Born in small villages in Udmurtia, my parents are Udmurt and are fluent in Udmurt. When I was born they spoke to each other in Russian; everyone around me—kids on the playground, at school, teachers, and everyone on TV—spoke Russian. In my childhood the only place where people spoke Udmurt was the village where my maternal grandmother lived, the place where the Udmurt language is alive. It is there that I learned polite expressions like “тау бадзым” (thank you very much). As Russian-speaking children, we did not have Udmurt lessons and Udmurt literature classes at school.