From passive to active

I do a lot of reading in Ukrainian. It’s very common in Ukraine to respond in Russian (if that’s your preferred language) when someone talks to you in Ukrainian. I have these sorts of conversations daily. I watch movies in Ukrainian. For all practical purposes my reading and listening are fluent.

Ask me to speak and my pace slows, my vocabulary simplifies and it’s a real effort to sound coherent. Passive and active knowledge are two completely different things.

For a number of reasons, I’ve decided I want to start speaking more Ukrainian than Russians in day-today life. That’s why I’ve found a teacher and am working on bringing up my speaking.

It’s an in interesting experience to know something but not be able to actively recall it, and then working on rewiring those paths within the brain. It makes me wonder more generally about knowledge in the 21st century. Much of what we know is passive. We recognize things and know how to look up the details, but our active recall is shockingly small compared to other cultures where memorizing epic poetry and such was considered the norm.

I can’t say whether this is good or bad, but I wonder how it’s physically affecting our brains.