The artistry of KAL

From the Economist.

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For my first few months in Moscow I felt as if I was chewing pebbles. When I moaned about it to a Russian friend, he explained that “English is produced in the back of the mouth, but in Russian”—he puffed out his lips—“we speak from here, from the front. In order to strengthen these muscles,” he concluded seriously, “you should perform oral sex more often.”

An Economist correspondent on the Russian language, who also provided this gem:

But one particular phrase is so original and colourful that I have been running a small private campaign to bring it back into everyday use. To describe something that has shown up unexpectedly, out of nowhere, you say that it appeared kak iz pizdy na lyzhakh, which translates as “like out of a cunt on skis.”