I live in Kiev. One Saturday morning, I was shopping for groceries at the neighborhood supermarket, and I couldn't locate the eggs. Finally, I stopped a market employee - but couldn't remember the word for 'egg.'  I knew that caviar - fish eggs - were ikra, though.

"Gde ikra dlya kuritsya?" (Where is the caviar from chickens?), I asked. The young woman was puzzled, then pointed me toward the fish counter.

"Nyet," I said in my poor Russian. "Ikra dlya kuritsya."  I then resorted to pantomime, moving my arms like chicken wings and clucking... then squawking and holding my hand between my knees, as though I'd just laid an imaginary egg!

When the poor woman stopped laughing, she took me by the hand and lead me to the eggs, chicken variety!