Archive by Author
3 Best Russian-Language Songs of the 2010s Posted by Maria on Dec 9, 2019
Picking the top songs of the decade is tricky—how do you even determine what makes a “top” track? Is it its popularity, impact, or commercial success? In putting together this list, I’ve selected tracks that I thought were representative of Russian-language music of the “teens” in some way. Naturally, my choices are subjective and by…
Talk About Employment with This Russian Root Posted by Maria on Dec 3, 2019
You might know работа, work, and other related words as a helpful word family for talking about employment. Have you heard about труд and other related words, though? This post will look at how this word family can help you express ideas about jobs and labo(u)r. Труд The basic word is труд, labo(u)r, effort, hard…
Why Reading Russian is Better Than Relying on English Transcriptions Posted by Maria on Nov 21, 2019
For speakers of languages that use Latin letters, the Cyrillic alphabet is often the first obstacle for learning Russian. There are some crutches beginners can, such as relying on recordings or Latin transliterations, but these workarounds have some significant drawbacks. I’d like to share why actually learning to read Russian will help you in the…
Give or Take: Russian Verbs with -давать Posted by Maria on Nov 14, 2019
It may be useful to learn words in related “families,” so let us look at several verbs that share their root with дава́ть [dɐˈvatʲ], to give. I will include the imperfective and perfective forms of the verb and any related nouns for each verb. This post does not cover every verb or every possible meaning…
Russian Recipe: Beet Salad with Garlic and Walnuts Posted by Maria on Nov 6, 2019
When we talk about Russian cuisine, the same dishes keep coming up—Olivier salad, borsch{t} (arguably of Ukrainian provenance), pelmeni, etc. This time, let’s make a lesser-known—but delicious!—dish popular in Russia: a beet salad. You may remember that beets (свёкла) feature in some other Russian dishes, such as the already mentioned borsch, vinegret, and “herring under…
Russian Spooky Folk Characters Posted by Maria on Oct 31, 2019
It’s Halloween again! This holiday is not as ingrained in Russian culture as it is in some Anglophone cultures—children don’t usually go trick-or-treating, and you won’t see many eerie decorations in people’s front yards (especially since most people live in high-rises). However, children usually learn about it in their English classes, and there may be…
6 Slang Words for Your Face in Russian Posted by Maria on Oct 24, 2019
It has recently occurred to me that Russian has multiple ways of referring to someone’s face, especially in a critical manner. Learning some common synonyms of лицо́ (litso, face) will help you understand colloquial Russian more easily because they come up a lot in informal speech. This post will use International Phonetic transcriptions for each…