Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 8 September 2007

English-speakers working in Russia generally go through a stage where they jokingly refer to a restaurant as a pectopah.

issue 08 September 2007

English-speakers working in Russia generally go through a stage where they jokingly refer to a restaurant as a pectopah. The joke consists in pronouncing the cyrillic letters as if they were Roman. I was surprised to discover that the Germans fighting in Russia in the second world war made a joke on the same lines with the Russian for a barn (in which soldiers might well be billeted), calling it a capau (whereas the Russian would be transliterated saraj).

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