Scary-Good Grammar. Unpacking the Urban Legend and the Spooky Story

Names and identifying details of every student here are changed, as they are everywhere on the blog.

The story I could not have told twice

I put 12-year-olds to the test with a request: retell in Russian, in 4 sentences, any story they had heard from another.

What I got back was 4 sentences of direct speech. He said, «I saw it,» she said, «it was there.» They put on a little play of it instead of simply telling me what was said.

Why I chalked it up to a vocabulary issue

When a child is unable to report another’s words he will act them out, and that is what gives the retelling an air of untruth.

For some time I considered it a deficiency in connectives. Lacking будто (budto) I would teach it; no что (chto) after a verb of speech and I would drill it. The drills were effective within themselves but did not go an inch beyond, something I observed and left alone for most of a year.

What I had not seen was that reported speech is not a word. It is a clause within a clause and the word order in those does shift when English is the majority language. Zuban and colleagues have shown heritage speakers in the US to be more prone to an English-like order in their embedded clauses than monolinguals. Heritage speakers in Germany were not, and main clauses in every group are as one would expect.

Then there is the matter of formality. Martynova and her team found in their data that this is what prompts the use of embedded clauses above all else. Their speakers will produce far more of them in formal settings than in informal ones, and this holds true for every group they have tested.

A ghost story is put in a difficult spot by this. The genre is informal in its very nature, yet the structure it is built on is exactly what informal talk puts down.

The requirements of reported speech

Three patterns will do for nearly any retelling and a child with them can pass on anything he has been told. One is already there, the other two are the work. Third is the pattern that allows for a legend. With Говорят, будто you are saying somebody put it to you and you are putting it to me without vouching for it; there is no single word in English to make the same point.

A legend that no one will stand behind is one that endures.

That is the whole of the genre and why these stories outlast their originators by decades. You cannot hold someone to account for what he never said he saw.

An example for a lesson

Here is one I have written for a lesson from the common motifs that seem to be in every version of this tale. It is not taken from anyone, the sentences are my own.

Говорят, будто в старом доме на краю города по ночам горит свет. Соседка сказала, что видела его много раз. Она спросила почтальона, кто там живёт, и почтальон ответил, что дом пустой уже 20 лет. Теперь никто не ходит мимо после заката.

Govoryat, budto v starom dome na krayu goroda po nocham gorit svet. Sosedka skazala, chto videla yego mnogo raz. Ona sprosila pochtal’ona, kto tam zhivyot, i pochtal’on otvetil, chto dom pustoy uzhe 20 let. Teper’ nikto ne khodit mimo posle zakata.

They say a light goes on at night in the old house on the edge of town. The neighbor said she had seen it many times. She put the question to the postman as to who was living there and he said the place has been empty for 20 years. Nobody passes by after sunset now.

It is 4 sentences, 3 of them are someone passing along the words of another. There is no action in the piece. No one enters the house or comes to any harm or finds anything. The whole thing is an effect of people repeating each other, none of whom were present.

Turning direct into reported speech

If you read it out loud and count the voices, not one is from a person who was there.

In Russian this is more straightforward than in English and one should tell a child as much. In English the tense is put back: I saw it turns into he said he had seen it. Not so in Russian. Я видела его (ya videla yego) is rendered она сказала, что видела его (ona skazala, chto videla yego), the verb is left as is.

The person is what changes and that is where retellings can go wrong. Я becomes она, мой becomes её. A child who forgets to make the change will inadvertently have the whole story happen to him or her.

With questions the mark is dropped but the order remains. Кто там живёт? (Kto tam zhivyot?) is она спросила, кто там живёт (ona sprosila, kto tam zhivyot). No inversion, no auxiliary of any kind. Only with a yes-or-no query does Russian put in a ли (li): Там кто-нибудь живёт? (Tam kto-nibud’ zhivyot?) becomes она спросила, живёт ли там кто-нибудь (ona sprosila, zhivyot li tam kto-nibud’).

What made it stick

We gave up on drilling and took to gossiping. Each lesson began with 2 minutes of putting down what they had heard. Not stories, but rumors of homework or a teacher not showing up or something said in the hall.

For weeks it did not go well. They would fall back on direct speech and I let it pass without making a correction, which was harder work than correcting and for some time felt like inaction.

Then a girl came along who wished to repeat something without taking the blame for it. She made use of говорят, будто of her own accord for the distance it gives and the construction was no longer just an exercise. My ghost story followed and was simple in comparison since she knew how to put forward what she had not seen with her own eyes. The grammar was in place before the assignment called for it. At Palme School we teach children online, in groups of up to eight, two forty-minute classes a week, and the first two lessons are free. Both courses above take bookings the same way, and the printable material is free whether or not you ever book anything.

Frequently asked questions

What does говорят, будто (govoryat, budto) mean?

They say that, with the source unnamed and the speaker not vouching for it. English has no single phrase that carries the same distance.

Does Russian shift tenses in reported speech the way English does?

No. The verb stays as it was; only the person changes. Я видела его (ya videla yego) becomes она сказала, что видела его (ona skazala, chto videla yego), not она сказала, что была видела его.

Why does my child act out stories instead of reporting them?

Not because the structure is missing. Heritage and monolingual speakers were found to produce embedded clauses at similar rates. What the same study did find is that everybody, in every group, produces far fewer of them in informal situations, and a ghost story is as informal as talk gets. Direct speech is the path of least resistance, not the only path available.

What age is this for?

Around B1 to B2, which in practice means 11 and up. Younger children can do the first pattern and leave the question version for later.

Sources

• Martynova, M., Zuban, Y., Gagarina, N., & Szucsich, L. (2024). Use of embedded clauses in heritage and monolingual Russian. Languages, 9(5), 157. doi.org
• Zuban, Y., Martynova, M., Zerbian, S., Szucsich, L., & Gagarina, N. (2021). Word order in heritage Russian: Clause type and majority language matter. Russian Linguistics, 45, 253. doi.org

Palme School: Conversation school · Russian for bilingual children · Free materials for learners

Lily Rozberg has been teaching for sixteen years, first English in Russia and now Russian to bilingual children across the US and Canada. She writes for Palme School about heritage language, reading, and the things report cards do not measure.