Cabbages

OK, so here’s a question for you: Why would Russians call Nadene Henry (my grandma) and Gayla Herrington(my friend) cabbages?
(answer next blog)



Who’s On First?
OK, so it’s hard to speak Russian, but who says it’s easy to speak English? Think about these words:

through, thorough, though, thought, and tough.

They all start with a “t,” and they all have the letters “ough” in them in a row, and yet, their pronunciations are widely different.

Ken has been cracking me up with his variation of a “Who’s on First?” Russian routine. We bought and ate a delicious pancake sort of thing from a street vendor, and he attempted to tell one of the students about the experience. He told her, “We ate BLEE-nee.” She had no idea what he was talking about, so he repeated the sentence over again, only louder this time. Finally, she understood and said that it’s blih-NEE (emphasis on the 2nd syllable, but otherwise the same). Ken told me it’s like he kept telling someone over and over, “I ate an up-PUHL” instead of saying “APP-puhl” (apple)!

He continued by doing a couple more variations of his Russian shtick to me, saying things like “Have you noticed that ‘what’ and ‘100’ are the same in Russian? They’re both pronounced like “sh-TOE.” So, he proceeded to demonstrate, first in Russian and then in English:

Question: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Answer: sh-TOE (meaning 100)
Question again: sh-TOE? (meaning what)
Response, only more frustrated: Yeah, that’s what I said, sh-TOE (100)!

Oh well, you get the point (or at least Abbott and Costello would have)!