Privet Krasavitsa

I really enjoy traveling. While I was in college, I studied abroad quite a few times in Europe and frequently traveled on the train. When traveling by train, it is very common to share a six person room with strangers. Since many train trips are a few hours long, I would get to know my cabin mates along the way. More often than not, my cabin mates were from a European country and spoke English. Before going our separate ways, I would always ask them how to say "Hello" in their native language, which is how I learned "privet krasavitsa"...or "hello beautiful" in Russian.

Now that I am living in Germany, I am trying to learn more than just "Hallo Schöne." In my apartment building, my Hausmeister (Facility Manager or Super) told me who some of my neighbors were...

The lady right next to me is Russian and she has a very loud TV.

The couple two doors down is German and they are nice.

The girl three doors down is also German and she is younger. (I ran into her and her name is Wenke - pronounced "Ven-kah", and she is very nice.)

So last weekend, I was leaving my apartment and I saw my Russian neighbor. She is about 5 feet tall, which includes at least four inches of very curly reddish/orangish tinted hair, perhaps a typical Russian grandmother.

She said "morgen." I said, "Privet" and her eyes lit up and with a huge smile, she said (what I believe to be) "Oh dear, you speak Russian!!"

To which I said, 'Privet Krasavitsa!' This was probably the most exciting thing that she had ever heard because she came over and grabbed my hand with both of hers and started speaking Russian... which I actually don't understand at all...

Then I explained in English, with a few German words, that I actually don't speak Russian, only English, Italian and Spanish, and 24 words in German...and that I will learn more German, since I plan to be here for a while.

I smiled and said, "maybe I should learn Russian..."

She said, "Yes, I tink dat is better."

Schwul and Schwül

The Umlaut. As it turns out, learning how to pronounce the umlaut is actually very important.

I went to an International party organized by InterNations, a networking community for expatriates and "Global Minds." The first woman I met was from Armenia, the second person I met was from Turkey, and the next two guys I met were German. Since there are so many different countries represented, the common language is English.

One of the german guys I met is a Teacher and we eventually started talking about the pronunciation of the 'umlaut.'

To explain it in writing is fairly simple, and in fact, this is how you spell the umlaut letter if your keyboard doesn't have the ability to do the umlaut.

ö sounds like oe

ü sounds like ue

ä sounds like aeh (like in Heaven)

The pronunciation is a lot more difficult. Especially the ü and the ö --they are sounds we don't really have in the English language.

Since I was speaking to a teacher, my "homework" was to find out the difference between "Schwul and Schwül," (keeping in mind that the 'w' in German is pronounced as the English 'v', just in case you are reading this and trying to pronounce these words out loud.) =)

The sample sentences were:

Das Wetter ist schwül. (Since we were talking and not writing anything down, I heard: Das sveater ist schvool. So naturally I started thinking about a sweater....which turned out to be unrelated to the actual meaning...)

Mein Bruder ist schwul. Again, to my novice ears, I heard "Mine Broder is schvool, and I could not discern the difference between the 'schvools.'

Before I left, I had him write down schwul and schwül so I knew how to spell them correctly.

When I looked up 'Schwül' (pronounced schvuel) I learned that it means "humid." The description actually said "please do not confuse with schwul (pronounced schvool), which means gay, or queer."

Homework is now complete...now I just have to work on the pronunciation.