Eva-- What I wrote at the top of my note, thanking Arne (Danke Arne) was
in transliterated Russian. For more than a decade, owing to various technical
factors in the beginning and then my own unfamiliarity with a
cyrrilic keyboard, I have corresponded with Russian colleagues via email
in this strange way. And it IS strange. A colleague sent me a note
using cyrrilic characters to represent English and WOW was it hard to
read!
I read Russian, but slowly, especially if the prose is dense, so I have
a pretty good sense of what it would mean to take a serious part in
READING a Russian conference like xmca and if I were to try writing
in the conference it would provide lots of laughs.... as my talks do
when I am in Moscow... because I freely make up words (Russian is
wonderfully generative that way) and I am understood "double" --
both for what I was trying to express "correctly" AND for the interesting
way in which I cobbled together bits to make the standard meanings,
and perhaps some other interesting variants, visible.
Rosa- The Latin American group is an interesting alternative case for
all the reasons you indicate. And, of course, locally here in San Diego,
our belief that Latino kids benefit from being allowed to express themselves
any way they can, including lots of code switching, comes in for criticism.
Maybe your case arises from a commonality between Spanish and French
culture? :-)
My wife tells me my personality changes when I speak Russian. She
isn't happy about the change! But it does indicate that learning alternative
languages/cultures opens one up to a broader exploration of being in the
world.
mike