, our oldest daughter, even had the opportunity to attend a pre-school in St. Petersburg for a year.
In the spring of 2014, however, my wife was accepted to graduate school in the United States, and so we moved to Minnesota in July of that year. At that point Vanessa was 4 years and 2 months old, while Adriana was 2 years and 3 months old.
This post is available only in Russian. Please change the language at the top of the page.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
I recognized the importance of language and its connection to freedom when I was very young. At the tender age of 13 I traveled to Paris with my mom and I quickly recognized the limitations of not being able to communicate freely. My Russian and my poor English were not much use in Paris. We got around, ate well and saw all the important sights with relative ease but I felt there was more to this than meets the eye. Deep down I knew that I didn’t truly connect with this country and its people.