Does the usage of headphones mean "talk to me" in Russia?

As you may know, У меня плохо с русским, or in a Russian you understand better, my Russian is bad. To avoid any kind of contact with Russians on the street, I do my best to not have any kind of eye contact with people. I really don't like doing it but, unfortunately, it helps me not getting in contact with people that I can't talk, yet.

Not not make eye contact with Russians, I keep my headphones on my ears all the time. May the Lord bless the Aiko Morita for the walkman and Steve Jobs for the iPod :D . But it seems it doesn't work. It feels like some Russians think that if a person is using headphones, you know, listening to their music, it means you can stop than to ask some information, or maybe some money.

I was walking home and this lady stops me to ask an information. I asked her if she spoke English. She didn't, so, no help from me :( This other lady, with her kids, stopped me while I was listening to my iPod. Again, I asked if she spoke English. She asked me where the Metro station was. A question I answered with my finger, that one we use to point a direction. Finally I could help someone here :)

But there was this day I was walking, with my headphones on, and this guy stops me. He starts to talk in Russian, pointing to his cellphone. Again, I said I didn't speak English. I thought at first he was asking me where it was the closest machine he could add credits. But I realized he wanted me to give him money. I said I didn't have. Well, I had, but not to him. I kept walking and he was following me. I turned and said with a rough voice "did you loose anything?". Not polite, I agree, but I had to do it. Also, could have been dangerous, if he had a knife or and kind of weapon. Good he didn't have any.

Maybe, to avoid those situations again, I'll have this t-shirt done:



In a Russian you understand, the shirt reads "Just because I’m with my headphones doesn’t mean you can ask me anything.”. Natalie Sytnik, my BBDO Moscow colleague, thank you for translating it to Russian :)

Hello ... Alô ... алло ...

Have you seen the movie "Crazy People"? David Paymer's character says "hello" most of the time in the movie. He even composed a song with Woody Harris' character. You can hear it on the credits. It's funny.

It's quite funny to hear the Russians answering the phone, because "алло" (allo) sounds like "alô" - Hello in Russian and Portuguese.

I confess that when I listen Russians saying алло when they answer the phone makes me homesick the most :*(

Trying to say yes correctly

I thinks "YES" is the word I hear the most in English. And your variations, like "Yeah" and "Yep". In German, "yes" is "ja", but you say "yah". In Russian - since now I'm living in Moscow - "yes" is "da", or "Да" - cyrillic alphabet.

It feels for me a little hard to say "Да" more often. Even almost every Russian don't speak English, they understand "yes", but I try to not say it all the time. Then, there's the German "ja" or "yah". What makes it hard? "Yah" is the "I" in Russian, like "I am ...", "I can ..." - Я, in the cyrillic alphabet.

On my first shopping or whatever that involved money spending adventures, I could process questions like "Do you want a bag?" or "1 ticket?", so, what was my answer? "Я" - "yah", because even "yes" or "Да" weren't coming out.

My landlord doesn't speak English. Whenever we talk, we do through online translators. Me with my computer and him with his smartphone, since my computer doesn't have the cyrillic alphabet. Whenever I ask a question and "yes" is the answer, he uses "yes" instead of "Да". Thank you for confusing me even more!

I confess that "Да" is coming out more often than "yes", "yeap", "yeah" and "ja"-"yah". Even happier that what confuses me with the yes isn't sounding like "I want to have sex with your monkey".