Archive for November, 2016
Conquer the Backwards R — Learn to Read Russian (Part II) Posted by Maria on Nov 28, 2016
Last time, we looked at some letters of the Russian alphabet that either look and sound or just sound like their Latin counterparts. This time, we will look at letters that have similar sounds to other languages and, finally, some unique letters. Letters That Sound But Don’t Look Like Latin Letters A lot of these…
Conquer the Backwards R — Learn to Read Russian (Part I) Posted by Maria on Nov 21, 2016
Every so often a reader of this blog will be frustrated about not being able to read Russian characters. While we will occasionally include transliteration and audio, learning to read Cyrillic is much easier that you think! There are several reasons why reading Russian is beneficial, and we will look at some relatively painless ways…
Silver Linings: Five Idioms For Dealing With Shock And Disappointment Posted by Maria on Nov 14, 2016
The results of the presidential election in the US came as a surprise to both supporters and opponents of the President-Elect Trump. For situations like this, along with Brexit, which we covered on this blog, a few Russian idioms may come in handy. How and whether you will use them will depend on your outlook…
Five Easy Parts of Learning Russian — Part II Posted by Maria on Nov 7, 2016
We are looking at parts of the Russian language that are easier to grasp that many learners would expect. Make sure you read Part I. Subjunctive and Conditional Moods Russian has very simple forms for the subjunctive (сослагательное наклонение) and the conditional mood (условное наклонение). Both of these look like past tense forms + the…