To Speak Like a Russian, Buy One of Their Cars

Stuk, stuk, stuk, wheeze! Whirrr... phlph.It's always a sad day when your car dies, but in the case of our beloved Tavria, it was like losing a close friend. Worst of all, it was our fault.Our mechanic took one look and then eyed us accusingly.Zastuchalsya, he muttered. We didn't comprehend. Vsyo. Konets mashiny, he said, making a throat-slitting gesture with his thumb. Stuk, stuk, stuk.He had recreated our Tavria's death rattle. Our mechanic was trying to tell us that the car's engine had seized. We later established that a valve of some kind had broken, letting out all the oil, but that the little indikator on the dashboard had failed to light up, setting up the Ukrainian five-speed's date with destiny. The official diagnosis was zaklinilas' -- it got wedged -- probably a reference to what happened to the white hot metal of the pistons as they entered their casings bereft of oil.Perhaps more devastating than the loss of a means of transportation was that it meant the end of a particularly rich period of vocabulary acquisition: Chainik, or tea kettle, which is how professional drivers refer to bad drivers of privately owned automobiles (possibly a pun on chastnik, or private car); nayezdnik, someone who drives his car into the ground; dvizhok, driver slang for dvigatel', or motor.Since parts of the Tavria regularly broke, we had to learn the Russian names for all of them. Remen' poletel, our mechanic would say; the fan belt has broken. Or tormoza poleteli; the brakes have stopped working. We often wondered about the origin of the expression poletel, which actually means "flew off." Then one day one of our wheels flew off, and we understood.When we were told that our amortizatory poleteli, we were confused, because we were just beginning to understand that this word has something to do with what happens to a bankrupt firm's assets. Amortizatory turned out to also mean "shock-absorbers."And then, on that dark day, our mechanic announced that the worst had happened. Our dvizhok poletel -- the motor had flown off, because of our neglect. We were nayezdniki.While we're on the subject of neglect, we had a little visit from a Belarussian knight in full battle regalia who vowed to smite us like so many Teutons if we didn't correct two spelling errors that appeared in last week's column. No problem, sir knight: The ill-starred betrothed couple of 12th-century Slavic lore were Rogneda and Yaropolk. We apologize to any living relatives for the error.