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Archive for January, 2022

Racing through prefixes Posted by 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…

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Familiar Unknowns II Posted by on Jan 27, 2022

king of the world

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…

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The joy of grammatical mistakes, or a few of my lightbulb moments Posted by 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…

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Familiar unknowns Posted by on Jan 17, 2022

a boyar

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…

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Let’s Explore Russian Morphology with Baby Animals Posted by 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”)…

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Spooky Russian podcasts Posted by on Jan 6, 2022

scary door

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…

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