One of the rare times I'm not mutually friending someone

[xiphias]

Almost all the time that someone friends me, I friend them back, and then read their journal, too. Because people interest me. I don't post that much friends-locked, but, if someone is interested in me enough to friend me, that interests me enough to be interested in them.

The problem is that snysmymrik posts to his or her journal entirely in Cyrillic, which I can't read. I mean, at all. I know, kinda, what SOME of the letters sound like, but not really, and I know, like three words in Russian, and a Russian proverb which someone taught me phonetically and which they claim means "The first pancake is a lump," and that's it.

So, snysmymrik -- if you're wondering why I haven't friended you back, it's TOTALLY not intended as a slight, and if you want me to friend you, I will -- it's just that I'm going to skip over what you're writing, because I just can't read Russian.

It's times like this that I regret not being a linguist. snysmymrik's location is listed as Israel. Which suggests to me that he (or she) can not only function in three languages, Hebrew, Russian, and English, but three alphabets.

I can function in ONE alphabet -- the Roman one. I can read Hebrew, but I can't communicate in it. I can sorta get by in American Sign Language. I know as much Latin as you'd expect from three years at not-the-honors level in high school. And that's it.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I've had that happen a few times, I never friend them back. I can't figure out why they've friended me, so I assume it's random.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Scanning back he seems to have some Cthuhlu related posts, so maybe it's in regards to your octopus/squid/cthuhlu theories?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Or, since he lives in Israel, in a town near where I've got friends, he may know people who know me personally.

[(Anonymous)]

babelfish.altavista.com

dod

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Which is about as useful as you'd expect a machine translator to be.

Four words: Guests mail large tumor.

Also

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

Google Translate.

Re: Also

[the-editor.livejournal.com]

Used 'yahoo translate', on a phonetically spelled piece of arabic.... and it translated to whole page into English... from English...
leaving the phonetic phrase intact, and screwing up the rest of the page beyond readability.

English to English = unintelligible....
why?
~I tried to learn Ukrainian... I really think it takes a TEACHER to get one over the second alphabet hump....
But if I have the time I can translate a page of text... one
letter
at
a
time...

[ecban.livejournal.com]

My Russian is spotty at best, which makes me sad because I can grasp just enough of snysmymrik's LJ to know that there's a fascinating mind behind that language barrier. Very frustrating...

[temima.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I had a couple of those. I took only one class in Russian, and that doesn't qualify me to understand anything they write down. They seem nice enough.

I remembered what I was going to tell you

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about wishing you were a linguist. Three alphabets? snysmymrik sounds *impressive*.

And I really like how you noticed that. Someone told me the other day that they admired the joy I take in the world, so I was thinking about my inspirations in doing so, and you're definetely one of my major inspirations.

:)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I've forgotten nearly all my college Russian, but I do remember enough to tell this is a legit user, unlike the last Cyrillic-poster to friend me. It's entirely possible that zie reads English well enough to follow your blog, but either isn't comfortable enough to post in it or is mainly posting for a non-English-reading audience.