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“I am the very model of a conjugation paradigm…” Posted by Rob on Nov 20, 2012
As every student of Russian knows, learning verb conjugations can be a bit daunting. Grammarians claim that Russian has only a горсточка неправильных глаголов (“a handful of irregular verbs”) — but for a foreigner, there are countless verbs that might as well be irregular because of their conjugational oddities, even if a linguist would insist…
The care and feeding of pets (but especially rats!) Posted by Rob on Nov 13, 2012
Может быть, вы думаете завести какого-нибудь питомца? (“Maybe you’re thinking about getting some kind of pet?”) But perhaps a cat or a dog wouldn’t fit into your образ жизни (“lifestyle”) — or your apartment. In that case, allow me to recommend the lovable серая крыса (lit., “gray rat”), commonly known in English as the “Norway…
Defense Against the Dark Arts! Posted by Rob on Nov 6, 2012
[Note: This post was originally written for Хеллуин, but as already mentioned, the arrival of Hurricane Sandy caused some power outages and delays…] In the Harry Potter books, “Defense against the Dark Arts” is a mandatory class for Hogwarts students, and in the Russian editions, it was straightforwardly translated as “Защита от тёмных искусств.” And…
Karaoke in Russian (or at least “faking it”) Posted by Rob on Oct 29, 2012
Pick the correct song lyrics: ♪♫ Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end… ♪♫ ♪♫ Дорогой длинною и ночью лунною… ♪♫ ♪♫ Try our ge-fil-te fish, it’s such a ta-sty dish… ♪♫ In fact, all three lines — along with many other variants in dozens of languages — have been sung…
There’s a chill in the air… Posted by Rob on Oct 15, 2012
Осень пришла (“fall has arrived”), at least officially, and at least for those of us на северном полушарии (“in the Northern hemisphere”). Двадцать второго сентября было равноденствие (“The 22nd of September was the equinox”). Cмотря где живёшь, ещё не очень холодно днём. (“Depending on where you live, it’s still not very cold during the day.”)…
“Dreamin’ is free…” Posted by Rob on Oct 10, 2012
So goes a line from an old Blondie song — you could translate it as можно видеть сны бесплатно (“one pays nothing to dream”). And “dreams” are the theme for today, because позавчера мне снился странный-престранный сон. (“The day before yesterday I had an oh-so-strange dream.”) Although maybe кошмар, “nightmare,” would be more apt! Во…
Прогулка по лесу (or, “A bit o’ botany”) Posted by Rob on Oct 8, 2012
На прошлой неделе, я сидел с племянником (“Last week, I was babysitting my nephew”) and since the weather was nice, he wanted to прогуляться в лесу (“to go for a stroll in the forest”). And a прогулка по лесу (“walk through the woods”) actually offers a great opportunity for Russian vocabulary practice: not only learning…