According to an article I read in The Guardian last week the Russian government has decided that Russian officials must speak a foreign language by 2020. The reason behind this is that recently Russians have had a few embarrassing slip ups with their foreign languages, most famously the speech by sports minister Vitaly Mutko for Russia’s World Cup bid in Zurich…
Now, let mi spik from may khart, in Inglish: this got me thinking about how when learning a foreign language you have to be prepared to be laughed at (although not necessarily by thousands over the internet!) Just like Mutko I have had some very embarrassing moments because of my lack of language skills, so I thought I’d share some of the funniest with you.
The first language struggle I had was when I lived in Petrozavodsk at the end of my first year in university. The woman I lived with asked me what we do for children’s birthday parties in England. I wanted to tell her about bouncy castles but obviously my limited vocabulary didn’t quite stretch to knowing how to say that in Russian! In the end I started jumping up and down in her kitchen pointing to the floor shouting “BIG BALLOON!” I still don’t think she knows what I meant!
In my year in Moscow there were many MANY language slip ups which I have already blogged about, but I’ll share with you my favourite again: the flour/fly incident. At the beginning of my year living in Moscow I asked my flat mate if we had a fly in the cupboard. I wanted to know if we had flour in the cupboard, fly = mykha, flour = myka. She still finds this hilarious!
Even in England I’m still embarrassing myself with my Russian slip ups… Recently I met up with a Russian friend to practise my Russian and I was telling her about the time I spent in Petrozavodsk. I told her that I saw a bear outside the State University; I meant to say I saw Medvedev, the President of Russia. Bear = medved.
So at the moment it’s my Christmas holiday from university and I’m feeling pretty low. Over the last two weeks some major things have happened to me and have left me feeling completely unmotivated about my degree. I can’t find the energy or drive to do any of my work. However this blog is not some kind of self indulgent rant about my life – it is a self indulgent rant about my love of Russia! So I’m not going to get into what is going on in my life but I AM going to use this post to try and motivate myself again!
Throughout the four years of my degree I have never been in a lesson where I have felt that I actually fully understood the topic and/or what was going on! University has mainly taught me that although I have some knowledge on subjects I can never be bothered to ever become an expert on anything! Until this year when I learnt I am an EXPERT at pretending I know things.
This year one of my modules is about security and politics in Russia and Eurasia; a topic I know very little about. The module is different to others in that it isn’t taught with a lecture then a seminar; it’s all done in group work. At the beginning of each 2 hour session we are assigned a task and at the end of the lesson we have to present it. Normally the task is to write a briefing paper, press release or an answer to a radio news correspondent. Now I know very little about for example, political events in Kyrgyzstan (in fact it took me three attempts to correctly spell Kyrgyzstan) BUT if I am asked to write a press release about it I can totally pretend that I am an expert. As a journalist in the making I am brilliant at saying lots of things without actually saying anything at all.
So basically I love this lesson because people actually seem to think I know what I’m talking about! A few weeks ago I had my proudest moment at university to date… and it was all down to the Spice Girls. Before I explain it, please watch this short video to reacquaint yourselves (don’t pretend you don’t all love it!) with the musical genius that is, Wannabe…
We were given the task of making a story board to a music video to describe EU-Russia relations and were given a choice of songs or we could think of our own. My friend Toby (Toby Eccleshall that is – I know he wants to make sure it is all over the internet that he LOVES the Spice Girls) jokingly suggested that we should do Wannabe by the Spice Girls. As I immediately started reciting the lyrics (I am a long time proud fan) we realised that actually they really worked! So here is our storyboard describing EU-Russian relations, to the lyrics of Wannabe:
We decided to have the EU and Russia as a couple who had recently split up and then saw each other in a bar. I don’t want this blog to go on forever so I’m not going to explain each scene… but here’s the gist of it!...
The boy is Russia (shown by everyone’s favourite Russian stereotype – the mullet haircut) and the girl was the EU. The song begins with the lyrics I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want so in this scene the EU and Russia are shouting what they want from each other. Then we move onto those well known lines If you want my future forget my past in which we show Russia throwing his hammer and sickle into the bin. Another chorus of I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want is shown through Russia asking the EU for security. Later the lines If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends are depicted through the EU bringing on her friend Georgia. The lines If you really bug me then I’ll say goodbye are portrayed by Russia turning off a Baltika (Russian beer) tap in the bar symbolizing the Russian oil taps. Then comes the rap which was quite hard to fit in with the subject Em in the place became Moscow’s influence over the EU, we got G like MC was Georgia (although I don’t know how this is relevant… I think I just wanted to get the rap in somehow!) and finally that lyrical GENIUS of slam your body down zigazig ah showed the EU re-evaluating her relationship with Russia.
MY FINEST HOUR.
After our group presented this the whole class were crying with laughter and I think it is the one time that I can honestly say I remember all the information I learnt in a lesson. Give me a pop music reference and I will learn!
So thank you Mel C, Geri, Victoria, Emma, Mel B (…and Toby).
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Apologies for the lack of posts recently. My only excuse is: final year of my degree is hard. My social life now revolves around the library. As I said to one friend this week, “I’m not ignoring you but if you want to see me you’re going to have to come to the library.” So dear readers I am not ignoring you but at the moment I can only be found in the library looking like this:
However, it has been a whole month since I last wrote so I think it’s about time I gave you something new to read.
So this week apparently someone told the weather I was missing Russia and it snowed in the UK. In typical British style everyone freaked out then realised that actually 1mm of snow really wasn’t going to affect us that much. The freezing cold temperatures are getting everyone down though.
I remember this time last year in Moscow it was around -10°C and I kept thinking how it wasn’t really that cold and I wouldn’t be able to show off to everyone back home how I’d survived in freeeezing temperatures. Rookie mistake. In one weekend it plummeted to -27°C and I realised that being able to show off was not worth living in such a cold climate.
At the moment it’s about -2°C in the UK. Definitely not as cold as it is in Moscow but obviously everyone is whining about how cold it is. To be honest I am too but I am however using the cold weather to be a complete show off. If anyone dares tell me that it is cold my usual response is “Hah! This is not cold. Last year I survived -30°C.” I think I have become unbearable to everyone around me. But to all the people who are finding me annoying: I do have a point. Last Thursday it was about 1°C in Birmingham. This is what it looked like in Petrozavodsk:
Aside from the weather, one of the big things of the moment is my dissertation (or disastertation, as I have renamed it). This year I need to write a 12,000 word report on anything to do with Russia and as I enjoy writing this blog so much I decided to write a report on the Russian blogosphere. So far I am really enjoying researching it. The Russian blogosphere is soooo much more interesting than the UK’s, mainly because blogging is a lot more popular in Russia than here. However I have come across a problem: there are so many Russian blogs, I don’t know where to begin! So that is where YOU come in brilliant readers!
I know that a lot of people who read this blog are Russian and/or interested in Russia. If so I would love to hear from you if you have your own blog or if you can recommend some interesting blogs to me (по русскии!) You can email me at sez34@hotmail.com or just comment on this blog. Any suggestions would be brilliant!
OK, I think that’s enough procrastination. Back to actually doing dissertation research!
Well. I knew this would happen. I have tried to resist but I just can’t help but feel the internet is lacking something without my regular blog updates so…
I’m back, by popular demand!
Yes, popular demand: In the last three months I have had numerous requests to continue blogging (at least 3 separate ones…) and even two emails from Russian people telling me how much they liked reading my blog! Reason enough to spend half an hour trying to remember my blogspot password…
I’m going to start blogging again for two main reasons: 1.Because I like being the centre of attention and blogging is an outlet for this.
2.Because something I and my fellow Russian students are learning is that as hard as you try, Russia never leaves you.
I love the UK. I love living in the UK. I love drinking water from the tap. I love it that in October I can still walk to uni wearing only two layers instead of the four I was wearing this time last year in Moscow. I love my washing machine. BUT I can’t shake the feeling that I am not done with Russia yet. This is the first time in four years when I haven’t had my next trip to Russia planned… and it feels weird. I know I will go back to Russia, but when? Where? How? Why? Russia isn’t the kind of country you can go to once and never feel the need to go back. When you go there you catch a bug, the Russia Bug.
I have a full blown case of the Russia bug. I get excited when I hear anything about Russia no matter how far fetched it is (today my friend told me the word for ‘wormwood’ in Ukrainian and I felt a kick of the Russia Bug). My friends and family regularly send me links and cuttings from newspapers about anything Russia – ranging from the diary of a British family who moved to Moscow to photos of two Russians who decided to dress up as cats on their wedding day (side note: this is not normal Russian behaviour).
My Russia Bug has got so bad that I’m even starting to miss living there (but don’t tell anyone – they’ll all shout at me for moaning so much when I did live there!) I miss my friends, I miss the metro and I miss Teremok.
Mmmmmm, Teremok. Fast food pancakey goodness.
I still tell people that I live in Moscow (if I know there is no chance I will ever see them again… it just makes me sound so much cooler!) So from now on I’m going to use my blog to satisfy my Russia Bug.
Vodka, Cabbage and Snow will be the Clearasil to my Russian Bug spots.
