Editor's note: This is the latest of Sam Borden's Postcards from Russia, in which he shares his observations, fears, joys and travel stories from the 2018 World Cup.
MOSCOW -- Traveling abroad inevitably comes with linguistic challenges, but there is a truly special level of unease when you are in a country that uses a different alphabet. Yes, sure, my French is weak (at best) and I barely speak any German, but if I'm in Paris or Munich, at least I can read -- and try to extrapolate -- the words on the street sign or the menu or the storefront. That isn't the case in places like Japan or Greece or Abu Dhabi.
Or, you know, Russia.
Cyrillic, which has its origins in the ninth century, is tricky to parse, but after visiting Russia a few times, I quickly came to realize it does have several letters that look like letters from our Latin alphabet. So, to help recognize important words or places, I've taken to reading (as best I can) the Russian letters as though they were in English, essentially coming up with my own (English-sounding) mnemonic "words."
This isn't always easy. For example, the subway stop that I use often is Novokuznetskaya, which in Cyrillic looks like this: Новокузнецкая.
Tough, right? Others are fairly easy and ubiquitous. Anyone who has ever spent any time in Russia learns right away that if you're hungry, you just look for a Pectopah -- that's "peck-toe-pah," to me -- which is the word for restaurant in Russian and, despite actually being pronounced "rest-oh-rahn," looks like this: PECTOPAH.
Modern Cyrillic has over 30 characters in its alphabet, but there are more than a dozen that approximate letters we would know, including: ABEKMH0PCTYX. There are also characters that look very close to W, R and N, either in lower or upper case. So, in general, the easiest "words" to create are ones that have a lot of those letters in their formation. One that shows up quite often, of course, is MOCKBA, which is the Russian spelling of Moscow.
Now, as in many languages, there are plenty of words in Russian that are so-called Anglicisms, generally newer words that are adopted from English and pronounced in roughly the same way. I encountered this quite a bit in South Korea, too, and in Russian words like "internet" and "printer" essentially sound the same as we know them. The only problem is that, when they're written out in Russian, my inclination is to pronounce them as they look, not as they're supposed to be said. While I should look for the "password" when I'm trying to get on a Wi-Fi network, instead I'm looking for a sign that has the "nack-bo-pah," because "password" looks like this in Russian: Пассворд
As you might imagine, there can be some situations where this sub-language produces some funny (or awkward) results. Some constructions sound amusing to the ear (CHOBA, POTATOP) while others are more straightforward. While out and about in Russia, occasionally I'll see MOPE (the sea) or HAM (the pronoun "us"). COP is a very old word for garbage, and there are a slew of words that spell out things not especially suitable for a family-friendly news outlet. (One of the more tame examples is the sentence that looks like "MOPE HOBO POET COCKY" which, according to one translation website, roughly means, "The sea is digging a new nipple.")
I must admit, sometimes I feel guilty for trying to find these faux-words. Instead of breaking down a new language into its most basic construction, shouldn't I be trying to learn it properly? As someone who has always loved words in all forms, I never want to be disrespectful of the way any culture communicates.
But, well, I also have a job to do here and most of the time under a pretty tight deadline.
So, dear Russian speakers, please forgive me: I have another game to cover and need to head to the stadium. On the subway. From the station that, to me at least, will forever be known as "Hobo-ky-she-car."