Flashes of Panic

It’s just a few hours until the IAAF World Indoor Championships starts in Moscow. Remembering how much Spanish I didn’t learn during the ‘99 WCA in Seville, which was largely spent shuttling between the stadium and the media hotel, I thought it might be useful to dredge up the Russian I still remember.

This is all phonetic, because I don’t want to mess with trying to make Cyrillic work, and besides, it’s probably poor grammar to begin with.

• Vui govoritsyeh po-anglisky? Do I really need to try speaking Russian?
• Gu-dye nahoditsyeh stadion? Where is the stadium?
• Poftoritsyeh, pozhalst’? Say that again?
• Pravilno? You’re kidding me.
• Molodyets/Molodtsa! Well done! (Male/Female)
• Kak vui gotovitsyeh? What’s your training been like?
• Bozhemoi! Two hundred kilometers a week?
• K’ chortu! That is most impressive.
• Ya ni ponimayu potomu-schto Russki muzhi ni begaet kak bistro chem Russki zhensheni. What do you think of the idea that intensely nationalistic countries often see domination of women’s athletics as a way to assert their superiority, sometimes even implementing a systematic institutionalized doping program to make sure nobody misses the point?
• Pivo, pozhalst’. Beer, please.

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