Mom Was Washing a Frame, or What You Should Expect to Learn During Your Two Years of College Russian
One of the first sentences that native Russian speakers traditionally learned to read in the Soviet-time elementary schools was this: Мама мыла раму (Mom was washing a [window] frame). This sentence became a cultural phenomenon in itself and is still widely used in the Russian media. There is a talk-show by that name, and advertisers love to exploit it as a catchy phrase.
In the United States, however, the English-speakers who are learning Russian couldn’t care less about that window-cleaning Russian mom. As a Russian professor, I make sure that my students learn only the vocabulary which help them immediately start using Russian in the real-life context (there is plenty of it here in California.) A word for window frame is certainly not on the top of my vocab list for students. However, if we just take that famous, time-venerated sentence as a point of departure and look at what students are supposed to learn during their two years of college Russian at a U.S. community college, this is what they would be expected to say about the matter in the end of each semester:
RUSS 401: Мама уже мыла раму или только будет мыть?
Has Mom already washed the frame or is she just going to?
RUSS 402: Наверное, завтра наша мама наконец помоет эту старую раму.
Probably tomorrow, our Mom will finally wash this old frame.
RUSS 411: На мой взгляд, мама вообще не должна мыть рамы, так как в последнее время она работает в две смены, почти без выходных.
In my view, Mom shouldn’t wash any frames at all as she has been working two shifts lately, almost with no days off.
RUSS 412: По данным последнего социологического опроса, работающие матери занимаются мойкой окон не чаще одного раза в год и уделяют этому занятию не более полутора часов.
According to the last social survey, working mothers wash their windows no more frequently than once a year and spend on it no more than 1.5 hrs.
This, in the nutshell, is the progression of learning Russian: from simple alternative questions to perfective verbs and declensions of adjectives and possessive pronouns to subordinate clauses and well-reasoned expression of opinion, and, finally, to the language of mass media and discussions on topics of public interest. Please keep in mind that each language is unique, and the progression of learning is always language-specific. Happy language learning!
