Why is it so rare to be perfectly bilingual in English and a Slavic language?

[Willow]

A very simple reason: the slavic languages are not viewed as prestigious ones, therefore the language of the new home country is strongly preferred, with the "a child should have only one native language or they'll speak them both wrong" myth still being well alive. That is why not only heritage speakers but also children and teenagers having been moved abroad lose so much.

I will agree here: it's a peculiar humiliation typical for slavic mentality (perhaps, for every slavic ethnicity)
Why does it even exist? It's a pretty difficult matter, perhaps, it's somehow connected with unfortunate events in the history of those nations

[Speakeasy]

A very simple reason: the slavic languages are not viewed as prestigious ones ... I will agree here: it's a peculiar humiliation typical for slavic mentality (perhaps, for every slavic ethnicity) ... Why does it even exist? It's a pretty difficult matter, perhaps, it's somehow connected with unfortunate events in the history of those nations ?

No, it's all about the Golden Rule. When a language owns the gold, it makes the rules ... because of its "economic clout."

Image: This is "clout"

[reineke]

That's a ball. There are around 20 million foreign-born Latinos in the US. Foreign born Vietnamese and Chinese Americans outnumber all the foreign born Slavs. It's not hard to find Latinos or Chinese Americans who do not speak "their" languages as it is not hard to find very proficient bilinguals.
Children from smaller communities and isolated families are less likely to grow up bilingual.

Regarding perfection:

"Born in 1899, in a wealthy aristocratic Russian family, Vladimir Nabokov was raised in three languages: Russian, French, beloved by Russian aristocracy, and English, highly esteemed by his Anglophile father. In 1919, the family, forced to flee from the Russian revolution, moved to England, where Vladimir attended Cambridge, and then made a home in Berlin. By the time Nabokov arrived in the US in 1940, he had been writing in Russian for more than three decades and publishing for two yet he is primarily known as an English-language writer. Nabokov’s mastery of English was such that he never hesitated at writing his memoir in English but the task turned out to be extremely challenging even for this master stylist, due to the tension between the language of the memories (primarily Russian) and the language of the telling (English)."

Bilingual memory
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psycho ... mory%3famp

[aokoye]

That's a ball. There are around 20 million foreign-born Latinos in the US. Foreign born Vietnamese and Chinese Americans outnumber all the foreign born Slavs. It's not hard to find Latinos or Chinese Americans who do not speak "their" languages as it is not hard to find very proficient bilinguals.
Children from smaller communities and isolated families are less likely to grow up bilingual.

And, again, this is also an issue of all children end up with some subtractive bilingualism even if their English skills are far less than their English L1 speaking peers. The major exception that I can think of is a chunk of L1 Spanish children who were put in "bilingual" schools in NYC but that's all about politics (why were the schools started, who pushed for the schools, and why was the instruction organized the way it was). It's not about, "oh well one non English language is less prestigious than another" as some have submitted, it's about needing to assimilate in a school environment. If you have a kid whose L1 is French, a prestige language in the US, and they don't have any French input in school (as in, they are not in a French immersion school where most of the education is in French), you can bet your arse that they are going to lose at the very least some of their French.

I haven't even touched on how the education level, in the traditional sense of the word, the children's parent(s) plays a role and their SES. The immigrant experience for people who are in the US, or any other country, for economic reasons is very different than those who are for humanitarian needs. Additionally adults who come to the US for family reunification reasons also typically have lower levels of English than those who come for economic reasons.

I should note that this specific topic is something that I've been studying fairly intensely and is one of my main research interests, I'm not just pulling this info out of thin air.

[LinguaPony]

In Russia Nabokov is known as a Russian-language writer. I know, of course, that he wrote in two languages, but I'm not sure how many of my compatriots are aware of the fact.

[rdearman]

In Russia Nabokov is known as a Russian-language writer. I know, of course, that he wrote in two languages, but I'm not sure how many of my compatriots are aware of the fact.

All I know is that his name is in a song by the Police.

[Serpent]

I'm not sure if he'd object to this, but espejismo definitely seems very much bilingual to me. He grew up in Moscow, moved to New York in his early teens and then moved back to Russia a few years ago. I met him for the first time when he was visiting Moscow briefly (ie still living in the USA), and I think he was making some deliberate effort with his Russian. He was a bit frustrated that people in Moscow seemed to be using more English words in their Russian speech than he did
After he returned he worked at a language school, and he counted as a native teacher there (I think most were British/American). It seems like he's conquered the major obstacles for any Russian learning English - the grammar (especially the articles) and the pronunciation.

Also, Slavic speakers are very prone to prescriptivism, and every little mistake is a big deal to us, both in L1 and English. Our own lack of confidence is an obstacle in itself.
(Somehow this reminds me on that quote about Russians having both a superiority and inferiority complex at the same time. If we do, this certainly applies to language as well)

I've met some Russians in Finland whose skills had deteriorated drastically. Each time I was on the verge of asking them how they had learned Russian (because for a foreigner their level would've been impressive). However, when my family members happened to be with me on such occasions, somehow they always assumed correctly that the person was in fact a native, and barely noticed any "mistakes" that to me were dead giveaways (except they weren't).

These giveaways normally had to do with morphology. I do think that relying on the morphology allows for less ambiguity in terms of marking things as (un)grammatical. Syntactical changes are more neat and seamless.

[DaveBee]

I haven't even touched on how the education level, in the traditional sense of the word, the children's parent(s) plays a role and their SES. The immigrant experience for people who are in the US, or any other country, for economic reasons is very different than those who are for humanitarian needs. Additionally adults who come to the US for family reunification reasons also typically have lower levels of English than those who come for economic reasons.

I should note that this specific topic is something that I've been studying fairly intensely and is one of my main research interests, I'm not just pulling this info out of thin air.

I watched a series of Motessori videos recently. One of the things the teacher was trying very hard to do was to increase the richness of the children's vocabulary as any disadvantage here would likely continue throughout their school career/life and impact their achievements.

[Dylan95]

After studying Russian for 2 years in college and 1 year in Russia I took an advanced Russian course at my university with one other student. She was a Russian heritage speaker who had taken a few advanced Russian classes in college and who had visited Russia at least several times. She didn't have any trace of an accent, but her grammar and vocabulary were worse than mine. The vocab part didn't surprise me because she obviously didn't discuss those kinds of topics with her family, but I was surprised about the frequent grammatical errors.



Also here's a video of Milas Kunis speaking Russian (her native language). I'll leave it to native speakers to judge her accent, but I thought it was pretty obvious that she's American because the way she talks sounds the way a lot of American girls speak. It's kind of strange listening to her because it doesn't sound quite like a native Russian speaker who has spent their whole life in Russia, but it also doesn't sound anything at all like an American who has learned Russian as a second language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhMQhMFgE-Y

[eido]

A very simple reason: the slavic languages are not viewed as prestigious ones, therefore the language of the new home country is strongly preferred, with the "a child should have only one native language or they'll speak them both wrong" myth still being well alive.

My parents cite this as the reason they didn't teach me Polish, or rather, speak to me in Polish. Granted, my dad doesn't speak it fluently and my mom can only really understand it now - she speaks it with difficulty - but if they had been able to speak it well and this was their reason for not giving me a chance to speak my language, I would be even more pissed.
Polish is prestigious. It sounds like a storm, thunder clashing, worlds moving. It's powerful. Everyone should take a moment to listen to its greatness and kneel.