Kalleh said elsewhere that when we went out to dinner, "Shu and I each had an excellent Russian beer."

Now, you might interpret that to mean that there was a Russian beer on the menu, and we each sampled it and found it excellent. Conversely, it might mean that the menu had several Russian brands of beer, that she tried one and I tried tried another, and that each was excellent.

So the phrase is ambiguous. But for the life of me, I can't think of any non-ambiguous way of saying either version, without going through clumsy convolutions. Can you?

Shu and I both tried a Russian beer that was excellent.

There was an excellent example of a Russian beer that Shu and I tried.

Shu and I each had a different Russian beer, both excellent.

Shu had a fabulous Ukranian beer and I had a vodka (or three as the case may be) and . . . oh heck, it wash a really shwell time . . ..

Well, since I was the culprit here, I will explain why the choice of words...though I fear I was wrong.

I thought that each would mean that we separately enjoyed a different Russian beer. Had we drunk the same Russian beer, I would have said, "Shu and I both had a Russian beer." I suppose that's wrong.

Shu and I each had a Russian beer, to me, can mean at least two things: one we each drank the same kind of beer but out of two different bottles, or we each drank a beer, and said beer was Russian, and they may have been different brews.

Chto eta? Eta pivo.