Marta and I were having breakfast, an I brought out the bag of sugar to add some to our porridge. The sugar bag reads:CUKRUS
CUKURS
SUHKUR
CAXAP
Marta looks at it and asks:
Why is 'sugar' spelled with a 'c'?
I look at the bag.
Because it's written in Latvian, honey. See, 'Cukurs' is 'sugar' in Latvian, 'cukrus' is 'sugar' in Lithuanian, 'suhkur' is 'sugar' in Estonian, and ...
"Oh crap," I think. "How do I even pronounce the last one? 'Shagar'? 'Zaksar?' Is that how the Russians pronounce what they have rendered in cyrillic as CAXAP?"
And the last one is written in Russian.
What is Latvian?
It's the language of Latvia.
Where's Latvia?
It's the country south of here, honey.
How come the Russian one has an 'X'?
Because the 'X' makes a 'G' sound -- I lie -- and the 'P' makes an 'R' sound. They have a different alphabet.
Marta looks at the sugar bag, slightly confused.
Oh.
3 comments:
Russian "X" is pronouced like Estonian "h" or even "hh"... like in suHHkur :)
sahhar :)
Funnily enough Russian < x > is pronounced just as /x/ according to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
It is a voiceless velar fricative, which is a sound made by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the back part of the tongue against the soft palate without vibrating the vocal cords.
Anyway.....
Very sweet linguistic anecdote. It made me smile. Keep them coming. :-)
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