Michele Berdy is probably best known for her newspaper column “The Word’s Worth”. Her articles provide fascinating insights into Russian life by exploring the depths of the Russian language. Michele has lived and worked in Moscow for the best part of 32 years and her varied career has spanned everything from documentary film and television to journalism, book translation and professional interpreting. Michele is the author of several books on Russian language and culture and is an accomplished writer.

I’ve been a follower and fan or Michele’s writing since my first visit to Russia back in 1999 when I chanced upon her column in a copy of the Saint-Petersburg Times. After a little internet detective work, I managed to track Michele down and she very kindly agreed to an interview...

Welcome Michele! I know you’ve lived in Russia for the best part of 32 years so perhaps I can begin by asking what first brought you to Russia and how you ended up staying here so long.

I first came to Russia on a three-week student trip during my Christmas break in 1975, and then I came back to study for a semester after graduating from college in 1978. From the moment I arrived, I wanted to figure out a way to stay. I was fascinated by the place and people. I wanted to understand how they lived their lives. And I wanted to be able to speak Russian beyond the level of a precocious six-year-old. So I found a job with a Soviet publishing house and stayed for almost four more years.

I think you fall in love with a country and culture the way you fall in love with a person. You can say, “I love him because he’s smart, caring, funny, charming and we share similar values.” But there are probably another million or so men like that. Why this one? Why this country? I’ve stayed because Russia is smart, sometimes caring, often hilariously funny, charming as hell and sometimes has the same values I have. And also because I’ve made a life here, with dear friends and that odd fabric of life that one weaves out of everyday activities: chatting with the lady behind of the counter of your favourite produce store, going to the bath house, moving out to the dacha, walking your dog with your dog’s dog friends, going to the movies on Saturday afternoon… All that stuff that feels like home.

When did you start studying Russian and what sparked your interest in the language? Which aspects of Russian would you say are the most difficult for native English speakers?

My parents were first-generation Americans. My mother’s family was Ukrainian, my father’s – Lemko, a small (but proud) ethnic group from the Transcarpathian region. Like most poor first-generation kids, their ambition was to assimilate. Like most second-generation kids, secure in my American-ness, I was interested in my roots. That got me started on the language, and then I got hooked.

But like fish on a hook, we foreigners flip and flounder over aspect, remembering which cases go with which verbs, and, in written Russian, word order. Whoever came up with the “old information, new information” paradigm of Russian sentence structure should be tarred and feathered. And then the damn language keeps evolving. Just when you’ve got one thing right, they go and change it on you.

Do you have any favourite words or expressions in Russian and can you share some with us?

I like those difficult-to-translate concept words like принципиальность (principled-ness) or междусобойчик (just-between-us-athon). I like really-super-difficult-to-translate words that we don’t have in English, like авось, a crazy belief that things will turn out all right, against all evidence to the contrary (like when driving into the oncoming traffic lane). I love the expression прикинуться шлангом (to pretend to be a hose), which is what you do when you want to pretend you don’t hear your Significant Other reminding you that it’s your turn to take out the garbage.

I think you’d agree that making mistakes is part and parcel of learning to speak a foreign language. Can you mention a few funny or memorable mistakes you’ve heard from Russians in English and perhaps a couple of your own in Russian?

The funniest mistake I ever saw a Russian speaker make in English was in a propaganda article about the paucity of social services and modern amenities in the Philippines. There were no schools, no movie theatres, no clubs, no TV – nothing at all to do “but walk around all day with your cock in your hand, looking for a fight.” Cockfight, he meant cockfight.

Prefixes are my undoing. I’ll say переспала (to sleep with someone, in the Biblical sense) instead of проспала (overslept). Once I wanted to drown a bath house (утопить) instead of firing it up (топить). Come on – one word for drown and heat? That’s just not fair.

What do you like and dislike about living in Russia? Is there anything you miss about living in the States?

I love the way you can develop a deep friendship with someone just-like-that – you know, you start chatting with someone as you walk your dogs and before you know it, you’re discussing your philosophy of life, your first marriage and your most cherished hopes and dreams. Taken as a whole, Russians have a genius for deep and meaningful human relationships.

That said, I have to admit that I’m not crazy about the current phase of Russian evolution, particularly in big cities like Moscow. It’s a grabby phase, as if the entire population thinks they’re playing a high-stakes game of musical chairs in which they have to grab all they can before the music stops. They grab profits, ease, comfort and mountains of stuff as fast as they can, whenever they want, and no matter who it inconveniences or robs or destroys. It’s understandable, of course, that after decades (if not centuries) of not having, people want to have a lot of whatever they want right now. And they’re right, of course, that the illegal and immoral ways that many people make large fortunes these days will come to an end. Russia will rediscover its cultural and ethical roots again. But it’s hard living through this phase.

These days what I miss is a sense of community. That used to be very strong in Russia – there were communities of dissidents, artists, writers; dacha communities filled with fellow scientists or actors; apartment house communities that got together to clean up the yard and have courtyard parties. In these transitional times, that sense of belonging to a community has gone away in Russia. But it hasn’t disappeared in the US, and I find I miss it.

I also miss cheap clothes.

Through your work as a professional translator and interpreter, you must have met some interesting and influential figures. Can you tell us a story or two?

Well, um, no. Interpreters are a bit like priests: can’t share what was said in the confessional.

But I can share one story about someone I interviewed. I was working on a film about Andrei Sakharov, and the director wanted interviews with people who remembered the 20th Party Congress (when Khrushchev “exposed” Stalin). I went out to Peredelkino to interview the writer and singer Bulat Okudzhava. I asked him about his memories of that famous political turning point in history. He thought for a moment and then said, “Actually, I don’t have a single memory of it at all. I was falling in love with my wife at the time.” That was the end of the interview, but the start of a lovely chat over tea.

I’ve been a follower of your newspaper column “The Word’s Worth” for many years now and enjoy your insights into language and culture. What would you say are the main differences between Russians and Americans?

Oh, do I have to answer this question? Can’t we forget it? Please? Pretty please?

There are differences between the way Russians and Americans have been raised, the way our languages mold our perception and thinking, the way our myths about ourselves and others have impacted on our worldview, and the way our histories and climates and landscapes have instilled certain expectations about what the future holds. But when you try to formulate those differences, it’s like trying to grasp mercury: it fragments into thousands of little, slithering, silvery bodies - that is, thousands of discrete individuals who to greater or lesser degrees either match the archetype or contradict it.

Russians have the idea that they are somehow different from everyone else. What do you think about the idea that we foreigners can never truly understand the “deep Russian soul” (глубокая русская душа). Do you believe in its existence and if so are the secrets to unlocking it to be found in the Russian language itself? How is Russian mentality reflected in the Russian language? Can you give a few examples?

Well, I think Russians are different from everyone else, but I think that everyone is different from everyone else. These days there is a tendency in Russia to see itself as unique and everyone else as “the same.” People talk about Europe or the West as if it was one little country, not a group of wildly different social, political and cultural systems, languages, levels of wealth, religious traditions, beliefs, values, and notions of what is appropriate to wear on a beach. I think it is very difficult to enter the soul of any country, including your own. I mean, do you get the Tea Party? Talk about the mystery of the national soul!

But if there is a way into the soul of a country, it’s through the language: the intonations, the cadences, the stress on one thing (like intent, in Russian verbal system) rather than another (like the obsessive time-line in the English system of tenses); the untranslatable words, like авось in Russian and privacy in English, and what that says about risk-taking (okay in Russia because it’s going to turn out just fine) or social intercourse (polite, but somewhat constrained in English – never ask about religion, politics or money).

Can you imagine your next 32 years in Russia and do you have any interesting plans on the horizon – books, research, or perhaps running for Russian President?

Uf! I can barely imagine next winter, let alone the next 32 years!

My plans include finally, really, once and for all, getting my housing management company to fix the leaks in our communal roof and my individual apartment ceiling. I want to master the art of pirozhki (every kind of dough and filling). I’d love to convince non-Russians that Russian food is more than sour cream, dill, and greasy, garlicky stuff that the old lady down the street used to make. If I can get Russians to eat carrot cake, surely I can get Americans to eat mushroom soup.

I’d like to spend months travelling around Russia’s ancient little towns and write the kind of travel log that would inspire people to jump on a plane and head to Uglich instead of Venice. (Venice is so last year.) I’d like to translate a wonderful writer named Teffi, who wrote funny, poignant, acerbic, sweet articles and prose as the Russian Empire collapsed and who is little known outside Russia. I’d like to revisit the 1990s, the most misunderstood and unfairly maligned period in Russian history. (Maybe that’s a movie script. I’m thinking dark, antic comedy.) I’d like to write about the misunderstood and unfairly maligned women translators of Russian literature, like Constance Garnett and Isabel Hapgood.

Hmm. The common thread in all this seems to be rehabilitating the misunderstood and unfairly maligned. I’ll be too busy doing that to run for President.

But first I have to get my roof fixed.

You can keep up-to-date with Michele’s fascinating insights into Russian language and culture by reading her newpaper column here.

I would also recommend Michele’s new book The Russian Word’s Worth.