The perils of mis-pronunciation: Papa’s Dog Style

This morning a Russian who does not speak especially good English asked me what I had been doing last night. Speaking in English, I said,  “I was working, then I went for an hour to the pub to celebrate Doug Steele’s birthday.”
     Doug (pictured right, photos Andrey Sedin) is the brains behind many Moscow night-spots where the big dicks of the ex-pat world hang out. The Russian was someone who had once got annoyed with me because I had never heard of  Sheeshl. Have you heard of Sheeshl? No, neither had I. We went back and forth for quite some time, until she said, “Sheeshl, you know: Ueenston Sheeshl!” Then the penny dropped: Churchill, Winston Churchill.
     This is the danger in so many conversations in Russia. It’s almost as bad as trying to talk to native Shetlanders—but that’s another story. It is important to cultivate patience and tolerance.
     “Why dog steel?” she asked me this morning. “I thought it is said: style?”
     “His name is Doug Steele,” I said.
     “Oh. I thought you said 'style'. Celebrating cобачий стиль.”
     “You mean you thought I said we had been in the pub celebrating Dog Style?”
     “Yes of course.”
     Suddenly there rose up before me horrific visions of the boys on their knees in Papa’s Place enjoying the comforts of Istanbul, as it were, or what my grandfather’s generation used to call “Hunnish practices”. But as you can see from the picture below, we were all quite upright, indeed upstanding, such are the harmless pleasures of life on Meat Street, or Myasnitskaya. Even the hand holding in the picture below looks to have been quite innocent, though I did leave early and cannot be sure what happened after my hour was up.