I’ve lived in Kyrgyzstan for over five months at this point, which means that I’ve managed to gather enough language fails to put two into a full-length blog.  Luckily, rather than being embarrassing, these are all moments that led to raucous laughter, and some of which my host family recounts lovingly to every guest who comes to visit us at our house.  Let’s take a look.

To set the scene for the first fail, Kyrgyz culture has great reverence for the art of toasting.  At any formal guesting, whether with or without alcohol, every guest is expected to make a toast to the honoree of the feast or to other people sitting around the table.  It can be as simple as “за здоровье,” or a complex speech that takes a minute to give well wishes for health wealth and everything in between to all 20 people seated around the table.  At the end of each toast, everyone takes a shot of vodka or cognac (cognac is both popular and delicious here).

Well, for our culture day celebration back in June, everyone in my language class had to prepare and memorize a toast to say during a skit.  I ended up with one of the longer and more complex ones, and so I set myself to practicing it rigorously put it in a pile and then memorized it the day before.  It’s a good thing I had a day of practice, because my failure is now household legend.

My toast began innocently enough; “Friends, we today celebrate the birthday of our good friend.  I wish that you may always be happy.”

But things get a little weird in the next sentence: “I hope that soon you will acquire a жип (jeep).”  Turns out, жип means “a piece of string,” whereas Жиип is the car, which is what I had meant to say.  A little bit of giggles, and I continue in blissful ignorance.

“I hope that you will have a lot of ачка (achka).”  Well, my most frequent mix-up in Kyrgyz rears its head: акча means “money,” but ачка means “hungry.”  So, dear friend, may you have a lot of hunger in your life.

“And I hope that you will always be with доктор.”  This one came from a Cyrillic mix-up, where instead of reading достор as “dostor,” I read it as “doctor.”  So, instead of always being our friend, I told her to go to the doctor.  Welp.

But, I just want you to know, that it gets better.

Last night at dinner, we were talking about bread in different countries.  In Kyrgyzstan, it’s common to bake your own bread, but in the US, we usually buy it from the store, and you eat a loaf over the course of a week, but in France, you go to the store every day, because otherwise the bread will get stale.  As I told them, “Bread in France is made without презервативы (prezervativi).”

An important lesson, children: “preservative” in every other language means “condom.”