Silly and smelly



“You are so smelyi!” I wanted my husband to know that I am  proud of him.
“Excuse me, why I am smelly?” Scott sniffed under his left shoulder, then under his right armpit making the funniest wrinkled grimace, “You think I am smelly?”
“Did I say you were smelly?”
“Yes, you did. Am I?” Oh, goodness. The international conflict was coming.
“No, you are not smelly!”
“Yeah, maybe I am. I am stinky because I just held the cat…” Scott managed to catch our asocial cat and placed him into the carrier. The cat’s fur odor was still fresh. 
"Love, S-M-E-L-Y-I in Russian means brave, courages, not stinky. Can you trust me?"
My husband moved the sofa and it seemed like the right moment to thank my husband for his effort, “Honey, ty takoi silny!”
“Silly?!”  Scott paused in amusement.
“Not ‘silly,’ SILNY! It means ‘strong’ in Russian!” My Mother was already laughing at us, getting the meaning out of the Russian words, and of our frustrated faces.
“Oh, sure!” My husband looked at Mama and finally believed that I didn’t mean to hurt him. He got hysterical at how similar-sounding words SMELYI and SILNY could create a problem without translation. Sometimes Russian and English create hilarious verbal twists that are hard to predict. 

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