Archive for January, 2013
Gangnam Russian Style Posted by yelena on Jan 24, 2013
The only way you would not have heard PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is if you с Луны свалились (fell off the Moon). Otherwise, by now you’ve probably heard the song one time too many. But as a another well-known (Russian) song goes, “эх, раз, да ещё раз, да ещё много, много раз!” (once, and once more and…
5 Russian Stereotypes Other Than Winter, Vodka and Bears Posted by yelena on Jan 17, 2013
In the middle of the winter, a group of young foreigners travels across Russia searching for Russian women, Russian vodka and Russian bears. Nope, this is not a sequel to Особенности национальной охоты (Peculiarities of the National Hunt) movie. Instead, it is this year’s Cinetrain documentary project. The twenty four filmmakers participating in it are…
“So the lady says to the talking margarine…” (Participles and dumb TV ads) Posted by Rob on Jan 16, 2013
The title of the post is drawn from a list of “Stupid TV Commercial Cliches” that I found on a Russian humor site. I got a kick out of it because “idiotic advertising” has been a staple of English-language humor for generations, but in Russian, poking fun at consumerism is mostly a post-Soviet development. Apart…
“In eight o’clock of morning, at January 8th, on the 2013…” Posted by Rob on Jan 8, 2013
…this post are scheduled for to be auto-publishing’ed over blog Transparent! 😉 A Russian learning English might make these exactly these sorts of stereotypical blunders with English предлоги (“prepositions”) — saying “at January 8th” instead of “on January 8th,” for instance. But an English speaker learning Russian faces faces exactly the same problem of…
Happy New Year of the Black Snake! Posted by yelena on Jan 3, 2013
Image Source: Tobyotter via Flickr! Happy New Year! С Новым годом! Have you had a chance to try a real салат Оливье (Olivier salad) this year? To be honest, I wasn’t going to make it this year. I mean, after so many New Years in a row featuring this dish, this salad simply приелся (became boring). But…