Wednesday, March 11, 2009

language learning

An effort to balance out the blog- As you know we have posted a dozen times or so about what we eat, and I have not yet posted about my now 6 weeks in of language school which I attend 4-6 hours a day, so you may get the impression we spend most of our time eating. To combat that misperception here is a story about Language school.

So I am exposed to many new words every day and most of them get filed into that part of the brain where I never find them again but after many exposures they become closer to being a word I can say I and maybe use properly in context. Sometimes these words get exposed in contexts and I remember them as used improperly. Here is an example.

Looking out the window while we were trying to write something someday one of my teachers (I call her the grandmotherly one) said (in Russian of course) Look there is a big "??????." Having no idea what a ?????? is I look out the window and see a traffic jam (which is status quo for most roads in the afternoon around these parts, so it took me a while to realize she was talking about the traffic) Anyhow to describe what a ?????? is she drew a picture of a wine bottle on the blackboard and points to the long thin top. Ok I get it this is an international explanation for traffic jams, traffic works its way through the "bottleneck" ?????? must mean bottle neck. File that word in the to be used again sometime part of the brain.

So a few days later in a different class (with the teacher I call the young energetic one) we are talking about wedding traditions in Russia, low and behold the word ?????? comes up again. The teacher describes how at wedding parties "friends" of the bride and groom try to hit the bride and groom with the ?????? of champagne bottles at the wedding reception party..... So I am picturing bar style bottle bashing on the newly wedded heads.... Not being one to pass judgment on another cultures traditions I hold my skepticism and ask, "Doesn't that hurt?" The teacher replies of course it can hurt so the bride and groom try their best to avoid the ?????? as it is hurled at them.
So now I am picturing mass chaos and a scene from Grey's anatomy or ER at wedding receptions...1

Thinking this can't be right I finally pull out the dictionary and look up the word ??????. Which low and behold means CORK. Not bottle-neck.

This actually reveals quite a bit about how Russians think of traffic.. you see in the states when traffic gets heavy there is usually a way through the traffic jam but it is a narrow pass that only a couple of cars can fit through at a time causing everyone to slow down, right... hence the term bottle neck...
In Russia when traffic stops it is usually because someone has blocked the road, parked car, accident which can't be moved until Police and Insurance companies arrive, city truck driver napping in his truck, someone couldn't find a parking spot so they just put on the hazards and stopped in the middle of the road to run into the store.... Hence the Russian term for traffic jam is a Cork, as in nothing is getting by.

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