Let me start with a little ditty by a Polish poet Julian Tuwim that I learned years back in my then-Soviet elementary school:

Ok, so «ох» doesn’t mean “please”, but I took some poetic license here. «Ох» is «междометие» [ an exclamation or an interjection] that can be best translated as “oh dear” or, in this case, possibly as “wow”. But that wouldn’t rhyme with “peas”, would it?

Here’s what prompted my recollection of this poem. A few weeks ago I went to the local «рынок» [farmers’ market]. This being a very early spring in North Carolina, there wasn’t anything exotic there or so I thought. All around me customers were busy paying and transferring into their reusable bags the winter basics – potatoes, cabbages, carrots.

Some time later as I stood  «в очереди» [in line] for some amazing Linzer tart, I overheard two women talking about beets. One just bought a bunch and the other one asked her what was she going to do with these beets. Turns out, this second woman, well into her 50ies, had never eaten a beet in her life!

Being Russian, I had to chuckle to myself and shake my head sorrowfully and indignantly babushka-style while muttering «вот буржуи, едят бананы-ананасы, а простую свёклу готовить не умеют!» [oh dear, this bourgeois eat bananas-pineapples, yet can’t cook something as basic as beets!]

Admittedly, most Americans I talked to on the subject of beets do know and like this humble veg. But the tepid “like” pales next to the «любовь и уважение» [love and respect] most Russians have for beets.

I won’t go so far as to say that «свёкла» [beet] should be the national vegetable of Russia since it might cause some geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine. But it is at the top of the list of the most popular and longest cultivated and used (by many accounts since 11th century) vegetables.

So, what do Russians do with beets other than make sugar, use for natural dyes and pectins, feed to farm animals, and use as home remedies and, also home-made, beauty products? Well, they eat it, of course!

With much love and attention lavished on this simple vegetable, it’s no wonder Russians have not one, but two ways of pronouncing the word itself. Throughout this post, I used the grammatically correct «свЁкла». But in real life you won’t catch me dead using this dictionary-approved form. Instead, like so many other Russians, I say «свеклА».

So, pick your side and roll with it! You will be understood either way. But if you do have problems with remembering where to place the stress in Russian words, then go with the grammatically correct and fool-proof «свЁкла» since as I said in the earlier post, «буква Ё всегда ударная» [letter Ё is always stressed].