Do you remember Josefina’s post about all the English words that are widely used in Russia? I hope you read the comments as well because Neil, Colin, Steve, saint and Svetlana all provided more great examples and insights into these “lazy” words.

I’m in NY now, «в гостях у моих родителей» [visiting my parents] and digging through their books, looking for something to supplement my summer reading list. Guess what I found? «Избранные англо-русские лексические ассоциации: 5000 английских слов, которые Вы знаете, даже не изучая английский» [Selected English-Russian Lexical Associations: 5,000 English Words Russians Know Even Without the Study of English]. Here’s the only link I found to the publisher.

Ordinarily, learning even 50 new foreign words would sound like a lot of work and 5000 would be a major «напряг» [stress or crunch]. It’s just not the kind of effort I’d undertake myself or challenge others to in this oppressing «жара» [the heat] that seems «плавить мозги» [to melt the brain].

«Вот если бы можно было без напряга!» [If only it would be possible without the strain].

That’s why I was so happy to read, in the book’s introduction that «Вы можете не напрягаясь, за несколько дней расширить свой английский словарный запас на 5000 слов» [Without straining yourself and in just a few days you can expand your English vocabulary by 5000 words].

I figured, since the book is essentially a Russian-English dictionary it can be used by English-speaking students to learn Russian words. Except, of course, you won’t have to do any learning! After all, «вы уже знаете по крайней мере 5000 русских слов!!!» [you already know at least 5000 Russian words!!!].

The cool thing is that the book does not include too many «технические и медицинские термины» [technical and medical terminology] which is not really something we use in everyday speech anyway. The not so good news are lots of typos and weird way of transcribing English words.

Of course, I’m not going to list all 5000 words from the book. That’d be «скучно» [boring]. So instead I’m going to randomly select 5 nouns. Here we go…

«доза» [dose]

«спонсор» [sponsor]

«лотерея» [lottery – noun]

«реальность» [reality]

«сериал» [serial – noun]

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to build a sentence using all or some of these words and derived adjectives and verbs.

Adjectives

«дозированный» [metered or portioned]

«спонсированный» [sponsored]

«лотерейный» [lottery – adjective, as in lottery ticket]

«реальный» [real]

«серийный» [serial – adjective and yes, it’s a tricky one]

Verbs

«дозировать» [to meter or to portion]

«спонсировать» [to sponsor]

«реализовать» [to put in action, to implement or to sell]

Bonus point for using the verb «лотереить», which as far as I understand is used to describe a process of ripping people off through lotteries as well as the participation in said lotteries.

Finally, if you speak French as well as English, you are set for life! Turns out, there are a lot more Russian words that are borrowed from French than from English. Some of the most commonly used ones include «шедевр» [masterpiece], «элита» [elite], «декольте» [cleavage], «кокетство» [coquetry], «шантаж» [blackmail], «морг» [morgue], «реванш» [revenge] and «пляж» [beach].

If you think that this set of words is more exciting, feel free to build sentences with those instead of the original 5 or to mix and match.

If you don’t feel up to the challenge, it’s ok too. «Лето + жара= лень» [Summer + heat = laziness]. You can look through your Russian textbooks and let us know your favorite ones or the ones you found to be really quirky or plain weird.