During my walk in the hills behind Golspie I took a picture of a foxglove (наперстянка)
and was reminded of a story from my days on the Berlin military train. The march down the platform at Marienborn always involved three people: Officer Commanding the train (an officer from the Berlin garrison), Train Conducting Warrant Officer (TCWO) , and duty Russian Interpreter.
On an interpreter's first day the TCWO liked to test the mettle of the interpreter by asking for phrases to be interpreted that the interpreter might struggle with.
The story goes that one of the TCWOs turned to a newly-arrived interpreter and said "can you ask the Soviet officer if he is aware that you can get digitalis from the common foxglove." The interpreter, thinking on his feet, turned to the Soviet officer and said something along the lines of "такая хорошая погода сегодня" (what good weather we're having today) to which the Soviet officer replied "Да", which was the one word of Russian the TCWO knew. Mission accomplished.
By the way, the word anecdote (анекдот) is a bit of a false friend linguistically. In Russian it usually means a joke of some kind but in English it is more likely to be a short story sometimes, but not always, humorous.
and was reminded of a story from my days on the Berlin military train. The march down the platform at Marienborn always involved three people: Officer Commanding the train (an officer from the Berlin garrison), Train Conducting Warrant Officer (TCWO) , and duty Russian Interpreter.
On an interpreter's first day the TCWO liked to test the mettle of the interpreter by asking for phrases to be interpreted that the interpreter might struggle with.
The story goes that one of the TCWOs turned to a newly-arrived interpreter and said "can you ask the Soviet officer if he is aware that you can get digitalis from the common foxglove." The interpreter, thinking on his feet, turned to the Soviet officer and said something along the lines of "такая хорошая погода сегодня" (what good weather we're having today) to which the Soviet officer replied "Да", which was the one word of Russian the TCWO knew. Mission accomplished.
By the way, the word anecdote (анекдот) is a bit of a false friend linguistically. In Russian it usually means a joke of some kind but in English it is more likely to be a short story sometimes, but not always, humorous.
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