In my opinion a lot of people in international marriages doesn't fully understand the importance of languages.
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The following is copied from an earlier letter before divorcing with Lena.
My Ukraine wife for the last 13 years.
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About learning the language.
The barrier that can make or brake your marriage.
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Back in the days when writing letters,
I always touched on the importance of learning the native language of your destination.
If a woman didn't have a basic foundation in English or German already,
I considered it a waste of time to go forward.
In my opinion; most intelligent RW that are serious about moving to another country for marriage,
starts by learning a little English first.
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It is among my deepest beliefs; that for an intelligent, thinking person to feel at home and flourish in a society,
he needs to master the language to absolute perfection.
Not only grammatically correct, but all the subtle nuances adding additional depth to the spoken word.
A task so easy in youth, getting increasingly harder the older you get.
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From personal experience I have observed that some people can happily live their entire lives in a society
without knowing more than minuscule percentage of their language.
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Me, not. Neither would I want my future wife to be isolated by language in her new country.
Truly learning a new language is a long and hard journey that will take several years.
but the only alternative for happiness in my opinion is returning to where she came from.
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Through the years here at home I have seen many well educated women from FSU
working in low paid jobs far below their rank because they married a man that didn't
understand or want the burden of struggling for years perfecting his wife's new language.
Almost all of those divorced a few years later.
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When I started writing with Lena her English was above basic.
During the following eight months she rose to above good in writing and on the phone.
I offered to help pay for her classes early on, but she refused.
From the first day we met, communicating was mostly painless.
Before leaving from Kiev we visited several book stores in search of Russian-Norwegian dictionaries.
She then started learning Norwegian on her own immediately after arriving here.
Later, as soon as we got her enrolled, she took classes in school.
On top of that I found a young fluent speaking female teacher from Moscow,
for an additional hour or two every other evening.
Lena's first years in Norway was mostly dedicated to learning Norwegian.
And she is still learning to this day, even though her grammar now is above most native citizen.
Without mastering the language she wouldn't have been able to reeducate and kick start a new career either.
She is working as an auditor in the Norwegian Tax Department.
For her present position, investigating tax fraud and preparing reports to be used as evidence in court,
a perfect language is an absolute requirement.
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Later when we (my wife) planned for kids we decided to let them learn both Russian and Norwegian.
I would speak and learn them Norwegian, while Lena would communicate only in Russian, and she still does
On top of that we enrolled them in an English speaking kindergarten and later a private English speaking school.
It has paid off as planned, today at the age of ten they are mastering three languages fluently.
(Slightly behind in Russian as they have only one source of input.)
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From what I have observed, if you start learning at age 20 or older with no basement, it takes ten years or more.
And that is ten years of listening, correcting, learning and having a dictionary available at all times.
Asking questions about how to pronounce or build a specific sentence every day.
Not only living there and speaking the language.
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There is a large network of Russian speaking women in southern Norway.
According to Lena, all of them speak Norwegian, but less than ten percent speaks truly fluent Norwegian.
The level of language is worst among those who came here without knowing English first.
Today she is no longer dependent on this network to "feel at home".
She has been able to find new friends based on common interest instead of common language.
You will see this throughout the world,
how immigrants in countries builds communities based on a common language.
Because they need a place to feel at home.
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I listened to Swedish Radio a few weeks ago about discrimination by language,
They were interviewing older immigrants having lived in Sweden for most of their life.
Educated people speaking fluent Swedish, but with a strong accent.
Telling how they had been discriminated in everyday life when asking for help,
voicing their opinion, applying for positions at work and so forth.....
I have seen the same here at home, again and again,
it just shows the strength of bonds tied through language.
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Did Lena think it was important for me to learn Russian?
Absolutely not, she wanted all of our resources to be used for her to learn Norwegian first.
She couldn't see any reason for me to dedicate a lot of my already limited time,
for something I would barely have any use for.
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But I did learn a little Russian before marrying.
As I was driving by car in Russia and Ukraine for meeting with women,
I needed to learn the alphabet for reading road names.
And also a few words for directions, like left, right and straight ahead.
Of course being able to count and a few more basics was also necessary.
But I couldn't understand or speak at all.
Before going to Ukraine by car for a month this summer,
I picked up on learning again, so I could manage a simple conversation by phone.
To arrange a meeting with a Russian speaking woman I needed some 100 more words,
and 20-30 basic sentences related to discussing where and when to meet.
And avoiding a catastrophe when something went wrong.
It worked very well, but got me into some funny situations,
because the women didn't realize my severely restricted understanding of Russian.
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In my opinion,,,,,
use whatever time you available for learning her language before she arrives in your country.
But from the day she arrives,,,,
use all your resources for integrating her as smoothly as possible in her new environment.
And most of all integrating her through language.
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Jan

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Photo shows Lena 13 years ago in front of the free Norwegian school