language

One of the difficulties of coming to a new country is learning the language. We have discovered that you can manage to live without the language. Sign language is universal and you can get most things with a point or fingers for counting. Our work is mostly done in English - and occasionally a translator when needing to follow up with a local. When all else fails - google translate works.
Ron has been very studious - and quite academic in his language learning. He sits with his books each evening and so is becoming quite accomplished with the theory of the language. Now he needs the practice. The russians at work often want to learn english - but in recent days have become more committed to teaching us Russian - so we share a little of each others language.
Of course with Russian it has been a whole new alphabet. for example - how many of you when reading the blog title have prounced mockba - as in mock - ba - when what it is pronounced as moscva - the russian word for moscow. m is the same - then the o sound - but a c is an S and a b is a V and the the ah sound. - confused???? It has taken me until now to have the alpahbet click in my brain. There are 5 letters that look the same as ours and are the same - about 8 that look the same but say somthing completely different and then throw in the funny shaped letters that have sounds and there you have it. It is also differnt because you cannot just replace a russian letter with an english letter - they have some english words that have differnt endings and then a whole dictionary of words you cannot guess what they are. One good thing is that they ghave phonetic spelling. But our english rules are replaced with equally difficult rules and then gender endings that change not only the nounds but the verbs and the adjectives. Now I did not take to English language learning - so all these rules for language really !!!!
Having said all that we are learniong slowly and whilst it will be a long time before we can really have a conversation - we are beginning to manage the greetings and counting - so some progress is being made.

So as I sign off tonight - I need to say - dasvedanya ( which if I had a russian keyboard would look nothing like that)