Can anyone on ilx speak Russian?

I bought this belt today, why becase it look intersting. It's weird and big and doesn't work like normal belts (unusual clasp, with a nub that slots through a hole) and I've always had a fondness for a bit of Soviet tat. Can anyone tell me what it says? Or if it's a logo then what it's for? Ta!

http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/254499_1674462594921_1638124226_1339868_1275500_s.jpg

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%96%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%8B

I want to learn Russian.

good idea, googling the letters. not having that it's a belt based around a little orange frog.

H Y A 3
KK(weird double k thing)A b(?)
Y A 3 A

don't have russian keys though, ngh

toad.....

not that it'll help but here it is big:
http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/254499_1674462594921_1638124226_1339868_1275500_n.jpg

it looks great, i swear. huge huge buckle

According to Google Translate, "ичаз жаб чазд" translates as "ichaz toads chazd." So there you go.

жаб / жаба does mean toad. The rest is a bit of a mystery. Initials, i would have thought.

damn. i've been using the word 'toad' as an friendly insult lately, not the kind of thing i want on display round my midriff

though i dont come across many russians i guess

Could be wrong, but I'm transliterating that as "ichaz zhab chazd."

are they just nonsense words like 'tesco' and zara' or could they mean something too? my mate's ex-gf is estonian so he's got her on the case now

he just told me it says 'i fuck toads'

another mate said "The middle bit is capital letters: Zh D B . Pretty sure it's doesn't say toads."

really hope he's right

"Cordless workshop had as its objective the supply battery stations for a broadcast the first Moscow radio station. However, it did not last long, and during the NEP, its production facilities were transferred to a self-supporting entity "ICHAZ", named after the initials of his heads (Chalco and Hilary Alexander Zajaczkowski)."

I posted this above the entrance to my work office
Оставь надежду всем, кто ввести здесь

ahh so it's just a logo, a nonsense word. bit disappointing

wonder if that company have a website

The middle bit is capital letters: Zh D B

Yeah, I wondered if that was a Д instead of А.

Housemate can read it, doesn't know what the words are. I'd write it phonetically, but ah... I don't know how to translate the sounds into English typing.

if i could just get the actual letters on here i could try and google the company, could you get your housemate to type them out please S-?

(thanks all btw!)

It's a D in the middle, that's right.

It's a Kazakh bank, although that seems unlikely to be the source.

ждб

http://e.gov.kz/wps/portal/Content?contentPath=/library2/1_kazakhstan/kr/mosotrud/pere4enmorg/article/ebrd&lang=kk

here's an online cyrillic keyboard: http://winrus.com/screen_e.htm

ha thats nuts, it'd be great if it was from Kazakhstan

i picked it up from a charity shop in leigh (angry little town in NW england, between wigan and manchester) today for £1.99

<3 "angry little town", ty

Same basic translation (filtered through German, so perhaps even less of a help) as everyone else gets. Just matching what appears to be the characters to that Cyrillic keyboard.

it sounds like it's initials so not actually a word with meaning. the middle line anyway, but the other two aren't coming up with anything useful. wish i could find the actual company though, see what they're all about. thanks everyone on here for pitching in

whoa, sweet Toad the Wet Sprocket buckle!

noooo

I get some pages telling me ЖДБ stands for Железнодорожная больница = "railway hospital" or железнодорожный батальон = "railway (construction) battalion", but the former seems an unlikely thing for a belt buckle to say and the latter isn't bringing me much joy regarding belts or logos either

you guys have figured out everything i would have been able to tell you

(means nothing to my girlfriend either which is way more significant than its meaning nothing to me)

I speak Russian and I think that sadly this is just a meaningless string of characters.

tbh this reminds me of a captcha i saw the other day.

is this racist too steve?

i need to think up something for when people ask me what it means. so far i'ts a toss up between a toad or a kaskhstan bank. none of which are getting me going. 'initials of the guys who set the company up' is just way too dull, rather go for 'toad bank' over that

ooh actually, "railway (construction) battalion" is the front-runner so far. evocative

If that's an E instead of a Z on the bottom set (it's hard to tell when the letters are stylised) you could say it stands for:

Чернобыльскый атомно эмиссионный детектор

"Chernobyl atomic emission detector".

Nobody will ever question you, but they may move away very quickly.

according to google translate if you split it like и ча з ж а бч а зд you get "and the frequency is real warhead and space" which is kinda cold-wary i guess.

or sorry that should be и ча з ж д бч а зд
"and frequency is a graph warhead and space"

ha these are fucking awesome, i'm going to try them all out and see which one freaks people out the most

If that's an E instead of a Z on the bottom set (it's hard to tell when the letters are stylised) you could say it stands for:
Чернобыльскый атомно эмиссионный детектор
"Chernobyl atomic emission detector".

i so wish you weren't lying here

is "and the frequency is real warhead and space" actually true? because that's amazing. graph one is ok but real warhead and space is the most terrifying shit going

according to google translate it is, but I don't speak russian so no idea how wrong that is :-)

also.. snoop toady toad

http://www.last.fm/music/Snoop+%D0%96%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B0+%D0%96%D0%B0%D0%B1

ha ha this is throwing up all manner of mindmangling shit. current faves: warhead frequency, railway battalion and snoop toady toad.

like i said to a friend just now, im finally living out a tiny part of my longheld stalker: shadow of chernobyl dreams, and keepin my pants up at the same time

such a perfect little word:

ростбиф

бифштекс is good too.

I'm living with Russians for the month. My favourite word is the one for soup that sounds like 'bullion'

бизнесмен

My Russian is going to pot, I'm forgetting really simple nouns and verbs and my grammar is going to hell. I think I need to read some fiction - nothing super-stylized, but not an 'easy reader' either. I've got Турецский Гамбит but I'm not sure that the Russo-Turkish war is going to carry me through the frustration of finding out how slow my reading has become.

It's not the most gripping book in the series but, iirc, the war is just a backdrop to the murder mystery.

My Russian is appalling so I stick to works in translation but the Night Watch books seem to be relatively easily available in Russian. Whenever I ask people what modern fiction they're reading it's usually Game Of Thrones.

oh yeah, Night Watch might work. I'll try Turkish Gambit first and see how I get on - might have been misled by reviews re: how much war detail I'll need to sit through. Also, Googling Night Watch led me to a great-looking Russian bookshop in a part of Toronto I need to get around to visiting, so thanks!

has anyone here tried to teach themselves russian? i took 101 in college, didn't do well, and went back to german afterward, but have always felt a little guilty for not persevering. kind of considering trying again this year.

Whatever Russian I speak is self taught. The Colloquial Russian series is good, I think. It is quite a frustrating language to learn, in my experience, in comparison to French and German but I think I might make more of an effort this year. I've let it slip a lot over the last few years.

I've got Турецский Гамбит but I'm not sure that the Russo-Turkish war is going to carry me through the frustration of finding out how slow my reading has become.

I've had a vague interest in learning Russian so I could read a writer or two I am interested in that language. I know some Spanish and buy collections of Spanish poetry with the original on the left hand side. Maybe that could work for you?

Yeah, I used to have a book like that in college - can't remember whether it was poetry, or a novel - and they're really useful. I think at the moment I'd rather just throw myself in, though. I want to be reminded of some very basic stuff I already know (and to learn some new stuff from the context). If I see the word for 'biscuit' or 'cupboard' or 'glass' I'm going to understand them instantly, but I find that that when I want to use them in a sentence myself, they're gone! Maybe reading them will help.

my vocabulary was never good and is now terrible but my grammar's not bad; i have my cases straight and stuff. i need to either go there or just immerse in a book. fatter chance of the former, honestly.