Russian Language Blog

Does your textbook still talk about Alla Pugachyova (А́лла Пугачёва)? I mean, she was big in the 80s, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a person under 30 who still finds mainstream Soviet artists relevant or lists them among their favo(u)rites. Here are three up and coming Russian artists to update your playlist with. 1.…

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Oftentimes, the Russian language is primarily—or solely—associated with the country of Russia. At the same time, as I wrote before, Russian is also used, to varying degrees, in other countries. This time, let us take a look at news stories in Russian about schools in countries other than Russia. Story from Kyrgyzstan: Making Kyrgyz a…

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Several readers have commented that they find posts on verbs with prefixes helpful, so here is another verb “family.” This time, we will look at verbs with the пуск-/пуст- roots that share the general sense of allowing something. The verbs are given in pairs of imperfective and perfective. Пуска́ть/Пусти́ть This verbs means “to let someone…

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Back by popular demand, this post in our “verbs with prefixes” series will look at several verbs sharing the same root—руч/рук. You probably recognize this root from рука́, hand. All verbs will be given in pairs of imperfective and perfective. Руча́ться/поручи́ться The first verb, руча́ться, means “to vouch for someone” or “to be sure of…

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A sad piece of news came from Russia — Eduard Uspensky (Эдуа́рд Успе́нский), a children’s literature author and the creator of Cheburashka (Чебура́шка) died aged 80. Many of his stories were made into cartoons that many speakers of Russian (not only in Russia!) grew up on. In addition, he wrote the screenplays to many cartoons.…

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