Friday, April 8, 2011

Russian Verbs in America

FYI - This post will mostly appeal to speakers of Russian, and those interested in the assimilation of cultures.  Everyone else might find this more interesting and appropriate for their tastes

Russians are language lazy.  I'm not sure if it's a product of trying to assimilate, or just the opposite, but they tend to melange their yazik all ensemble. Oh, I'm sorry, I must have dozed off while mixing my languages together.

But you would too!  Imagine, you're an American in France, eating a baguette, smoking a long cigarette out of one of those Cruella DeVille cigarette holders while deriding some foreigner for wearing a religious headdress.  You've almost entirely assimilated.  Yet, when you speak, you inject a little English, just for good measure, "Je n'ai pas du croissant, mais si vous voulez, vous pouvez breakfaster chez moi." (I knew I majored in French for something - education well used).

Then the French organize an impromptu flash mob and force you to eat like, 1000 frog legs.  You're still hungry afterward, cause, seriously...all you had was frog legs, and let's face it: there ain't much meat on them bones.

So getting back to the Russians.  While I might not speak, I understand about 90% of what's going on around me.  And having my Russian language background be almost entirely built upon a dude who has read more than Oprah, and who speaks impeccable Russian, I cringe just a little bit when I hear the local people use words like, "move-itsya" and "shop-itsya"; English words with Russian endings, a linguist's nightmare.






Ok, well, I've been staring at this page now for 10 minutes thinking of how to end this post.  But I can't figure out a good ending.  So here's Tom Cruise with no pants on.

1 comment:

  1. Dialing in the end of the post? And Tom Cruise no less? Careful, Blog Fairy will leave coal under your pillow, SHE'S WATCHING.

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