Russian Language Blog

Russian is a gendered language, which means that nouns have a grammatical gender (род): feminine (же́нский), masculine (мужско́й), or neuter (сре́дний). True, it can be confusing to grasp why a table (стол) is masculine and a river (река́) is feminine, but it should be much simpler with names of people’s occupations, right? In theory, yes…

Have you ever struggled to pronounce these odd-looking one-letter prepositions in Russian? Especially if that letter was a consonant? The trick is to stop enunciating them and to attach them to the word that follows. Let’s break it down case by case. One-Consonant Pronouns Many Russian prepositions (предло́ги) only have one letter, a consonant at…

If you read articles on Russian media websites, you might have noticed a paper airplane icon inviting you to follow the publication on Telegram. A lot of people writing in Russian use this relatively new app, so it can be a valuable tool for reading a variety of Russian news and commentary on social media…

A big story from the post-Soviet region (постсове́тское простра́нство) is that the president of Kazakhstan (Казахста́н) has resigned after nearly 30 years in power. Since Russian has official status in Kazakhstan and since this story is being widely covered in Russian-language media in several countries, I thought we should look at how it’s being reported…

Thanks to their numerous prefixes, suffixes, and endings, Russian words can be pretty long. In addition, the “morphology principle of spelling” (морфологи́ческий при́нцип правописа́ния) dictates that we spell Russian word roots consistently, even if they are pronounced differently in related words. Think of го́род (city) vs. города́ (cities). If they were spelled phonetically, they would…

I follow several Russian news outlets and commentators on social media, and this past week has been filled with anniversaries having to do with politics. As much as I love Russian party games or quirky memes, I realize that many “Russia aficionados,” especially abroad, are more interested in and familiar with Russian history and politics…

We are now hitting the “gender” holiday season in Russia. Defender of the Fatherland on February 23 is usually seen as “men’s day,” and March 8 is International Women’s Day. Incidentally, a recent ad campaign by Reebok has started a heated debate—and backlash—around the subject of gender roles, feminism, and appropriate behavio(u)r. A couple of warnings…