I'll start at the end: the Russian word kasha means porridge. That's right, kasha does not mean either buckwheat or groats. Kasha is not a type of grain: it is a type of food.
You probably want proof, and you will say the story below is insufficient. So here you go:
And because machine translation can do odd things, here's a sanity check:
But this is important enough to pull out the big guns, so here's what I've learned to do when I really want to verify a translation:
Yep. That's porridge all right!
Are you convinced that kasha is porridge? I am. Well, I was until I ran just one more search. It turns out that in English kasha does mean buckwheat/groats:
But still. I'm reeling.
One more tidbit, and then we'll have completed our long way to go for our short drink of water.
In Hebrew, buckwheat is kusemet, which is fine and dandy, except that spelt is kusmin. And spelt is used much more commonly in Israel than is buckwheat, so I'm always getting confused between the words kusemet and kusmin.
There. So, the story.
I took Baby Yoda to his (Russian) pediatrician for his monthly weighing , so she can continue to be very worried about how tiny he is, and since she is sharing the worry, I can worry less.
As usual, the pediatrician asked if BY is a good eater. As usual, I said yes. To prove my point, I told her that I had been eating "kasha," and BY ate it with me enthusiastically: and no kids like kasha!
Since as usual, I wasn't sure how to say buckwheat in Hebrew, and the pediatrician is Russian, I figured using the word kasha would be fine. But the doctor gave me an odd look, and told me that, yes, porridge is a very good thing to give babies. At the time, I assumed that the doctor, like my previous (Russian) manager, was from a part of Russia wherein people eat kasha with butter and sugar, as opposed to with onions, and the kids there like kasha, because it's nice and sweet.
With that on my mind, I asked one of my Israeli coworkers, who is a son of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, how his parents eat kasha. His response boiled down (hehe) to, "Yuck, my father eats his porridge savory." I started explaining how yeah, it's delicious with onions, but my husband and kids don't appreciate it, and then did a double-take. End of story, my coworker convinced me that kasha means porridge, not buckwheat.
Now, I'm wondering if my manager and I both used the word kasha when comparing recipes, but she was talking about cream of wheat or oatmeal, while I was talking about buckwheat. I am completely floored.
