I challenged myself to go through Russian toddler/young-children
readers and things. Mostly old soviety stuff from the 60s but it
was enough to help. One of the most helpful things I found was
from a controversial idea from an Israeli linguist from the 90s
- I don't remember his name and I don't know if he's still
around, but he had a brilliantly simple notion: Learn the
infinitive form of the verbs. Learn as much body language/hand
gesture language. Do a lot of pointing. and that's pretty much
it. He advised that we spend a lot of time trying to "speak like
a native" when we should do the opposite: accept that we're a
foreigner, know that good-natured native speakers will be
forgiving of your non-nativeness (which will be obvious even
YEARS into trying to master fluency), and help you along.
controversial idea - goes against everything we're instructed.
But it's exactly what people thrust into cultures have to do
_anyway_ === What ultimately stopped me in learning Russian was:
a) moving to Florida instead of going to the monastery. b)
losing interest in the church / religion thing c) (and #1
really): I don't have much to say to people in my NATIVE
language, so WHY would I have _more to say_ in another language?
:)
