Vanechkin, Do You Speak English?!

Submission 17,849

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About

Vanechkin, Do You Speak English?!, also known as Do You Speak English?! or Vanyšky, Do You Speak English?!, refers to a scene from the Russian children's show Yeralash (or Ералаш in Russian) in which a woman (a teacher) yells at a student named Vanechkin, saying, "Du yu spik inglish?" as the camera moves close to her face. Then she faints after the boy's answer. The classroom scene came from the 182nd episode of the show which aired in 2005. In the 2020s, the clip became a meme on TikTok, specifically peaking in late 2023.

Origin

In 2005, episode 182 of Yeralash aired on Russian television.^[1] At one point in the episode, an older, female teacher is yelling at many of her students, asking them, "Do you speak English?" The episode was published to YouTube^[2] on July 20th, 2015, by the channel Киножурнал Ералаш, gaining roughly 20 million views and 210,000 likes in eight years. At the video's 2:02-minute mark, the character says, "Vanechkin, do you speak English?" as the camera moves closer to her face (shown below).

The scene gained predominant memetic usage in the 2020s, starting with semi-viral reposts of the scene in late 2021 on TikTok.^[3] Currently, the first known variation of the scene was posted by TikToker^[4] @komap.anatoli on February 12th, 2022, gaining roughly 70,100 plays and 5,000 likes in one year (shown below).

Spread

On February 19th, 2022, YouTuber^[5] CAStration posted a Content Aware Scaled version of the scene, gaining roughly 214,000 views and 4,900 likes in one year (shown below).

Soon after, on March 3rd, 2022, TikToker^[6] @ezzmany1 posted an alternative content-aware scaled version, gaining roughly 22.1 million plays and 1.4 million likes in one year (shown below, left). About a year later, on June 20th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @user5976731284377 used the sound of @ezzmany1's video, gaining roughly 2.5 million plays and 141,000 likes in three months (shown below, right).

On August 24th, 2023, TikToker^[8] @monkey_pup posted a version in which the scene's sound repeated and progressively slowed down, gaining roughly 1 million plays and 138,800 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). On September 16th, 2023, TikToker^[9] @bloxy.rb posted a highly saturated iteration with a cat edited in to represent the student Vanechkin, gaining roughly 1.6 million plays and 192,300 likes in two days (shown below, right).