Life is a beach and then you start learning Russian. "Beach" in the language of Tolstoy and Pushkin is "pliazh", but they took it from the French word "plage". You may have a hard time imagining the moralistic author of War in Peace holding a surfboard instead of a sickle, or Pushkin's sheep-like sideburns set off by a slick pair of Ray Bans, but a lot of the terminology for sun and fun in the modern-day land of the Czars doesn't differ that much from anywhere else. "Veensurfeeng", "Topless" and other fun phrases are direct borrowings from English.
"I'm hot!" emphatically declares the English speaker. "You're not," comes the sarcastic reply. In Russian, one is more modest: "Mne Zharko" really means "it's hot to me." The assumption being that the temperature of the air might be perfectly fine with the person lying next to you. If, on the other hand, one is giving an update on his libido or capacity for exciting members of the opposite sex, the phrase "Ya Goryachy" does just fine. "Goryachy" is also used to say your food has just been cooked and is ready to be eaten. What an erotic language!
Getting a little moist under the arms? Beaded brow? In English, men sweat and women perspire. In Russian, even bottles and sunglasses get their glands in motion. My bottle "zapotela" means droplets are running down the glass. Literally, the container is sweating.
The same thing said of one's eye glasses would mean that they are fogged up. What an erotic people!
Russian speakers, like just about everyone else except Americans, use the metric system. Thus 40 "gradusov", or degrees, would be nearly intolerably hot weather for a day at the beach, but the perfect strength of good vodka. "Gradus" translates into English as "proof" when the subject is alcoholic beverages. Hot weather and strong vodka of course should not be mixed but often are the cocktail of choice among the "proletarian of the pliazh" or "beach bums." The consequences of such behavior for this stubbornly independent breed range from a Pirate red tan to river drownings.
Go with the Flow
It's summer, so our expatriate reader may want to go for a swim. Stop! You already have a linguistic problem. If you want to invite Tanya or Petya to splash around in the water with you, you would say "Ne Khotite Kupatsya", which literally means "Do you want to go bathing." Don't get excited yet, no one is planning to lather you up with a bar of Irish Spring in the Dnieper. In fact, this is the way we used to speak in English - otherwise, why do we still call what we wear to the beach "a bathing suit"?
The real word for "swimming" in Russian is "Plavat", which is used to describe any travelling motion in the water by people, boats, crocodiles, etc. In other words, you can invite Tanya to "plavat" to a nearby island or to the Caribbean on your yacht, but if you just want to dunk each other a few meters from shore or playfully yank at Petya's make-shift trunks under water, this is called "Kupatsya".
By the way, unless you're into skinny dipping, you may like to know that the word for "swimming trunks" in Russian is "Plavki". These are for men. For Women it's "Kupalnik" or bathing suit. There is also, of course, the international "bikini", which needs no further explanation. How about "goggles"? These are called "Ochki" in Russian, which is also the same word for "glasses". Interestingly, the Russian word for "eye" is "glaz". So if you take these roots literally, you might come to the conclusion that we English speakers "goggle" at other swimmers under water (Petya, beware!) or that Russians wear their spectacles into the pool.
But all this isn't nearly as strange to the English speaker as a trip to a local "Baseyn" or pool. Why is that older woman sitting in the men's locker room? And she may not even be that old? None of the other men seems to mind. They just strip to their Y-fronts, put their towels, trunks and toiletries into plastic bags (with the ubiquitous cigarette adverts proudly displayed), and shuffle along into the shower room, where they further prepare for the pool. Presumably, it's ok to expose your undies to the old girl but no bare buns or genitalia. She is busy reading the latest edition of Fakty anyway. Or is she? Just try to enter the locker room in street shoes and she'll tell you a thing or two. Who do you think has to mop that floor? Street shoes are taken off and put on before entering the locker room.
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