Just Say Nyet

Russian

Riding the bus everyday is boring. So I have been studying Russian because it gives me something to do, besides I like it when people sit next to me on the bus looking all perplexed wondering what strange thing I'm up to and what kind of strange writing I'm looking at. It looks like Russian but it can’t be because she’s a fat black woman and fat black women don’t learn Russian, they read the bible, pancake recipes, food stamp rule books etc but not Russian.

Oh but I have a degree in Linguistics-- they don’t know that and I don’t bother to tell them, so I have a lot of fun.

The main reason I’m studying it is because the Russian people fascinate me. Those are some hardy people. I really like them. They lead hard lives, their language is hard, their climate is ridiculous, they lived for a long time under the paranoid secretive ultra military oriented Soviet Union, their language has too many fricking consonants and don't even get me started on those damned nesting dolls. Yet they still love their country, and they drop consonants every now when they have too many of them in a row and they know how to enjoy themselves under such hardships.

You know a language is hard when you have to buy a vowel just to say “Hello”. Здравствуйте! pronounced zdravst vooityeah-- that’s “Hello”. And "Hi "isn't much better privyet. “Hi”...privyet....”Hello”....zdravstvooityeah! In my little pronunciation book and the word Gulag is on the third page of the pronunciation exercises. Gulag? (It’s an acronym for prison camp and is pronounced Goolak). This word has a very negative connotation in America, being a place for political prisoners. When you first learn a foreign language you learn words like Mama, Papa, Pencil, Book House, not Prison Camp. You usually have to be way up into a language before they start airing their dirty laundry. You probably don’t learn how to say Concentration Camp in German until well after your first year. But in Russian its right there on page 3.

And how many times a day do you say “Hello” in a day? If I had to say Здравствуйте! 20 times a day, everyday, I would have to stop speaking to people. I'd be one of those people that when you speak to them they just look at you or give a lukewarm semi smile because they can’t muster the energy or social skills to say the word “hi”—these clowns wouldn’t make it in Russia.

Anyway I was thinking….. about poor Vladimir, falsely imprisoned in the Gulag because some jealous coworker made up a lie about him, only to find out that while he was serving his sentence his favorite uncle died from radiation poisoning while serving patriotically aboard the submarine K19, the Widowmaker.

Since Since Vlad lives a couple of hundred miles downwind from Chernobyl he has this weepy liver and big brown pus filled spots on his back for which he has received treatment because it takes months to see a doctor in the Gulag. The tips of his hands are black from frostbite from digging ditches in the hard dirty snow in the below zero Siberian wilderness.

His appeal is finally heard and he is finally released. He takes the long train ride (which takes three days from all the stops and mechanical failures) back to his tiny little village and finally makes it back to his home where his mother gives his frozen face a kiss in between her hacking coughing fits from pneumonia. He smiles, happy to be home and then he sits down to a big steaming bowl of borscht. Borscht?? Borscht?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht



Vlad...Vlad don’t do it, don’t do it Comrade, step… away… from… the… borscht. Look at this, Vlad. It's a juicy hot cheeseburger with pickles, mayonnaise, crisp green lettuce, and ripe red tomato----

Carla, you had me at Здравствуйте!