Answers to “Fun with Russian”

Woah. Where did last week go? I can’t believe how busy that was…

So, answer time. For a refresher, the challenge was to insert appropriate spaces to turn this into intelligible Russian:

kolokolokolokola

Ammon von Lovell found three answers, but I’m only aware of two, so I’ll be curious what he found that I didn’t.

Here are my two:

Kol okolo kolokola – The stake is near the bell

Kolokol oloko kola – The bell is near the stake (don’t you love Russian word order ambiguity?)

The source of this puzzle was the Wikipedia entry for Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. The page points out interesting linguistic constructs involving repetition in many languages.

Let’s hope this week affords more opportunities to blog than last… I still can’t believe how busy I was.

6 thoughts on “Answers to “Fun with Russian””

  1. You had to thrown von in there didn’t you? Jerk . . .

    Anyway the third answer is stupid, but valid. It’s also on the Wikipedia article by the way:

    kol o kol okolo kola – The stake, o stake, is near the stake.

    Hey, FYI I just found out about another mission website that you’re not registered on:

    http://www.russiamoscowmission.net/

    Your alter ego Justin Turman created it. And I’m assuming you’re not going to the reunion this weekend in UT, right? Oh come on, why don’t you take a flight out, there will be that many more orders on the printer waiting for you when you get back. Tempting?

  2. Ammon,

    Apologies over the name. For some reason, when I was writing this I recalled that you actually were signing your name as such… I was tired. I’ll refrain in the future.

    As for Justin Turman’s site, there is a “sign in” button, but no “sign up” button, which makes it difficult for anyone to register. Further, if you click the “sign in” button with a bogus username and password, the site throws a fit. All that means that it took me about 7 seconds to decide it wasn’t worth the time to figure out how to use it.

    As for the mission reunion, no, I won’t be there. I have other obligations this weekend… I’ll actually miss the saturday conferences too, which is unfortunate, but c’est la vie in my line of work.

    (Wow… that felt like a really negative comment… I need to go get some good karma, fast.)

  3. Hey don’t worry about the middle name, I was just jerkin’ yer chain.

    Yeah I would have to agree with you about that website. The only way I knew how to get in was Justin emailed me and told me my username and password. I’ll pass your comments along.

    Too bad you can’t come, I just found out President Young will be there.

  4. hey there, are there any more sweet russian things like that? my grandpa is learning russian and hasnt told me that one, so ill have to tell him. By the way, this is posted by a guy who used to live in your western illinois (bulldogs) town who then moved to zion. try and guess! (i bet it wont be hard, but maybe its been too long.

Comments are closed.