What's in a word?

I'm in Barnaul for this entry and this afternoon found a little cafe in town where I had a couple of pints more than I expected, slept it off and then went for dinner. I went to a really good Mexican place because there really is only so much grilled food you can eat and I felt like a change from my pin the tail on the donkey efforts at Russian menus, though that's not actually done me any harm so far.

So here I am, sitting in the hotel with a little time on my hands and not wanting to drink any more. Ive lost track of days and times and am planning to drive south east tomorrow toward Gorno Altai on the way to Mongolia. At this point in time Ive been thinking a bit about language, largely because there's no break from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and also because Mongolia in a few days brings me to a country where I think I will really have absolutely no clue or hope about language.

Communication was always going to be a bit of a thought on this trip although I wasn't overly concerned about it. As mentioned in other posts I've managed to get by with English which was great in many locations as where there was a lot of foreign folks around and someone decided to try and translate a menu it was often into English. Also in much of the world people who are educated get given lessons in English as a first foreign language. For the countries where Russian was a language of education a lot of younger folks are schooled in their own generally Turkic language firstly then choose to learn English so there's a chance that with basic words you can get by. In touristy areas the people who are working there are quite often amazing with language and if you seem relaxed with it they will regularly admit to wanting to try and practice their English on you. Uzbekistan was funny because everywhere you went there were children practicing all sorts on you from simple hellos through to what's your name, where are you from and how old are you.

I mentioned German before also which has also done me well in all manner of locations from Germany (of course) through Turkey especially, already once in Russia and also once in Kazakhstan where I had a welcome break from the policeman who was trying to extort some kind of a "souvenir" from me.

That leads me to Russia where things are really quite difficult in a lot of respects but there's also some simplicity. I'm lucky that in my time in Baku I had a few lessons in Russian and I've also had a few in Aberdeen. In those lessons I've gotten a grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet and I've been able to piece elements of the language together. Where I've not been certain about what a word means I can at least come to a point where I can pretty much say a word and try to guess from there. Some simple examples are;

Аптека
Aptek, as in apotheke used as chemist throughout europe

Спорт
Sport

Милиция
Militsia, like militia for police

Шашлык
Shashlik, often by the roadside for a quick and tasty feed

Реклама
Reklama, also reklam in Turkish and werbung in German for adverts

And then Центр
For tsentr, or centre for getting around town

And then there's the ability to read place names on road signs which is quite handy!

So, up til now with a few words in a few languages I've gotten by with surprisingly little recourse to my little book of pictures to describe things, and only a few times decided I had the need to go moo to get some beef. I'll let you know how things go after Mongolia and Japan...

Location:Barnaul, Belarus, Russian Federation