It IS clean.
CBAH is "Swan" or more closely "Svan" in Cyrillic. A E K M O and T are the same in Cyrillic as in English. Cyrillic uses "our" alphabet in other letters but assigns different sounds. C is S, P is R. a backward R is "Ya" meaning I or myself, H is actually N and a backward N is "EE" or I. Y is a long U. Thus the name Tom, in Russian is still TOM but Anna Marie would be Aннa Mapии which *looks* readable but with phonetic shifts. Other signs such as ш (sh) and д (d) are uniquely Cyrillic.
I don't have a Cyrillic keyboard, so I cheated by cut and pasting. Here's the plot so far
I said "This is good! This is VERY good! and the reply: "Good? No, this is rubbish!"
сван, Вы говорите по-русски?
"Svan, Ve Govorityeh Po-Russki?"
"Swan, do you speak in Russian?"
I reply -
Чушь?! Я так не думаю! Да, я выступаю в России. Я узнал много лет назад.
"Ooshi?! Ya tak nyeh dumai! Da, Ya vistula(?) v' Russi. Ya oozhnal lyet nazad." (phonetics approximate. English has not the lettering)
Rubbish?! I do not THINK (so)! Yes, I speak a little Russian. I learned many years ago.
Basically, I learned Russian in high school I had several Russian friends and we would limp along (my grasp of Russian was even then rather weak) but I have the very basics. I have a Moscovy accent because my friends were all from that region.
Russian is SUCH a beautiful language! Hearing it spoken is like watching sunlight through Baltic amber, a stream of liquid pleasure! Same for Greek or French. Also... my spelling in Russian is SO much BETTER than English... but then... that's because it is a laconic language with very few 'wasted' or unvoiced letters. What you see is what you get.
I can flail around in Russian, German and Spanish. My strong languages are English and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Go figure!
I WISH I could speak Greek, Japanese and Arabic!!
Generally if it's a Romance language (Spanish, Italian, French, etc) I can read it fairly well. Speak? Fugeddaboudit!
I LOVE Enya/Ice!! I used to work with a co-worker at Atlantic Richfield. Her name was Galena and we drove the boss cRAZY by whispering back and forth in Russian! We only DID it because he was such a stick in the mud! So every time I "hear" Ice's voice, it is in Galena's beautiful lilting tones! LOL
CBAH
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)