What are the top 5 russian-sounding words that Americans can pronounce and spell?

What kind of product? A good airline would be PubicAir.
A good potato chip could be Spud-nic.

@filmfann real estate marketing

vodka, vladimir, tsar, gulag, yuri

Americans can spell?

New Russian online sex-roleplay site: Cyberia

Russian real estate company? Georgia on my mind?

@filmfann Love both suggestions! Although not quite as clever . . .

Zhiavago Winter Vacations (There’s a Place for Us)
Boris Bears (stuffed animals)
Vlad (the Impaler) Garden Tools
Putin on the Ritz Dance Studio

Ah, I am too slow to pick up on the ACTUAL product under discussion (Real estate marketing) . . .

The Red Door . . .

Glad you nost my neighbor?

Ivan to buy your House?

Da, Nyet, Pravda, Glasnost, Perestroika

From wikipedia

babushka – grandma or scarf
cosmonaut – spaceman
gulag – prison
Molotov Cocktail – gasoline bomb
Comrade or Komrade – friend
Sable – fur coat
Sputnik – man made satellite
Borscht – soup
Kasha – breakfast cereal
Glasnost – Barney the Dinosaur
Mir – space ship
Tsar – boss
Luna – moon

Kremlin of the Crop?

Tsar or Czar.

ruble, but sounds too much like rubble, which is not a good connatation for real estate

Downtown Dachas
Moscow Mansions
Petersburg Properties

One of my favorite stores is the Moscow and Tblisi Bakery but Moscow and Tblisi Realty is too long

How about Chernobyl Village-It’s Hot and Paris Hilton could be your spokesperson.

KGB!

@YARNLADY Uh, a bunch of those are completely wrong.
Babushka = grandma, nothing else.
It’s not cosmonaut, it’s kosmonavt.
Glasnost does NOT mean Barney.
Mir = peace/world.
Tsar = king, not boss.

@galileogirl Chernobil isn’t in Russia.

@gggritso If you will look at the reference, I was simply using the words there, with a little editorializing. (P. S. babushka also means scarf in English).

Sorry read that wrong. How about Cagey Be Us. KGB us

@YARNLADY well yes, I understand, but I @ replied you specifically only because I wanted to make sure that the problems in that post get addressed, nothing personal against you :)

Also I realize that babushka means scarf in English, but if someone wants to build a brand off something like this they should know exactly what the Russian meaning is, that’s all I’m saying.

@gggritso I don’t know what you mean by “build a brand off it”, but beware that if a word has one meaning in it’s original language, (like Mat in russian) and a different meaning in English, you could be getting a meaning you aren’t bargaining for. Hav you heard the English expression Bring someone to the Mat? It would mean something completely different in Russion, wouldn’t it?

@YARNLADY Well, the way I see it, even though he’s creating a brand for Americans he should be aware of the exact meaning of whichever word he’s using in both cultures, just to be informed. I understand that building any brand is serious and he wouldn’t just go to Wikipedia, but I thought I should point it out.

Also, I should note that whatever you decide on you should definitely ask some Russian people what they feel the connotation of the word is, so you don’t leave a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth.

glasnost (гласность) means “openess”.

also, you have to be aware that certain cognate english to russian words have certain connotations. for example, привилегия (privilege) carries a meaning associated with связи (connections) to the Party. A митинг (meeting) is not a business meeting, but a political one.

a great resource for Russian words and phrases (despite the above noted Wikipedia, which is ever so accurate~) is a magazine called Russian Life. Every issue (it’s bimonthly) has an article called Survival Russian, where they take a theme word or concept, and explain the background as well as associated slang/colloquialisms. They’ve combined some of the articles into a book of the same name, as well.

Perhaps if you could share what the product or service you are attempting to sell/promote is, i could offer you some specific words that might work. I’ve taught Russian for a bit, and work as an interpreter/translator from time to time. If need be, you can PM me, too.

удачи вам!

TOVARICH USA

Dacha-Your-Housa

Difficult to know what “pronounce” and “spell” mean in the context of a nation that hardly knows any Slavic languages except around Chicago, but i’ll suggest Putin, Soviet, sputnik, bolshoi, Spassky, Mir, Siberia(?), troika, perestroika, apparatchik.

i wonder how i could have failed to think of vodka, gulag, da, nyet, Molotov, czar, dacha.

In many cases where a word has become usable in English, the pronunciation is seriously distorted—for example, “czar”.

“mir” means both “peace” and “world”. that’s why the SU chose it as a name for its space station. But the pronunciation of “Mиp” is seriously different from that of English “mere”.

@eponymoushipster : i’m delighted to discover that we have you as a resource! i was certain that my three semesters of Russian wasn’t going to make the grade in a case of serious need.