Puzzle Description:

#1: Joel Lynn (furface1) on Jul 4, 2013 [SPOILER]

Would that translate to tiny Christmas tree?

Uncle Google sez yes to the "christmas tree" part.

Yes it is. As I mentioned my daughter doesn't speak any English. She can write in a few Slavic languages, in Roumanien and (as she will start primary school in Hungary) in mother's language, of course. I can translate to the same languages and to English, German, Serb, Croatian...
Her grandparents was born in 3 different countries, mine are in 4 different states (none where we are living now).
... and before someone likes to know: Ann isn't her real name but of one of her dolls... My original first name was Tomasz (in Polish form), but I've never lived in Poland. In Hungary I'm official holding Tamás form, and the family name is written first (it's exceptional in Hungarian) :))

What I forgot: When Ann made this puzzle, sat on my knees and liked to ask me to translate title to English. I answered it could be one of dozens of xmas titles. She quickly changed her mind...

tell her multumesc... :)

What does it mean "multumesc"? :)

Uncle Google sez "mulţumesc" is the Romanian way of saying "thanks".

Ah well... I tried to understand it in some Slavic language... Roumanian (Transylvanian) relatives are on the mother's side of Ann. That's why I didn't mention new-Latin languages as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Roumanian. Usually we don't use them.
We've got a joke about this theme:
Older woman says in the 80's: I was born in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. After the 1st World War I started my school in Czechoslovakia. At the end of 30's started to work in Hungary and few years later - after the 2nd World War - married in the Soviet Union. My children are Ukrainian citizens now.
Ask: Why did you need so often change your place?
Answer: How??? Never in my life I've not left my birthtown, Mukachevo...

correct! Uncle Google sure is smart.... ;)

That's funny Thomas! and it's pretty much true....I've got some Romanian friends and even took a trip there a few years back(to the transylvania area, as it happens). it's customary to learn a few key phrases like pls and ty when visiting a foreign country, so I knew "multumesc". I was surprised to learn that the children there are taught French and English in elementary school, though it was no surprise to learn that the older generations had to learn Russian. On a different note, my dad spoke Polish as a kid and his parents were teaching me as a tyke(they lived 3 houses down the street) until my mom forbid it...and I also can do some Russian(though I'm out of practice)

It's very easy to speak Russian when your grandfather spoke Polish, but hard to write their special letter-set.
Inverse: You can easy read and understand Slovakian writing when you know Czech, but not able to speak with each other...

Kurt, your case is very special, because your first name is originally German but family name is Polish. (casus belli, 2nd world war)

mother's maiden name was Feltmann...they dropped an "n" to Feltman to make it seem less German at the 2nd world war

Nooo. (I think) Her name could be Feldmann (this is the real German or Jiddish form) and they changed d to t and nn to n. With this name could get green card to USA, as Feldmann they could travel to the Holy Land...

oh, yeah! you're almost correct. I forgot about the "d", sorry. Name was changed well before I was ever born.... originally, it was "Feldtmann", I believe. (dropped the "d" and an "n")

OK. Statistically Feldmann form 20x oftenly mentioned in Europe than Feldtmann. With t mainly from Germany, without t in all German territories (Austria, Suisee etc.) and Hungarian, Moravian, Polish too. Feld is equual to word "field", feldt is not in modern languages, it's an old adjectival form.

Thanks to Ann for the lovely little tree, and to Thomas for the interesting language lessons.

Thomas, many letters in the Russian/Cyrillic alphabet are the same as Greek. Once you learn the characters, I thought it was not much different that learning other languages - vocabulary, conjugating verbs, etc. It just looks exotic to those whose first language uses the Roman alphabet.

learning the roots aren't so different, nor is conjugating verbs... And like you said, it's not hard to get used to the characters. however, every word changes ending depending how it's used, what case, what declension, and the cases don't make much sense to someone who learned english first. prepositional case, for ex....if a cat is on a table, it's "koshka na stolye" (to give an english equivalent to cyrillic). but a cat under the table is "koshka pod stolom". Why does the "table" change ending? In English, those are both prepositional phrases... I never figured out the cases...so russians can understand, but they think I talk like an idiot. some of it you just kinda know you have to do after a while, but I never knew the reason why. and possessive case is just weird. a river bank, for ex....the "bank" belongs to the river, so it's possessive. hard to figure out what case to use in a normal dialog, cuz you're not used to thinking like a russian

but overall, I think Thomas meant about pronunciation...those languages are full of tongue-twisters. that, and some of the words are the same....I always called my grandmother "Busha", as in a shortened form of babushka. same word in russian as it is in polish....

So. Russian alphabet is not difficult to learn (yes, it's close to Greek one), but more easier Russian grammar. Very logical (as Kurt mentioned). Much more easier, than learning Hebrew, Arab or Japanese alphabet.
All in all, Slavic languages are close to each other, but only in basic word set. Grammatically very close Polish to Russian, Czech to Slovak, Serb to Croatian, but in writing not (then Russian is close to ciryllic Serb, Polish to Czech, Slovak to Sloven etc.) The main thing: If you are Russian or learned it well AND YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND other Slavic languages, you will.
Example: You all have no problem understanding British English, even You speak American words. When you're hating Irish and don't want to understand, you won't.
It's the same with Slavic languages...
There are 3 main language-groups in Europe: German, Slavic and Latin. Only a few languages not belong to these: Greek, Basque, Alban, Finnish and Hungarian.

Yeah, Kurt, when I wrote my comment about the alphabet, I was also thinking about what a pain it was trying to learn all the differences for the cases, but didn't mention it because it's not something we deal with in English. Seems to me there were six cases, but I'll be durned if I can remember them all - but then it's been nearly 40 years since I last took a class in Russian...

Yes, there are 6 cases:
Who is? (subjective)
Who to? (transitive)
Whose? (possessive)
Who for? (dativum)
With who? (instrumentalis)
Who about, where?

Upps... (prepositional)

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