Russian

So...

I'm learning Russian. I don't know why, especially since I'm at that stage with trying to learn Estonian (on my own) where I could probably quite easily confuse myself, but I found a Russian teacher and I figured I should try to learn at least one language with professional help.

Why Russian and not, say, French or Spanish?

I don't rightly know, exactly.

I always felt that if you were going to learn a language you should learn one that could be used in a wide number of countries. I refused to learn Japanese when I had the chance because it was only spoken in Japan. I studied Indonesian in school, but largely because that was the only language on offer. I didn't feel the need to pursue it with any vigor as Indonesian is only spoken by Indonesians (and not even all of them). All I can really remember from those lessons is saya tidak mengerti, which means "I don't understand". A little bit useful, but not much.

And yet, here I am, trying to learn Estonian, which is spoken by less than two million people. Why? Because I refuse to have an Estonian passport and be entitled to help from the Estonian embassy if I've never been to Estonia and I can't even speak the language. So I'm trying to learn Estonian and I'm planning a trip to Estonia next yet (just a holiday this time, but with a view to moving there for a year or so in the foreseeable future).

Learning Estonian is, of course, ridiculous. It's ridiculous for exactly the same reason that learning Finnish would be ridiculous. Why try to learn one of the hardest languages on the planet when:

a) only a small group of people speak it,
b) everyone who speaks it also speaks at least one other language - any one of which would be much easier to learn,
and
c) the native speakers have a reputation of having little patience for people who haven't got a complete grip on the language, and can speak your language so much better than you could ever hope to speak theirs?

Plus, the language itself is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but it is. You don't need fourteen cases - especially if you are also going to have prepositions and postpositions. You do need gendered pronouns and articles. Whoever invented the Finno-Ugric languages was a bit like one of those sociopaths who lock up abandoned children in the basement and only speak to them in a series of complicated grunts. I'm almost convinced it was some sort of twisted sociological experiment that has gone on for far too long.

That said, it's so darn pretty to listen to that I can't wait until I understand enough words well enough to hear the meaning behind the poetry. Plus, the fact that it is such a challenge makes me feel strangely victorious whenever I've managed to wrap my head around part of it.

Which leads me to Russian. Okay, it's spoken by more people in more places than Estonian (including Estonia), but a heck of a lot of the non-Russian countries which used to speak it try to avoid it like the plague these days. It will probably help me read a few signs and talk to a few shopkeepers in certain quarters of Estonia, but if I'm not really planning on visiting Russia, and the Estonian speakers would have more respect for me if I spoke French, why learn Russian?

I think its partly because, when I was growing up, Estonia was part of the USSR, and, in the 1980s, the USSR was kind of cool. That was where all the best Bond villains came from. That was where the best competition came from in the Olympics. That was where all of the really cool scientists and artists defected from. The USSR, in the 80s, had a strange attraction for a young kid who read comics and watched action films. Every time you heard about a ballet dancer, gymnast or chess master from an Eastern Block country taking out some big honour, something in the back of your mind would register: "Eastern European countries rock".

That was all tied up with Russia. Knowing very little about Estonia, thanks to my grandmother's more-or-less total assimilation into the Australian culture, every time I learnt something new about Russia or any of the other countries in the USSR, I also felt as if I was learning more about Estonia. After all, it was a member of the Eastern Block...

Even though I have now spoken to enough ex-pat Estonians to know that they don't particularly like Russia, Russian or anything to do with the Russians, something deep down inside of me still feels that learning Russian somehow gets me closer to my Eastern European roots. And, even though Russia itself is now a bit boring and slightly obnoxious, the part of me that grew up during the last hurrah of the Cold War still finds something strangely alluring about it all.

Plus, it comes complete with a new alphabet. The part of me that always loved finding new letters and working out their names and pronunciations is completely over the moon. I mean, I used to amuse myself during boring lectures by translating words into phonetic symbols, so this is just great.

One of these days I'm going to learn French and Spanish, too, but right now it's Estonian and Russian. That will do for the present, I think.