Where did LHO learn to speak Russian (with a Polish accent)?

[Tony Krome]

32 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

The fact that he spoke Russian so well when he met Marina is revealing.

First Google hit;

The Foreign Service Institute of the United States has determined that it takes about 1100 hours of study to reach fluency in Russian. If you're willing to study 3 hours every day, it could take you a year to reach that level.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

First Google hit;

The Foreign Service Institute of the United States has determined that it takes about 1100 hours of study to reach fluency in Russian. If you're willing to study 3 hours every day, it could take you a year to reach that level.

I can't argue that.

On one side : I don't know what that would be compared to learning it while "working, living and loving" in Russia,  and as such being obliged to use the language :

- oct 1959 to june 1962 (almost 3 years)

- and before that, he did have an interest and made some efforts to learn the language (he likely took some lessons and by himself (music/literature)

Combining those factors, they could lead to a degree of fluency i.m.o. ?  That is, by the time he came back to the USA....   perhaps not enough yet when he met Marina (18 months there or so ?).  

On the mistakes he made (pretty much every witness said that) couldn't that be explained by the way he learned it ? 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Karl Hilliard]

11 hours ago, David Lifton said:

 The issue explored here, on this thread, is not Oswald's "southern accent" (when  he spoke English), but the source of his accent when he spoke Russian.  When he was living in Minsk, USSR, and met Marina at the dance (March 1961),  Marina immediately recognized that he spoke Russian with some kind of accent, which she  (Marina) took to be someone who (she thought) was from one of the "Baltic" states.

 

Hello David....my wife [of 22 years now] still speaks English with a Russian accent and she always will. People that don't know that she is from the former Soviet Union [Ukraine] can tell that she has a foreign accent but still have to ask her just exactly where she is from. On the other hand...my Russian is terrible and she reminds me that I still have a Texas drawl no matter how hard I try to conceal it. My Spanish is mediocre but still, I have this American accent and always will. Point being that the natural tendency is to retain your native accent. It is possible I guess, to learn how to disguise it but why bother? Anyway about Marina...she was very young and impressionable I gather, when she got married and came to Texas.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Thanks for clarifying George de Mohrenschildt's early years, Jean Paul! National borders changed a lot in eastern Europe, especially during the first few decades of the 20th century. It's worth remembering that national borders rarely if ever match the distribution of languages (I've been told there are German-speaking communities inside the Belgian border, for example). Plenty of people in 'Poland' at any one time would have been native speakers of other languages, and would not have considered themselves Polish.

Greg - yes, the question of whether Oswald was taught by David Lifton's friend's mother's next-door neighbour's nephew's doctor's cousin's postman's niece, Ms 'Balinowski', is potentially of far more importance than whether he picked up a Polish accent from her.

If she was teaching Russian to GIs in Santa Ana at the same time as Oswald was learning Russian as a GI in Santa Ana, it's certainly possible that this would help to explain Oswald's acquisition of Russian. But the claim that he had a Polish accent is weak. It seems much more likely that he had an American accent.

I recall that Oswald went off by himself occasionally at the weekends while in California. It could well be that he was taking Russian lessons from Ms 'Balinowski' then.

There is also a plausible scenario in which Oswald learned Russian from official sources while in the Marines. The full version of the article which Larry Hancock mentioned (http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language) shows that Oswald had three opportunities to receive tuition/instruction (delete as appropriate), unknown to his fellow Marines:

1. A 20-day period up to 15 November 1957, officially spent in  hospital for the treatment of a minor wound.
2. A 48-day period up to 13 August 1958, officially in detention after a court martial.
3. A one-week period up to 6 October 1958, officially in hospital for a minor infection.

The second of these periods would have allowed just over six weeks' worth of intensive learning. After that, there was a period of just over six months before he sat his Russian exam (on 25 February 1959), during which time Oswald taught himself the language using recordings, books, newspapers and a Russian-English dictionary (and perhaps face-to-face tuition from a Russian-speaking Polish civilian).

This schedule is consistent with the Marine guidelines for taking the foreign-language exam: an intensive six-week course, followed by an exam six months later.

It is also consistent with Oswald's application to Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland, in which he claimed that he knew "Russian (equal in fluency to 1 year of schooling)", which happens to match the source which Tony Krome discovered.

This scenario is explained here:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2313p25-oswald-and-the-russian-language#40367

Edited September 23, 2022 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Corrected a typo

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Thanks for clarifying George de Mohrenschildt's early years, Jean Paul! National borders changed a lot in eastern Europe, especially during the first few decades of the 20th century. It's worth remembering that national borders rarely if ever match the distribution of languages (I've been told there are German-speaking communities inside the Belgian border, for example). Plenty of people in 'Poland' at any one time would have been native speakers of other languages, and would not have considered themselves Polish.

 

Belgium indeed has a German speaking community, some 100,000 living there.  It's a long and complicated history, but Wiki makes a nice summary :

Quote : "Eupen-Malmedy became part of Belgium in the aftermath of World War I. The region, which had formerly been part of Prussia and the German Empire, was allocated to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles. It was formally annexed after a controversial referendum in 1920, becoming part of Liège Province in 1925. Agitation by German nationalists during the interwar period led to its re-annexation by poopoo Germany during World War II. It was returned to Belgium in 1945. Nine of the eleven municipalities which originally constituted Eupen-Malmedy now form the German-speaking Community of Belgium, one of Belgium's three federal communities. (Flemish, French and German)."

The cities where pretty much completely destroyed during the Battle of the Bulge.

But even worse... the German speaking people there were forced to go in the German army.  Some of them found themselves shooting at their own houses.  It was a crazy situation, the families were happy to be liberated by the US soldiers, but were treated like Germans.  And the Germans didn't trust them either.... 

One of the best books within this theme is The Unknown Dead: Civilians in the Battle of the Bulge
by Peter Schrijvers, it really is a masterpiece and unique within the topic.  

You can do some pre-reading from Google-books :

https://books.google.be/books?id=6HuLY9HObA4C&pg=PT450&lpg=PT450&dq=cruel+as+ice+peter+schrijvers&source=bl&ots=XPmgSMExwg&sig=ACfU3U1hiuFHfWEJy3krgpKks1ICzTy2JQ&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIzKHT_ar6AhUpg_0HHZ8MCaMQ6AF6BAghEAM#v=onepage&q=cruel as ice peter schrijvers&f=false

Edited September 23, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Guest]

To get back on-topic, I have a question for ALL the english speaking persons here.

How does LHO sound to you when you hear him speaking english (e.g. in the TV debate - to the press - ... ) ?

Does he have a New-York accent, a Southern drawl, ... ?   

To me, it sounds like he is articulating with a little above normal precision (hard for me to describe).

Could be the circumstances of course (TV, reporters,....) and not his usual accent in among friends.  

We know his writing was poor (so is mine) but how did he sound in english... ?

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

How does LHO sound to you when you hear him speaking english (e.g. in the TV debate - to the press - ... ) ?

Does he have a New-York accent, a Southern drawl, ... ?

 

When I listen to Oswald speak I hear no accent at all. Though he does occasionally say a word the way a southerner would.

I live in Utah and used to live in California. I hear no accent in either place or in most American movies and TV shows. I think the accent is referred to a "general American" or "standard American."

I think I once heard Oswald say "aks" instead of "ask." I had only heard black people say it that way before, and that was in California. Maybe that comes from the south.

 

[Ron Ege]

58 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

When I listen to Oswald speak I hear no accent at all. Though he does occasionally say a word the way a southerner would.

I live in Utah and used to live in California. I hear no accent in either place or in most American movies and TV shows. I think the accent is referred to a "general American" or "standard American."

I think I once heard Oswald say "aks" instead of "ask." I had only heard black people say it that way before, and that was in California. Maybe that comes from the south.

 

Sandy,

Agree with the "no accent".  Interesting, interplay of his time in TX, NY, and LA, and  . . . . ?  Apparently, that combination "erased" any of the usual accents we've come to know.

I lived in IN, AZ, CA, TX, MS, SC, ND, MD, MI, GA, OH, and WA.  Have traveled extensively and spent at least a little bit of time in the rest of the states.

Teaching middle school for 17 years here in northern IN, most of the Black students said "aks" for "ask".  I've never heard it anywhere else, unless it was an unintentional misspeak, and the person always corrected it right away.  So, I'm thinking that it is simply an ingrained part of the regional dialect.

In the kids' defense, I often hear, "I doe not" for "I do not" - and it goes uncorrected by the person - many of whom are well-educated - some are even TV and/or radio announcers.

When I lived in Charleston, SC, in the early-mid '60s, my landlord spoke Geech.  After knowing the man two and a half years, I still understood only half of what he said.

I see Oswald as being articulate, especially considering his level of formal education.  It's one thing to read extensively, therefore building a reading and listening vocabulary.  Incorporating that into a speaking vocabulary takes some practice.  

[Sandy Larsen]

26 minutes ago, Ron Ege said:

When I lived in Charleston, SC, in the early-mid '60s, my landlord spoke Geech.  After knowing the man two and a half years, I still understood only half of what he said.

 

Geech (a.k.a. Geechee) is a new word for me.  

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Deleted - wrong thread! Duh!

Edited September 24, 2022 by Jeremy Bojczuk

[Guest]

On 9/18/2022 at 7:15 PM, Greg Doudna said:

I looked up in Ernst Titovets' book, Oswald: Russian Episode (2010), all the references in the index to Oswald and Russian language. Titovets presents Oswald as not knowing Russian upon arrival, learning after arrival, and makes references to a "foreign accent" in Oswald's Russian which was assumed by him and his friends to be simply because Lee was American.

p. 95, "speaking broken Russian with a heavy American accent..."

p. 110, "The girls immediately caught his foreign accent..."

p. 236, "He spoke Russian with a foreign accent..."

p. 245, "Oswald spoke Russian with a foreign accent..."

p. 249, "Alik [Lee] spoke Russian with a heavy foreign accent..."

However at one point Titovets quotes from Priscilla McMillan's Marina and Lee (1978) which gives a different interpretation of the accent in Russian. It occurs in the context of a romanticized (Titovets considers somewhat fictionalized) account of Marina's first introduction to Lee (quoting McMillan at p. 251 in Titovets):

"... He was wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and a white tie of some funny foreign material. The tie and his accent told her immediately that he was not a Russian. He must be from Latvia or Estonia"

Titovets adds that according to McMillan, Marina and Lee, "Marina claims that even after having met Alik she still had no idea that he was an American. Her realization came some time later". Titovets quotes differently on that point from an interview of his own with Yuri Merezhinski, the person who introduced Lee to Marina. Yuri said Marina knew Oswald was an American at that introduction because Yuri told Marina who he was.

 

Just received Titovets' book today, it is the 3rd ed. 2020. 

Not to nitpick 😇  , because it's about his American accent (not his Russian) :  in the new -  sept. 2020 -  preface (XVII and XVIII)  he makes a little "cynical" remark on using the KGB tapes in Moscow to conduct an extended forensic study of Oswald's Southern accent (please note : he mentions this in the Mailer context...).

I suppose there are different opinions on his accent (if any) in his native language. People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest (as with so many facets in this case). 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Jonathan Cohen]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:52 AM, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

Not to nitpick 😇  , because it's about his American accent (not his Russian) :  in the new -  sept. 2020 -  preface (XVII and XVIII)  he makes a little "cynical" remark on using the KGB tapes in Moscow to conduct an extended forensic study of Oswald's Southern accent (please note : he mentions this in the Mailer context...).

I suppose there are different opinions on his accent (if any) in his native language. People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest (as with so many facets in this case). 

Speaking of the Mailer context, I highly recommend his book "Oswald's Game" to anyone who has doubts about the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald's Russian-language abilities. The first-hand witness testimony therein destroys the ridiculous "Harvey and Lee" theory of two Oswalds.

[Stu Wexler]

Be very careful when characterizing New Orleans accents. Everyone assumes Cajun-like. But I went to school there for 4 years. And some folks can almost pass for NY, esp if they lived out of state for a while.

See, for example, actor Anthony Mackie.

Stu

[Pete Mellor]

On 9/26/2022 at 3:52 PM, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

I suppose there are different opinions on his accent (if any) in his native language. People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest (as with so many facets in this case). 

Caught a touch of Paul Simon there J.P.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

[Guest]

Haha 👍

Well, I just looked into the lyrics and it seems there's a lot more that could apply to LHO 

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of a railway station running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know

Asking only workman's wages
I come looking for a job

 

etc

After changes we are more or less the same

Then I'm laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone, going home
Where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me
Leading me, going home

 

Not that I am making LHO a victim, I'm still on the fence about that one.

 

The only thing I know is his pre-military years must have been plain terrible with very little to hold on to.          

Edited September 28, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans