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Паронимы: Frequently Confused Words in Russian Posted by Maria on Dec 7, 2015
If you grew up in the former USSR and had Russian in grade school, you will remember that most of your class time would be spent going over the numerous rules of that language. One of the aspects that often came up in my Russian classes was what is called паро́нимы. Паронимы are words that look similar…
In The News: Russian Director Eldar Ryazanov Dies Posted by Maria on Nov 30, 2015
A sad story was reported by the media this weekend — film director Eldar Ryazanov (Эльда́р Ряза́нов) has died at 88. Let us look at how this story was covered in various publications. Ryazanov’s Death Slon reports, “Росси́йский режиссе́р Эльдар Рязанов сконча́лся в Москве́.” Сконча́ться is a respectful, official way of saying “die, pass away.” According…
Knowledge Transfer: Verbs With The Root -вещ- Posted by Maria on Nov 26, 2015
I thought it may be interesting to look at a “family” of words related by a shared root. One such family refers to all things knowledge and knowledge transfer. Knowledge The basic form is ве́дать, a bookish/archaic way of saying “to know.” Он не ве́дает, что твори́т. (He knows not what he’s doing.) The word…
Regional Expressions In Russia Posted by Maria on Nov 19, 2015
Even though Russian is fairly uniform and cannot boast the same dialectal variety as some other languages, regional differences do exist. They tend to be more subtle so that most people in the region may not realize the word is a regionalism. Of course, there are the cases everyone talks about, like Moscow vs St…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part II Posted by Maria on Nov 12, 2015
We are continuing last week’s discussion of some Russians’ reaction to the Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics have voiced their concern that the award is becoming more political and that non-fiction, documentary writing is less deserving of this award. Let us continue looking at quotes from the article we…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part I Posted by Maria on Nov 5, 2015
I thought it might be interesting to look at recently published articles in the Russian press. Rather than having me summarize them, we are going to include quotes from the article and go over the language and message in these quotes. This week, I propose looking at the New Times article titled “Призы́в к смягче́нию…
Overview of Public Holidays In Russia Posted by Maria on Oct 29, 2015
Russian holidays have been covered several times on this blog. Let us recap all the times Russians get time off for the holidays. This is different from vacation, which can happen at various times during the year. Since Russia adopted several tenets of the European Social Charter in 2002, employees are entitled to 28…