П is for Понятно
When I was in Russian 101, we had class five days a week: four days with Dr. Lundberg, our professor, and one day with his graduate TA.
We liked our professor fine (he's still one of my all-time favorite professors at BYU), but sometimes we felt more comfortable asking our TA questions because she was closer to our age and a fellow student. Also, Dr. Lundberg tried to conduct class entirely in Russian as much as possible (albeit with a lot of miming and gesturing to help us out) and our TA was willing to talk to us in English.
One day one of us asked her: "What does the word 'Понятно' [Ponyatne] mean? Dr. Lundberg says it a lot when he's giving us an in-class assignment and we don't know what it means, so we just kind of smile and nod."
"Wait—Dr. Lundberg has been saying 'Понятно?' and you've been nodding your heads without understanding what he's saying?"
"Um, yeah."
She laughed. "'Понятно?' means 'Do you understand?'"
"Oh."
(And, thereafter, we did.)
2 Comments:
If you had been here in person telling me that story, I would have laughed. But you can't hear it from here, but I did laugh.
becca - No, I totally heard you! :)
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