As for me and my house we will serve the Lord....



Monday, November 22, 2010

Reading signs - or a little Russian lesson







We are getting better at Russian- Garry can do simple conversations with people, and I know a lot of words- although I have troble remembering them when I need to use them. However we are pretty good at sounding out the alphabet- so billbloards are fun. Often they have some English on---if you see the letters V---in Russian that sound is what looks like a capital B (a lower-case looking b with a cap on is the B sound) or S ---which is made by the C in "parusskie" -explaining why the USSR looks like CCCP (P is the R sound in Russian) Check out the photo of sign downtown near "Most" by a bread- or xleb kiosk (x is the H- but in this case a light 'ha' sound at the beginning of the word)It seems to be some kind of takeoff of Uncle Sam's I want you -from the picture on it and the word tbi- which is one of the many ways to say you in Russian.
The big advertisment for Joe Cocker's new album is mostly in English - Jam is the record store in most of the malls in Dnepro. Underneath you can see the name of the sushi store in Russian Bonzai! (the coolest letter in Russian the zee sound looks like a 3. The name or the small mall it's on is roughly Novi(roughly New) Center- Center starts with the "ts" sound in Russian(looks kind of like a U)- also used for the city center.
The store photo at top left was taken in Kramatoresk-- you may think it says tin ton but that letter is the Russian P so tip top - many signs when you sound them out turn out to be English!
The billboard ( or bigboard the local English speakers tell me) that is hard to see- I was trying to get a quick snap of it from the wrong side of the car (in the rain) yesterday before it changed while we were at the stoplight- it was on one of those billboards that flip over with three different ads on-- is for McDonalds and features items sold for 6 grivina (yes- on about 8-1 exchange- the less than a dollar menu) There was the cheeseburger, coffee, pie, small fries and I think -the breakfast blini- pancake. Hamburgers are less than that but if you want ketchup on your fries, it's 2 or 3 grivina a packet (Garry now eats his without)
Finally try out your new knowledge on the grocery bag in the bottom photo-- the name of the store Varus is in English- the next line is Russian but reads supermarket when you sound it out. The second letter that looks like a y sounds like oo or u and you now know the C is S and P is R and that the p sound is like a box without a bottom--- the rest of the letters K, M, T and in this word E (er)are the same as English. Some e 's are different though, the ones that sound like E (eek)are that upsidedown N looking letter!

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