Archive by Author
Patience à la russe Posted by bota on Jul 27, 2021
Patience is a virtue and also a fascinating word in Russian: терпе́ние. Let’s look at how to use that word and its derivatives in a sentence. Towards the end we will talk about translating the imperative “потерпи́” and a few idiomatic expressions with “терпе́ние”. Терпе́ние — patience It means «выноси́ть страда́ние» (endure suffering) but used…
Two very neat Russian words Posted by bota on Jul 15, 2021
*All images from Google Translate are by author This blog is simple. I have two Russian words that I find very neat and a little underappreciated. We will talk about what they mean, how they are used, and attempt to make sense of their English translations. And if you are a native Russian speaker or…
Russian idioms with ‘как’ Posted by bota on Jul 7, 2021
What Russian word connects geese, archaic measuring units, and a 14th century military commander of the Golden Horde? The answer is “как” and today we will cover just a few commonly used Russian idioms with this word. And while ‘как’ can mean a number of different things in Russian (and is one of the 100…
Russian euphemisms about death Posted by bota on Jun 22, 2021
A lot of фразеологизмы (idioms) about ‘death’ in Russian rely on verbs of motion that depict a person leaving this life and world. The 5 euphemisms below all mean ‘to die’ but I will write the literal translation in parenthesis to make them easier to remember. My goal, though, is to not just help you…
Death in Russian, continued Posted by bota on Jun 14, 2021
Remember this blog where I mentioned the Russian tradition of bringing an even number of flowers to the funeral? We will talk about that and other traditions surrounding Russian funerals as well as vocabulary that relates to death in general. Flowers So, the even number of flowers comes from old-time beliefs that even numbers symbolize…
Sputnik V in Kazakhstan Posted by bota on Jun 4, 2021
It has been a little over a year since we’ve covered COVID news in Russia, and while today’s blog is about Russia’s vaccine Sputnik V, we focus on the country’s southern neighbor, Kazakhstan. *All photos taken and used with permission from author (Akbota Yergaliyeva) In general Since the end of February, Kazakhstan has been administering…
How do you say ‘to die’ in Russian? Posted by bota on May 19, 2021
Many Russians devoted May 11th this year to visiting the graves of their loved ones. Known as Роди́тельский день и́ли Радо́ница (Roditel’skiy Den’ or Radonista), this day is directly related to Orthodox Easter and you can read more about the gist of it in Yelena’s old blog here. For a more detailed account on this tradition…