Archive for September, 2016
Tricky Russian Typography – Part II Posted by Maria on Sep 26, 2016
Last time, we started talking about punctuation that may be tricky to enter for Russians primarily used to handwriting; specifically, we covered direct speech. We are continuing to some other tricky cases. Dash At least in the US, a lot of attention is paid to distinguishing hyphens from n-dashes from m-dashes and the proper use…
Tricky Russian Typography – Part I Posted by Maria on Sep 21, 2016
We have talked about keyboarding in Russian and some peculiarities of Russian punctuation on this blog. Let us expand on these subjects with an overview of characters that may not be easy to enter on a keyboard. Generally speaking, until very recently Russian literacy dwelled primarily in the handwritten domain. That is, of course, books…
Вокруг да около: Expressing Proximity In Russian Posted by Maria on Sep 15, 2016
Let us talk about ways of expressing proximity in Russian. There are a few of them; however, not all of them are interchangeable. Рядом Рядом + с + object in the instrumental case means “next to something.” Рядом can also be used on its own to mean “nearby.” Рядом с нашей школой был парк (There was a park…
Трое в лодке: Collective Numerals in Russian Posted by Maria on Sep 8, 2016
If you look at the Russian translation of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in A Boat, you may be surprised to read “Трое в лодке, не считая собаки.” Why “трое” and not “три”? In my last post on forms that don’t exist in Russian, I briefly touched upon the category of collective numerals. Since they have…
Other Missing Forms in Russian Posted by Maria on Sep 1, 2016
Last time, were talked about some verb forms that don’t exist in Russian and some ways around these limitations. However, “missing” forms are not limited to verbs. Let us look at three other cases. These examples may not be immediately practical for beginner learners, who are welcome to check out our basic Russian posts. Dream On…