zhaman

After the concert, the vice-principal who is in charge of events asked me if I would sing at the next concert. “I sing very badly,” I meant to say. However, in Uralsk dialect, the word for “bad” is also the word for “very/a lot.” This is a problem for me. So I hadn’t really given her a clear “no.” I will fix that as soon as possible.

I discovered this idiom in late autumn, when my host mother started to eat lemons dipped into the sugar bowl this winter because one of her friends eats lemons like that. “She bad eats lemons in sugar,” I heard. “Why is it bad?” I asked, although I was really wondering why she continued to do it if it was disapproved of. “It’s not bad.” She said, as her whole face puckered.