Zdrastvuytye

No, Alexey wasn’t playing on the computer keyboard when it came time to write the title of this posting. That’s the transliteration of Здравствуйте!, or “hello” in Russian. If you just want to say “hi” instead, you can use the shorter Привет! (privyet).

Kazakh and Russian are the two main languages spoken here in Kazakhstan. Kazakh is the official language of the country. In an adept move that neatly worked around a potential political trouble spot, Russian was declared to be “the language of interethnic communication”. Almost all people of Kazakh background speak Kazakh and some Russian. Very few people of Russian background speak Kazakh, however.

It is fairly difficult to get Kazakh language training outside of Kazakhstan, so we opted to learn some Russian. That prepared us a little for what we face here. Many signs are bilingual. However, both languages use a version of Cyrillic, so our first task is always to figure out which part of the sign is in Russian. That’s easy enough if the sign is somewhat self-evident, but, if not, you can spend a while reading the sign. Occasionally we stand and stare at a sign for long enough that passersby slow down and start to read the sign with us, wondering what delights it promises.

Of course, pictures or pictograms on a sign usually help. Take a look at this photo.

The red cross with the 24 gives it away to a certain extent. It’s obviously a medical facility of some kind that’s open 24 hours a day.The word on the left is ДӘРІXАНА. Because Russian doesn’t use the upside down “e”, we know that word is in Kazkah. So we look to the right. We sound out the word АПТЕКА. Slowly we say “ap-tye-ka”. Ah, that’s quite similar to the word “apothecary” in English. This is a pharmacy.

Of course, you can be misled a bit. Consider the next photo.

Easy. Another medical facility. Obviously a clinic of some kind, where they speak English. The doctor looks comfortingly familiar. And we can call if we have questions. Even call their cell phones, the 8 701 numbers. Wait a minute. The doctor looks a little too familiar. That’s John Stamos, from the television show ER. Now we’re becoming suspicious. We start sounding out the big text. Kom-put-… ahh. This is a sign for a computer repair store. The text at the bottom is asking if our computer is sick. Thank heavens we didn’t call them and start babbling about our medical problems. [No, moms, we’re not sick.] That would’ve been… entertaining. For them, at least.

Some pictures have obvious meaning, even if you don’t know the details. We were advised at home that you can’t go wrong if you pay close attention to the pictures on the milk cartons in the grocery stores. There are cows, horses, and camels. We stayed with the bovine cartons, with much success. Therefore, we scurried for our dictionary in a panic when our cook showed up with a fresh carton of milk for us the other day: