Dr. Seuss in Russian

I have heard from a friend of mine today who lives in Kansas City, MO, and is raising two toddlers. She is trying to raise her kids with Russian and English, but finds it difficult to find Russian literature at reasonable prices. Her son and daughter love Dr. Seuss books (and so does Sasha), and she tries to read those to them in Russian. And, of course, when someone translates on a fly, it's difficult to convey the message while preserving the structure of a poem. Her new find is these Russian poetic translations of Dr. Seuss famous "Cat in the hat", "Horton hears a who", "Horton hatches an egg", and a couple more.

They are published on a Russian poetry page where anyone can publish their poetry. In fact, here is another collection which belongs to a close friend of mine from college: http://www.stihi.ru/avtor/radavilova . Although, all her poetry is in Russian.

Thank you, Olesya, for the link to Dr. Seuss poetry translations. I hope others will also find these helpful.

Fight Alzheimer's with bilingualism

If you weren't yet convinced (still?!) that being bilingual has tons of benefits, consider this: A new research by Canadian neurologists indicates that speaking multiple languages throughout your life helps delay onset of symptoms of dementia.

According to this new study, bilingual individuals were diagnosed with Alzheimer's almost 5 years later than monolinguals. And this cannot be contributed to better education, because in many cases the bilinguals actually had lower level of education, as they immigrated to Canada from other countries.

The researchers explain this phenomenon through the idea that bilingualism requires rapid "code switching" (in other words, you have to quickly go back and forth between two languages in your daily life), which is just another form of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking, as many other brain activities, helps stimulate the brain, thus prolonging its active life.

And one more time, it turns out that our brain is not confused by it, but, on the contrary, gets its exercise from bilingualism.

Sasha signs

So, I am wondering if we need to start a sign language vocabulary page for Sasha, as yesterday he has successfully used his first sign in a context. Greg was reading him books, one after another, and Sasha was signing "more" in between. There was no other interpretation for his sign, because he was actually complaining if you put him down and insisting on more by putting his fingertips together.

Truthfully, we did not teach Sasha sign language early on, when it would be helpful. Apparently, you can teach your baby to sign as early as at 3 months! The benefits are obvious - your child will communicate before he can speak. In our situation, we don't use sign language consistently, and the only signs Sasha uses so far is the pointing sign and "more".

For those who wonder whether communicating with signs diminishes child's ability to learn a spoken language, here is my linguistic opinion: No, it does not. A sign language (whether it is American Sign Language or British Sign Language or French Sign Language) is a language in it's own right. Different sign languages develop independently from each other and if you can sign in ASL, you cannot communicate with a Russian person who speaks Russian sign language. These languages have their own grammar, their own vocabulary and their own form. They also change with time.

So, if you are teaching your baby to sign, you are raising her in a bilingual environment. She might not be bilingual later on, but you are building the foundation to bilingualism with sign language.

Interestingly enough, ASL is widely used in speech therapy in America. I wonder if anybody has ever considered using a spoken language for speech therapy.