Desperate Serbwife

Random Thoughts: Pola kilo, kvickers and the number 4

These three things are driving me crazy (yeah, I know, short drive, ha - ha).

1. "Pola kilo" means "1/2 kilo" in Serbian and it is the only answer I know how to give when vendors in the market ask how much I want of something. And this amount is fine in something heavy such as meat or potatoes, but when we are talking about red peppers, I end up with an enormous bag of red peppers. I have asked my Serbian teacher how to say "1/4 kilo" but for some reason I have been way too shy to use it - I am also still trying to figure out how much that would actually give me since I grew up learning weight in pounds - and I know that a 1/4 pound of beef is not much more than a hamburger, but how many red peppers that equals, I have no idea.

2. Serbia does most food stuff very well; their fresh bread is amazing, their fresh vegetables are scrumptious, and they have a billion varieties of smoked sausage which are all delicious, but they really need to learn what a cracker is. Mike and I have bought no less than 15 boxes of different kinds of "kvickers" in an attempt to find one that isn't sweet, buttery or rice cakey, but to no avail. We would really like to enjoy cheese and crackers for a snack, but it is becoming painfully obvious that we will not be able to find a cracker worthy of a slice of cheese.

3. The other thing that is making me crazy these days is the number 4 in Serbian. I will list the numbers and maybe you can see why the number 4 is so hard:

1 - jedan
2 - dva
3 - tri
4 - chetiri
5 - pet
6 - sest
7 - sedam
8 - osam
9 - devet
10 - deset

There are at least 10 different ways that people pronounce chetiri, and the people in the market are especially bad at mumbling and shortening the word. And it only gets harder when we are talking about trying to differentiate between 14, 40 and 400. I'm walking around with tons of small bills in change because every time I can't understand the price of something I just hand the vender the biggest bill I have and hope that covers it - and then, of course, they invariably ask if I have any smaller bills, ugh!

So as I was laying awake last night thinking of my battle with the number 4 (I told you - it's making me crazy), I was thinking about what the hardest number is in English. I have decided that it must be the number eight. Think about trying to learn that number, it's pronounced like "ate" but it's spelled all crazy! Come to think of it, one and two aren't spelled so phonetically either. At least Serbian is mostly phonetic, unlike other languages I've attempted to learn, like French - ugh, what a disaster of a language!!! Anyway, the next time you hear someone struggling with English, just think of me and the number 4 and give them a hand, will ya? That, and if you come visit me, I really hope you like red peppers!

posted by Brooke @ 8:30 AM