S dniom razhdjenia, America! God Bless America (with the apparent exception of Alaska and Hawaii) on Zoe's first Independence Day!

July 4th was marked with the usual food, fun, fireworks, the flag--and a fifth "F," a new friend--another little girl, almost three years old. Born in America, of Russian descent and bilingual. With a natural preference (along with her mother) for speaking Russian.

The Russian language isn't formally taught to children in the orphanages. Upon evaluation by an international adoption professional here shortly after arrival, we learned Zoe's Russian language skills were typical of a three-year-old Russian orphan--that is to say, well below her non-institutionalized three-year-old Russian peers. The Russian she knew was little more than a few basic phrases essential to her care, feeding and playtime in the orphanage.

From the moment the plane took off from Moscow, Zoe jettisoned her Russian vocabulary in favor of English, which she has picked up at a rapid pace. Over the last eight months, we've experimented with feeling out her Russian whenever we happened to find ourselves in the company of someone who speaks the language. Her reactions upon hearing the language seemed to range from fear and contempt in her first days home to confusion and shyness.

On a recent trip to the beach, we enlisted the aid of a few of the summer workers (largely Russian and Eastern European college students) we met at the shops and restaurants to see how she would react. Zoe's reaction was one of shyness, but she seemed to understand what they were saying, even though she didn't respond.

Getting back to July 4th...Zoe and her new friend Sasha hit it off right away and spent the entire time giggling, playing and chasing after each other, which wasn't surprising. But what was surprising was how they were communicating with each other...in Russian.

While the words and phrases coming from Zoe's mouth while playing with Sasha didn't exactly flow like a Dostoyevsky novel, they were familiar from our days in Russia. "Da" (yes), "nyet" (no), "spaseeba" (thank you), "eye-eye-eye!" (don't do that!), "kreseeba" (pretty) to name a few.

We enlisted Sasha's mother, with whom Zoe had also grown comfortable over several hours, to do a more thorough evaluation. Zoe clearly understood the complex things she was saying. Her responses in Russian were short, but appropriate.

Many adoptive parents seek out formal language classes in an effort to maintain their childrens' heritage. We realize the importance of maintaining heritage, but plan to do so emphasizing the Russian culture rather than the language.

Zoe is a huge Dora the Explorer fan, even picking up a few bits of Spanish from the show and accompanying storybooks. Given where America is heading in the not-so-distant future, I'm thinking Spanish will be a lot more practical and am tempted to give that a shot.

But for next few years, English is priority one for Zoe.

Further complicating the language issue in our family is Zoe's cousin, of Hispanic descent, who begins tenth-grade foreign language class this fall. Her language of choice? Russian.

Yo quiero borscht!

Я хочу Taco Bell!

God Bless America.

  ¶ 5:54 AM 1 comments