Ornoth

iniren is a native Russian, and I studied Russian for most of my college career, so when we started dating, I tried to revive what little I remembered of the tongue.

For the most part, iniren had no patience for it, and gave me little to no support, allowing me to flail around at random in hopes that I’d eventually give up. However, on one occasion, I provided an unexpected moment of amusement.

Earlier, I’d managed to wheedle out of her the adjective ВКУСНЫЙ (FKOOSNEI): “tasty”. I thought I’d compliment her by combining it with the second person singular pronoun.

Unfortunately, my memory or my pronunciation was faulty, and iniren heard a slightly different word: СКУЧНЫЙ (SKOOSHNEI).

Just look at those two words. You might think an intelligent race like the Russians would give nearly identically sounding words nearly identical meanings, wouldn’t you?

Well, you can see where this is going. The difference between FKOOSNEI and SKOOSHNEI is the difference between telling my girlfriend she’s “tasty”, and telling her she’s “boring”. And people say English is difficult?

Although she’s never let me forget that incident, this week I got the last laugh. When she came back from the Passover Seder, her mother asked her how it was. When she called down the stairway that it had been “ВКУСНЫЙ”, her mother (knowing nothing about my confusing the two words) heard “СКУЧНЫЙ”, causing iniren no end of chagrin.

I think I’ve been vindicated.