Four cheeses

My hairdresser insists on talking to me in English, though we’d probably communicate better in Russian. The other night she was telling me about her prior life in Germany. She said, “I make four cheeses.” Interested, I thought about the farmhouses I’d seen in Switzerland, where farm families cured cheeses in their basements. Usually they’d only make one or two kinds of cheese, and I imagined that Alesya’s business in Germany must have been pretty impressive.

As she continued her story, however, I realized that she hadn’t said cheeses, but Jesus. “I make for Jesus.” OK. I had to re-think. The Russian language includes a common verb that translates variously in English around the concepts of doing and making. No doubt she thinks in Russian and translated her thoughts into English. So she was doing for Jesus. Once again it made sense, but the meaning changed greatly.

Do I still get into similar predicaments in Russian? Probably, but people are generally too polite to tell me.