Cyrillicism

[rinue]

Am currently listening to one of my roommates speak loudly, quickly, and passionately in Russian, and have realized that at that speed, I find Russian indistinguishable from gibberish. I could swear she just said "baa baa blah bee ho." I'm starting to suspect that she doesn't speak Russian at all and is just making it up. And by "she" I mean all Russian speakers. Note that the Soviet Union is the only place Esperanto really caught on. Clearly, they are messing with us. Mind you, it might not be Russian at all; it could be Belarusian, or something - I'm just hearing a lot of "da"s. It's kind of slushy.

Have met my third roommate, who, following a trend, is very nice. She's Brazilian, and she's here studying English. As the room's native English speaker, I am regularly peppered with questions like "what do you call the holes in the moon?" which makes me want to write miles and miles of songs and poetry. There's also the occasional game of charades, and requests that I repeat back sentences so that they have the same meaning but use different structures and words. It's wonderful; it's like living in a crossword puzzle where I know all the answers.

I spent probably three hours of my day walking. I was going fairly quickly. I have no idea how much ground I covered (much of it the same ground). My feet are tingling.

Comments

[azzy23.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised heheheh Russian is a lovely language. I wish I'd learned more of it!! (I can count and say a few words).

interesting monolog of untranslatable russian

[paul-broom.livejournal.com]

i'm always so shy speaking english.but i try to improve.please correct me.

[paul-broom.livejournal.com]

ah, your roommate is from Russia? so nice!say her that "ты молодчинка" ("attagirl"if t only use this word in a right way).
have you ever heard Belarusian speech?

P.S. American ambassador in Belarus seems to be cute :-)

Re: i'm always so shy speaking english.but i try to improve.please correct me.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually worked out where she's from, partly because I don't know Slavic languages at all - I have no idea which ones I've heard and not heard. It's kind of embarassing. I haven't been able to ask her much about herself because every time both of us have been in the room, at least one of us has been asleep or on the phone.

Re: i'm always so shy speaking english.but i try to improve.please correct me.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Your English has been perfectly nice so far, by the way. I'll let you know if anything ever sticks out at me.

Esperanto

[(Anonymous)]

Esperanto is more popular in brazil and europe.

Re: Esperanto

[rinue.livejournal.com]

That's probably true these days, and unsurprisingly given the lingual roots; I just know that in the 70s, the USSR had a major program trying to get people to learn Esperanto so that they'd have a language in common (and as a gesture that said "hey look, we're not trying to make you learn Russian - we're not an empire trying to colonize you, we're equals!")