Keith Gessen racconta per il New Yorker della sua scelta di insegnare il russo al figlio, pur non essendo egli stesso madrelingua e ben sapendo che il vantaggio cognitivo dei bilingui è tutt’altro che dimostrato.

I no longer remember when I started speaking to Raffi in Russian. I didn’t speak to him in Russian when he was in his mother’s womb, though I’ve since learned that this is when babies first start recognizing sound patterns. And I didn’t speak to him in Russian in the first few weeks of his life; it felt ridiculous to do so. All he could do was sleep and scream and breast-feed, and really the person I was talking to when I talked to him was his mother, Emily, who was sleep-deprived and on edge and needed company. She does not know Russian.

Immagine: Dmitry Ivanov