Fatih Şahin Фатіх Шахін Ukraine, business and international experience — since 2004
National Days & Anniversaries

Easter 2011

The greeting exchanged three times, and the correct response, which took me several years to say without thinking.

A church bell tower
Photo: Ivonna Nowicka · CC BY-SA 4.0

Christ is risen.

The greeting has a fixed structure and I got it wrong for years. One person says the greeting, the other gives the response, and it is exchanged three times. Not once, and not as a general remark to a room.

The mistake a foreigner makes is treating it as a pleasantry, said in passing while doing something else. It is not that. You stop, you face the person, and you complete the exchange.

Somewhere around this year I stopped having to remember it. That is a different kind of fluency from vocabulary, and it takes longer.

A peaceful Easter to your household.

Christ is risen.

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