General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just found out my kid's kindergarten class is teaching Russian 40 mins per day. [View all]electric_blue68
(26,040 posts)We had a bit of French in ?4th - 6tg grades. For some reason I didn't like that teacher (I usually remember something about why) so when it came to French as a choice in 9th grade (JHS) I said - no. I didn't want to learn Spanish either at that point.
But...
Russian was our third alternative. Hmm. I thought well I could talk to my dad a bit. He spoke English excellently - I don't know whether his (both) 1st Gen Ukrainian parents started him off with English but he seemed to be able waaaaay back then to speak fluent Ukrainian w his father (my grandfather).
The tricky part was having 3 endings for many words - masculine, feminine & ? nuetral.
OTOH, I thought learning a New, different Alphabet was kind of cool. I do remember a few words. I should maybe look up on line some basics, again.
Now I'm a born/bred NYC'r, so being a translator for the UN was a possibility. Or other UN jobs. BUT while my Local HS continued with Russian, the Specialized HS I went to for Art didn't. (That's where I ended up taking Spanish) I did really want an Art Career, I headed towards that
And geeebz there are plenty of Russians (and we've
seen the demonstrations on line) that are against Putin's murderous War against Ukraine... so there shouldn't be such a "verboten" reaction here - imnsho.