#AtoZChallenge – Y is for Ya ne ponimayu

Posted by tmycann on Apr 28th, 2012 in indie, writing | 1 comment

My penultimate A to Z blog challenge post. What a month! Doing 26 posts in a month seems like a mini NaNoWriMo–but I’m pleased with the background bits I’ve been able to share about Dust to Blood.

So today’s post reverts to language study, and another one of the very early phrases any beginning student learns: “Ya ne ponimayu” … “I don’t understand.”

When I did a Google image search for this phrase, then, I discovered some wit in Russia captioned this adorable cat picture with “Ne ponimayu ya lyudey” … “I don’t understand people.”

While we’re at it, I want to say “Thank you (very much)!” (in Russian: “spasiba” Спасибо!) for everyone who has been following along. I hope, someday, to also be able to say “You’re welcome!” (in Russian: “pazhAlusta” пожалуйста!) for sharing some basic Russian phrases with you and helping you explore a small corner of this fascinating culture.

Since Russian is the 8th-most-spoken language in the world, with an active population of 144 million speakers, some of these phrases might actually come in handy sooner than you might think.