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Archive for September, 2008

Word of the week: «Прикалываться» Posted by on Sep 27, 2008

In my post from last week, “On Free Magazines & Expats in Russia”, I used the verb «прикалываться» without thinking twice about it. I did so even after I searched for a proper translation of the word into English without finding one. My trusted Kenneth Katzner dictionary only translates «прикалывать» [impf, pf – «приколоть»] as…

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On Free Magazines & Expats in Russia Posted by on Sep 18, 2008

As an attentive reader always on the look-out for some kind of text to stuff myself with so as to aquiere new, often wholly and fully useless, information I love free magazines. And that’s one of the pluses of living right now, in a time and place where journalism is in crisis and free magazines…

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Word of the Week: трезвость [sobriety] Posted by on Sep 15, 2008

«Только трезвая Россия станет великой!»[Only a Sober Russia Will Become Great!]  Since I’m back in Russia I am also fully and completely back in the blogging game, now that I once again can catch the country of interest in her everyday activities, like for example this poster above. I found it on the wall of…

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Безопасно ли летать в России? [Is It Safe to Fly In Russia?] Posted by on Sep 14, 2008

It’s happened again. A plane crashed at 3:10 по московскому времени [Moscow time] right before it was supposed to land in Пермь [Perm’], a city with over a million inhabitants located about six hours west of Yekaterinburg, on the European side of the Ural Mountains. I’m quoting an article from the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter: “All…

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«Право на радость» [Entitlement to Joy] Posted by on Sep 7, 2008

The success of Russian soccer players in early summer revealed to Дума [the Duma] the hitherto practically unknown problem of the average Russian Ivan being prohibited by law to wave the flag of the Russian Federation in any way he or she might see fit. During June this year, millions of Russians took to the…

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Learning ‘Conversational Russian’ Posted by on Sep 2, 2008

A good textbook often reads just like a novel. One excellent example of this is Helen Yakobson’s “Conversational Russian: An Intermediate Course” from 1985 [при The George Washington University]. Earlier this summer I found it in a box up in my mother’s attic marked “Russian books”, this pale orange and tattered little book of no…

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