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Six Words You May Be Saying Wrong In Russian Posted by Maria on Apr 24, 2014
Russian did not contribute nearly as many loanwords to English as French or Spanish did. However, a few of these words of Russian origin are floating around in English. Naturally, many of them changed their meaning or pronunciation comparing to Russian. Here are a few words you should pay attention to when speaking Russian to…
Guide to Russians’ Beach Vacations Posted by Maria on Apr 21, 2014
Vacation has been covered on this blog more than once, but this subject — and activity — is something I’m ready to revisit at least once a year. First, a post from a couple years ago given a nice overview of the general vacation vocabulary. In this post, I would like to concentrate on what…
Russian outside Russia Posted by Maria on Apr 14, 2014
Despite being from Russia, I find it bothersome when people equate the Russian language with the country of Russia. In my opinion, it not only leaves other Russian-speaking communities out of the discussion of the language, but also misrepresents them by implying that if you speak Russian, you must be culturally/politically/ethnically aligned with Russia. I…
Famous People Who Learned Russian as a Second Language Posted by Maria on Apr 10, 2014
I’m sure you sometimes get discouraged when learning Russian. There are so many challenges, and it sometimes feels like you’ll never get it. While your outcomes depend on many factors, such as your effort, the time spent studying, practice, and instructional materials and methods, please don’t think that only native or bilingual speakers of Russian…
Fashion Dos and Don’ts in Russia Posted by Maria on Apr 7, 2014
Having lived in the US for some time now, I can’t help thinking about certain fashion and grooming conventions that are matter-of-fact in the US but would stand out as bizarre in Russia and vice versa. Some of these will inevitably be subjective, but they are true for most cases I’ve observed. Despite the “do”/”don’t”…
Работа не волк, or talking about work Posted by Maria on Mar 31, 2014
Work is a place where we spend at least 8 hours a day, so it can never hurt to learn to talk about it in Russian. By the way, the title literally means, “work is not a wolf (and will not run into the woods),” meaning that you shouldn’t work too hard or too much…
Comparative Degree in Russian Sayings Posted by Maria on Mar 24, 2014
Within the larger subject of degrees of comparison, I would like to concentrate on the smaller group of adjectives and adverbs that form their comparative form with the -ше suffix. As you remember, the more prevalent pattern for forming the comparative is the -ней/нее suffix, such as холодно – холоднее. However, a number of high-frequency…