I don't speak Russian--or read Cyrillic....
Ilya warned me when I joined Live Journal that I might run across a lot of his friends that spoke Russian, and indeed, one of the reasons that he switched to Live Journal was for the Cyrillic support.
Which I totally understand.
My father's family comes from Odessa, Ukraine. Both my dad's parents are Russian Jewry from time immemorial.
But they moved to Palestine as part of the (original) Zionist movement before he was born (1929), and took up Hebrew. He grew up with Hebrew as his first language, and while there was some of that spoken in my house when I was growing up, and I had a Bar Mitzvah, not a word of Cyrillic do I understand.
So, it's nice to have all these new friends, but you have to understand--I was Ilya's drummer for a while and we founded our friendship in Hashinger Hall, in the Eighties. I don't see him as much as I'd like (three times, since then, maybe?), and while I still have great fondness for him, I STILL don't speak Russian.
So, there's the story.
I'm afraid the burden is on all my new friends to speak some English to me (or at least, a language I have a chance of understanding) rather than Russian, if there's to be any chance of us communicating.
As cool a fucking language as that is! Either that, or you're going to have to give me a crash course. I'm a quick study.
Oh, and how fucking cool that Barack Obama got elected. I voted for him.
Which I totally understand.
My father's family comes from Odessa, Ukraine. Both my dad's parents are Russian Jewry from time immemorial.
But they moved to Palestine as part of the (original) Zionist movement before he was born (1929), and took up Hebrew. He grew up with Hebrew as his first language, and while there was some of that spoken in my house when I was growing up, and I had a Bar Mitzvah, not a word of Cyrillic do I understand.
So, it's nice to have all these new friends, but you have to understand--I was Ilya's drummer for a while and we founded our friendship in Hashinger Hall, in the Eighties. I don't see him as much as I'd like (three times, since then, maybe?), and while I still have great fondness for him, I STILL don't speak Russian.
So, there's the story.
I'm afraid the burden is on all my new friends to speak some English to me (or at least, a language I have a chance of understanding) rather than Russian, if there's to be any chance of us communicating.
As cool a fucking language as that is! Either that, or you're going to have to give me a crash course. I'm a quick study.
Oh, and how fucking cool that Barack Obama got elected. I voted for him.