Marta is always running around with different kids. A few times, she has stopped by with German, her classmate. German (pronounced with a hard 'g' sound, almost like 'Kerman'), is an Estonian Russian."This is German," Marta said. "He speaks ... you know."
"What does he speak?" I asked Marta. She is a little uncertain of language names and mixes up "Finnish" and "Russian" all the time.
"You know, he speaks privet."
"Ah, Russian. He speaks Russian."
"I speak Estonian too," German told me, "but also Russian. Do you speak Russian?" He looked up at me with great big hopeful brown eyes.
"No," I told him. "I speak English. I am from America."
German said nothing but looked utterly disappointed.
"They don't teach Russian in school in America," I tried to explain. "I learned Spanish."
He seemed even less impressed.
"Ok, I know a few words," I confessed. "Privet (Hello), dasvidanya (Goodbye), zatknis (Shut up)."
At this he finally smiled. Then the kids turned and stormed off in another direction.
2 comments:
They teach Spanish , German, Italian, French, Japanese and Chinese.
I don't know if they offer Russian.
Your 'zatknis' reminds me of my (Belgian) father, who once tried to impress our Italian immigrant neighbour kids by telling them the only Italian he knew. Sadly, it was 'Vaffanculo'.
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