# Why was Elmwood band?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [March 14, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449 "2010-03-14T16:33:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449/21 "2010-03-16T04:42:10Z")

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Of course, if we ask how Harpo would have pronounced that…

He wouldn’t! 🙂

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**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449/22 "2010-03-16T04:50:55Z")

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> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> Of course, if we ask how Harpo would have pronounced that…
> 
> He wouldn’t! 🙂

HONK!

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449/23 "2010-03-17T02:34:42Z")

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That reminds me of the person who was convinced the Russian word for ‘restaurant’ was _pectopah_, because he’d looked it up in a English-to-Russian glossary and it said it was PECTOPAH.

That’ in Cyrillic letters, pronounced rest-o-ran’.

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**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-elmwood-band/532449/24 "2010-03-17T15:10:15Z")

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> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> That reminds me of the person who was convinced the Russian word for ‘restaurant’ was _pectopah_, because he’d looked it up in a English-to-Russian glossary and it said it was PECTOPAH.
> 
> That’ in Cyrillic letters, pronounced rest-o-ran’.

I did this once when I was a teenager. The Billy Joel Russian concert CD had just come out, and I kept seeing posters for what I thought was an album called “KOhUEPT”. And I just could not figure out what that meant.

Until months later, when I noticed that maybe they weren’t just stylized Roman alphabet letters, after all…and then I :smack:, as I realized that it spelled, in Cyrillic letters, CONCERT.

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