There’s always room for improvement…

One of the things I’ve been proud of as of late has been my development in the Russian language – it took over a year, but only recently have I felt comfortable enough in my abilities to not have to lug around a Russian-english dictionary everywhere I go.

I’d attribute my speaking abilities to perhaps a 8 year old – often grammatically incorrect, but I can carry on a decent amount of conversation on various topics without problems, and I can communicate whatever I need to get across, albeit it in a rather simplistic form. So even though I speak like an 8 year old… it’s still pretty damn good to get to an 8 year old’s level with only one year of Russian, right?

Even though I feel comfortable, I still find myself at times at a loss for words, and I’m constantly forcing myself to learn new words by asking locals. Oftentimes this degenerates into a vigorous pantomiming of whatever it is I’m trying to communicate and a crude description in my elementary Russian. Most of the time, it’s successful, and I learn a new word.

Today I went to our local central bazaar, on the hunt once more for fresh meat and good cuts of beef. As of late I’ve been shopping for meat in a local western-style supermarket because I’ve been rather lazy as to take the bus to the central bazaar. However, the cuts tend to be rather limited there and are often frozen.

The central bazaar has a giant warehouse for fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as a fresh meat center, where whole giant beef pork carcasses are hung up on racks, and there are three rows of stalls, each manned by two ladies with hunks of various cuts of meat piled out on the table in front of them.

Never mind that the place isn’t refrigerated at all. But we’re straying from my topic here.

Now, you should know that our conception of cuts of meat aren’t standardized internationally, and the name of one cut of beef probably doesn’t translate. Hence, looking for and trying to describe a “Sirloin” or “Porterhouse” is practically impossible without the extensive use of charts and diagrams.

I decided to buy some beef ribs, because that’s easy enough to describe without bringing pictures of animals with little dashed lines going through them every which way.

So I walk down the bazaar aisle, scanning the various counters for beef ribs, and as I’m walking, naturally, all of the bazaar ladies are screaming at me to get my attention to look at their cuts.

“Paren! Paren!” (Guy/Chap!)
“Maladoi Chelavek!” (Young Person!)
“Oi! Tee!” (Hey! You!)
“Myahka myasa hoch, da?” (You want soft/tender meat, right?)

Rule #1 for walking down the meat aisle: Don’t make eye contact.
Rule #2 for walking down the meat aisle: Ignore EVERYONE.
Rule #3 for walking down the meat aisle: Scream back, “Tolka pasmatret, tolka pasmatret!” (I’m only looking! I’m only looking!)

So here I am, carefully looking JUST at the meat, and not being really able to recognize the cut I want, I just stop at one table with a pair of ladies that looked nice enough.

“Shto tebe nada, maladoi chelavek?” (What do you need, young man?)

Here’s where my awesome miming skills come in.
“Umm, I’m not sure what the word is in Russian,” I say to her in Russian. “When you have a cow…. It’s *this* part,” I say, raking my index fingers across the part of my body roughly inbetween my chest and navel.

“Ahh, vwot.” (Ahh, this.) She says, picking up two slabs of beef ribs with her bare hands.

The ever constant student in me perks up.

“Da, da. Kak skazat?” (Yes, yes. What do you call that?)

“Reyobra.” (Ribs.)

“yobra,” I repeat outloud. “yobra yobra yobra.”

Immediately, all the ladies around me that 2 minutes ago was calling for my attention break out into a laughter and cackling, everyone repeating what I had just uttered and giggling loudly. I shake my head. Crazy ladies. The lady I’m buying the meat from again, having finished her share of cackling, looks at me and corrects me.

“Nyet ‘yo-bra’, reeyobra!”

“Huh? YOBRA?” I say loudly. Cackles again.

“REE-YO-BRA!”

“Ahh… REE-yobra” I say slowly, fumbling a bit with the consonants. The ladies chuckle a few more times. I buy my meat, and wave goodbye, and they all wave goodbye to me too.

I go home, and check up what it was I exactly had said. Since there’s no word for ‘yobra’, I look up ‘yob’ and ‘bra’ up separately. I immediately understand why the cackles were so loud.

Dear reader, just in case you ever find yourself in Kazakhstan or any other Russian speaking country, and you find the need to say “Fucking Candleholder,” know that “yobra” means exactly that.