I learned the Russian alphabet in the Helsinki airport on my way to Estonia. After listening to the Duolingo owl read through the unfamiliar letters two or three times, I attempted to pronounce “Hello” — Здравствуйте — under my breath, conscious that the silent, stony-faced Finns in my vicinity would side-eye me if my clumsy utterances were audible. Two minutes later, I forgot the word, and had to look it up again. The point being: on my first day of classes at Tallinn University, a two-year old native speaker would have easily bested me in a Russian-face off. From the moment we stepped into class, Lukasz — our teacher, a man of mysterious national origin and fluent in no less than 5 languages — exclusively spoke to us in Russian. I quickly surrendered to the realization that, from the hours of 10am – 1pm (GMT +3), my communicative abilities would be severely limited. Although uncomfortable, the thought was strangely liberating: the bar was on the floor. Forming a basic sentence was a feat worth celebrating. 

I’ve taken Spanish since 6th grade; my memory of my first few weeks of classes is not vivid, but I do remember starting with the basics: simple phrases, colors, numbers. For the first two or so years of taking Spanish, instruction was in English. We had 50 minute classes a few days a week. The Russian course I was now taking, however, was by design more fast-paced. I’m also not in 6th grade anymore. Difficult topics came up quickly. On the first day, we learned the Russian word for “communist.” We learned the words for “crisis” and “freedom” before the word for “happy.” 

I soon realized that I have taken for granted my ability to express nuance (or even doubt) in English. In the first few weeks of class, we were inundated with deceptively simple questions. Are compliments dangerous? What do you not love? Do you like to rest? When I hesitated in class, Lukasz often turned towards the white board to preemptively review a grammatical concept; I didn’t know how to tell him that I understood the prepositional case — I simply did not know how to answer his question in English. I quickly armed myself with the word “иногда” – sometimes. While “sometimes” was often the honest answer to the puzzling and concerning questions our textbook posed, I felt it demonstrated a lack of linguistic creativity. I needed to diversify my sentences. But I also have a visceral resistance to formulating sentences containing sentiments which I knew to be false. (я люблю правду — I love truth — as I once wrote in my homework). I soon learned to compromise by articulating smaller truths when I couldn’t articulate bigger ones. 

Confronting the homework prompt What do I want? once sent me into a half hour tailspin. Due to the constraints of my understanding of Russian grammar, I could not immediately ascertain the scope of the question. Did I have to state what I wanted at the very moment of my writing, with my immediate needs (water, dinner, etc) in mind? Or what I wanted in life more broadly? In Russian, does one ask these questions in the same way? I decided that I would answer the question in a more existential fashion, but my limited vocabulary once again created a number of issues. I could think of things I wanted in life: I would like to be happy, to have no regrets, to have a good marriage and fulfilling career. But for Lukasz’s purposes, these paths were closed to me. I settled on: freedom, coffee, and peace. An equally true and far more grammatically simple answer. 

Answering the question What does everyone hate? posed similar challenges. Instinctively, I wrote down the word for war, which we had learned the previous day. But I hesitated. Does everyone really hate war? What does it mean to “hate war”? Certainly there were those who benefited economically from war — weapons manufacturers couldn’t possibly be honest peace-lovers. Putin likely does not “hate” war (a fact particularly difficult to ignore as a student studying Russian in Estonia during the war in Ukraine). After deciding that I had to move on with my life, I settled on: Everyone hates genocide and bad tourists. (Later, I realized that mosquitos would have been a better answer). 

Once we had past tense under our belt, our conversations grew more complex—and occasionally downright philosophical. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, Lukasz looked me in the eye and asked: How do you understand progress? The room was silent for a minute as I mulled over a response, eventually answering his question with a confused: I think do better and better every day? A week later, we busied ourselves with assigning colors to abstract concepts after adding the words for the former to our repertoire. I incorrectly stated that “Love” was red (the right answer was pink). We spent five minutes discussing whether purple or green better embodied “Elite” (I was in the purple camp). 

We soon reached more dangerous territory when we learned the names for countries in Russian, promptly followed by adjectives. You think Spanish and French textbooks are questionable? Our textbook, Поехали! (2019) — which roughly translates to Let’s Go! in English—had some eyebrow-raising takes. After talking about Swiss chocolate and Parisian museums, we upgraded to vaguely offensive generalizations. Africa is interesting, but dangerous and hot. It’s hard to live there. Lukasz seemed to agree with this sentiment and opened up the class for discussion. What I really wanted to say in response to the prompt was: “It’s obviously problematic to label an entire continent as dangerous. At the same time, it’s kinda insensitive not to acknowledge that the average quality of life is lower in most parts of Africa when compared to most European countries.” I tried to think of the Russian words for “exploitation” and “imperialism,” but came up blank. 

I managed: “я согласна, чуть-чуть, иногда” — I agree, a little, sometimes. 

The authors of Поехали! also had a penchant for assigning the adjective “exotic” to every non-Western country. One night, our homework prompts included: What countries do you think are exotic? Unable to reference Said’s Orientalism in Russian, I settled on: “I think exotic is an idea” and hoped it got the point across. 

No topic was off-limits to the lovely authors of Поехали! Some of my favorite discussion questions included:  Are you on a diet — why or why not? Is bitcoin a good investment? Do men wear dresses? What kind of clothes does God like?

I found some of the textbook’s questions offensively fallacious. Once, after listening to an audio describing the imaginary Ivan, we were asked if he can play guitar. Our options were: yes or no. I said: I don’t know, since I did not hear the word “guitar.” Lukasz corrected me: No, Ivan cannot play the guitar. He thought I did not understand the exercise. I decided to hold my ground. 

“Life—big; Text—small. Text is not everything. Maybe, he plays guitar—secret.” 

Lukasz conceded my point. 

That moment generated quite a bit of laughter on Lukasz’s part (and mine). I had grown flustered as I tried to explain myself; my face warmed as I mentally ran through my vocabulary set, searching for words. Distilling my objection into simple language felt like pushing my thoughts into a funnel. 

Thankfully, though, I’ve only really embarrassed myself once or twice—and only when I wasn’t contemplating my words as closely. (Even typing out the prior sentence leads me to recall a classic Spanish class scenario: confusing the words “pregnant” and “embarrassed.” If Señora Ramos, my 8th grade Spanish teacher, is still out there, I hope she knows that I have, so far, managed to avoid teenage-parenthood.) One day, our conversation turned to movies. Upon being asked what kind of films I would like to act in, I responded: 

“I would not like to act, because I think it — uncomfortable. But I like to watch active films.” 

Lukasz laughed and raised an eyebrow at me; clearly I had miscommunicated something. He corrected me in Russian: “I understand what you mean: action films. In Russian, what you said implies…” 

I laughed it off and consoled myself with the realization that at least I had sidestepped saying that I would like to act in pornographic films. (I don’t even enjoy action movies very much; it was the first movie-adjacent phrase that came to mind.)

But nothing I could come up with rivaled the absurdity of Поехали. One moment took the cake, at least for me — or perhaps I was just particularly delirious (in a Dostoevsky coded fashion) on a warm Thursday in July and couldn’t take it anymore. I was asked to read the following out loud in front of the class: Если женщина говорит нет, это значит может быть. Если женщина говорит может быть, зто значит да. Если говорит да, это не женщина. My classmates began giggling as I reached the end. It took me a moment to translate the sentences in my head: If a woman says no, it means maybe. If a woman says maybe, it means yes. If she says yes, it is not a woman.

I sighed. “Not true.”

“Why?” Lukasz asked, an ironic glint in his eye. 

“How do you say in Russian — “problematic”?”

Once he recovered from his laughter, Lukasz supplied the word, which has since become an essential part of my Russian vocabulary — right up there with иногда.

Citation for our Russian textbook: Станислав Чернышов и Алла Чернышова, Поехали! Санкт-петербург, 2019.