St. Petersburg's Zoo-bilee

300-Letiye Sankt-Peterburga: St. Petersburg's tercentenary circus, literally the "zoo-jubilee" of Saint Petersburg -- a pun based on reading the number "3" as the Russian letter "Z."

The residents of the northern capital do not seem universally thrilled by the celebration of their city's 300th anniversary. For months the city has been clogged by traffic jams, buildings have been hidden under scaffolding, and everyone has been depressed by report after report of misused funding. And now they are dealing with the celebrations themselves, which seem designed to be enjoyed by everyone but those who actually live and work in the city.

No wonder they have taken to calling it the zooletiye -- a pun based on a misreading of the number three as the letter "z" -- the "zoo-jubilee," zoo-bilee" or "tercentenary circus." They also call it "prazdnik na tri bukvy," literally, "the three-lettered holiday," or what we might call more gently in U.S. slang, "the holiday from hell." (If you want to know what the three letters are, ask any Russian friend.)

Has there ever been a city with more names? First it was Sankt-Peterburg, then Petrograd (renamed during the first war with Germany to Russify the name) and then Leningrad.

During Soviet times, it was often called Kolybel tryokh revolyutsii -- the cradle of three revolutions. Now it is once again Sankt-Peterburg. Through all these changes a lot of residents have been happy to use the working class moniker coined in the 1920s and call it Piter, as in: poyedu v Piter na prazdniki (I'm going up to St. Pete for the holidays). They call themselves Pitertsy -- piterets or pitersky for a man, piterskaya for a woman. If you want to be proper, you should call a man Peterburzhets and woman Peterburzhanka. But because Russian always likes to trip us up, the proper adjective is peterburgsky.

In the past there used to be more differences between St. Petersburg Russian and Moscow Russian, mostly in accent (a French rolling of the "r" in the northern capital, for example) and manner of speaking, but to some extent in expressions as well. Few of these distinctions are left, but some do still exist. In St. Petersburg, you will still hear proper pronunciation and diction without the "ahs" (akhanye) that have corrupted Moscow Russian. And they don't slur their consonants: konechno is pronounced with a hard "ch," as is bulochnaya and korichnevy (in Moscow, these words can sound like Koneshno, buloshnaya, korishnevy.)

You may be confused, however, when your host looks at an overflowing bread basket and exclaims, "Oi! Net khleba -- ya zabyla ego kupit" (Oh! There's no bread -- I forgot to buy it). For a St. Petersburger, khleb only refers to black bread -- white bread is called bulka (in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia this is a roll).

In St. Petersburg a cellphone (mobilnik in Moscow slang) is called trubka, proezdnoi bilet (mass transit pass) -- kartochka. In Moscow, you might tell someone, "Ezzhai na avtobuse do konechnoi ostanovki -- ya tebya tam vstrechy" (Take the bus to the last stop and I'll meet you there). In St. Petersburg you'll be told, "Ezzhai do koltsa, i ya tebya tam vstrechy" (take the bus to the end stop turn-around, and I'll meet you there). When they give directions to their apartments, they often say: "Podnimaisya na vtoroi etazh cherez paradnoe" (climb to the second floor via the formal entrance). For some reason in St. Petersburg, "formal entrance" has been shifted from the masculine gender (paradny podezd) to a kind of generic neuter paradnoe.

Pitertsy may still sneer at our accents, but at least we'll be able to understand what they are talking about.

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.