Archive for January, 2022
Racing through prefixes Posted by ryan on Jan 31, 2022
One of my favorite ways to learn verbs in Russian has always been to sit down, choose a verb, and run through all its possible prefixes, choosing example sentences to really cement the meaning in my mind. I have found this exercise especially useful with verbs of motion, which can have a broad range of…
Familiar Unknowns II Posted by bota on Jan 27, 2022
We continue to cover Russian idioms that make you say “What?” even though you are 99% sure you have heard them before. For Part I see here. Кануть в лету Definition: to be forgotten or to be long gone, to disappear. No, unfortunately we are not talking about summer (лето). Nor is this idiom about…
The joy of grammatical mistakes, or a few of my lightbulb moments Posted by ryan on Jan 25, 2022
Как уст румя́ных без улы́бки, Без граммати́ческой оши́бки Я ру́сской ре́чи не люблю́ These lines, from Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel in verse «Евге́ний Оне́гин» Eugene Onegin, pretty well explain what I would like to cover in today’s post. Much of learning a new language has to do with restructuring your thinking to express ideas using a construction…
Familiar unknowns Posted by bota on Jan 17, 2022
In my blog about idioms with the word ‘white’ (белый), I got a great comment about two Russian words чернила и белила (black ink and white paint). (Thank you @samonen! Have I mentioned we love to read your comments?) Белила reminded me of the phrase “белены объелся”. And before you ask, белила и белена are…
Let’s Explore Russian Morphology with Baby Animals Posted by ryan on Jan 14, 2022
With all the craziness going on in the world, I think we need a bit of baby animal therapy to take our mind off things. How about a lesson on Russian morphology to go along with it? Уби́ть двух за́йцев Kill two birds with one stone. (Yes, in Russian, we say “to kill two hares”)…
Spooky Russian podcasts Posted by bota on Jan 6, 2022
Чего́ вы бои́тесь? (What are you afraid of?) And I don’t necessarily mean the grown up kind of fears like not getting along with your in-laws, identity theft, or small talk. I mean the deep childhood fears of the mysterious, unknown, and overall spooky. Мо́нстры под крова́тью? Леге́нды? Вампи́ры? И́ли мо́жет да́же привиде́ния? (Monsters under…