Monday, April 14, 2008

Dine at Pectopah Byk!




Some of you may have a hankering for some of that yummy food I posted yesterday, so if in Belgrade, choose perhaps the "Pectopah Byk." No, wait, that's "Restoran Vuk"! (RES-toe-rahn vook). Just another little Cyrillic trap for foreigners, many of whom believe that there's a chain of restaurants called "pectopah"! "P" in Cyrillic is "R" in the Latin alphabet, "E" is "E," "C" is "S", "T" and "O" are just what they look like, then the P=R again, a simple "A,", then finally the "H" is an "N"! Simple as one, two, 2/987 to the n-th power. Oh, yes: "B" is "V," "Y" is "U," and "K" is just that. And finally, the person for whom the restaurant is named is Vuk Karadžić, 1787 -1864, who standardized the old Cyrillic alphabet to make one letter stand for only one sound, therefore the alphabet is phonetic. So if you do learn the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, you'll be able to pronounce anything...then you have to learn what it means.

3 comments:

Chuck Pefley said...

Hah! Your language lesson is just too funny! LOL!!
Thanks for trying, though -:)

Petrea Burchard said...

Brilliant! Now I just have to remember it all...

Gibepregiba said...

In second grade (nas 2. razred), when we started to learn latin alphabet we used to say - PECTOPAh for restoran just for joke. :) Thanks for reminding.

YANKEE IN NICE

 Edit: pastis is a licorice-flavored alcoholic drinksimilar to Greek ouzo. My favorite drink as it is for many people in this area. No more ...