Eelroad

It's vexing to be able to "read" Estonian, while not knowing the first thing about Estonian etymology. Since Estonian uses the Latin alphabet, one's recognition of familiar patterns and letter-combinations and the tendency to "sound out" creates an illusion of a transferable literacy that is completely, and consistently, wrong. In the realm of foodstuffs, we initially stuck to things we managed to correctly divine, like the everpresent "kartulisalat" (potato+salad), invariably swimming in "majonees". As for city orienteering vocab, because of their ubiquity, it was easy to guess that a shop was a "pood". We quickly noted that a bar was a "baar", a club, a "klubi" and a pub, a "pubi".

I didn't sample anything "eelroad" for a while -- my loss -- as nothing eel-like is involved (marinated lamprey is, mind you, a local favourite) ... these are simply "appetizers". Meat is "liha". I keep thinking that "sealiha" is fish, i.e. sea-meat, but it's actually "pork". "Sink" is ham. Milk is "piim". Sour cream is "hapukoor". Carrots are "porgandi" and cabbage is "kapsas".

Despite the success of this supermarket cryptanalysis, the pressing annoyance now consists in not knowing how to properly pronounce these words. For one, "pood" should not rhyme with "crude", though that's the way it currently sounds in my version.