Although I have made some progress in learning Uzbek – at first from Peace Corps training, and now in self-study, along with speaking it morning, noon, and night at work and at home – I am now embarking on learning Russian. Russian is used to conduct most businesses in Uzbekistan and is also the lingua-franca between people from other Central Asian countries. It is the predominant language in my office, and in the NGO world a lot of donors operate in Russian.
So these days, I patch whatever I know together and use all three (Uzbek-Russian-English) languages in one sentence! And if I still can’t make myself understood, then at least I have given the people of Uzbekistan a good laugh.
That, my friend, is what we called "Rusbeklish."
Posted by: Nathan | 05/20/2004 at 08:20 AM