The Imperfect Parent

I’ve always been insatiably curious about a great many things other people seem to take for granted or have no interest in. How did language evolve, and what do the words we use tell us about the way we think? How can we use evolutionary theory to make unique and testable predictions about our own behaviors? If I can visualize vector transformation across a Riemann manifold, can I abstract this to a 9-dimensional equivalent? And of course, the perennial why do humans keep doing such stupid stuff?

Although I’m not naturally gifted when it comes to learning languages, I always want to be able to speak enough of the language of wherever I find myself in order to understand more about the people and the culture. My curiosity is sufficient to spur me to make the effort — in my case, a very significant effort — to acquire a new language. And so it was that when I began to make regular trips to Ukraine and Russia in the 2000s I decided to learn Russian.

(Note: although in recent years the Ukrainian government has made huge efforts to get more citizens speaking Ukrainian and relying less on Russian, the fact is that aside from the very west of Ukraine most people still speak Russian as their daily language, as do those not only in Belarus and Russia itself but also across most of what used to be the USSR.)

I took the same approach to learning Russian as I’d taken with previous languages, based on my experience as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. I bought Russian language textbooks and I supplemented these with DVDs of…