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“Sit down, stand up, lie, lay, lain!” (Verbs of Position) Posted by Rob on Oct 3, 2012
[Note: My original post made a few errors with prepositions and noun cases that have now been fixed!] I think I’ve mentioned that my first-year college Russian textbook illuminated the verb лежать included the grimly Dostoyevskian example sentence: Труп лежит на полу. The corpse is lying on the floor. Well, that’s one verb I’ll…
We must cultivate our garden! (or, more about tools) Posted by Rob on Sep 26, 2012
In Monday’s post, I talked about some of the basic ручные инструменты (“hand tools”) that might be employed by a плотник (“carpenter”) or a сантехник (“plumber”) — as well as some of the verbs that go along with these tools. Today, we’ll take that theme out into to the огород (“backyard vegetable patch”), with some…
The right tool for the job Posted by Rob on Sep 24, 2012
Once upon a time, when мы с товарищами снимали небольшую квартиру недалеко от Киевского вокзала (“some friends and I were renting a small apartment not far from the Kievsky train terminal”), the door on one of the kitchen cupboards got a bit wobbly, because a петля (“hinge”) was loose. Alas, although it was a furnished…
To everything (Turn, turn, turn!)… Posted by Rob on Sep 19, 2012
♪♫ …there is a season (Turn, turn, turn!): A time to sow, A time to reap, A time for war, A time for peace, A time to learn confusing Russian verbs with an indecent number of syllables, A time to say “Фиг с этим!” and study Esperanto instead…♪♫ Hi, everybody — can you guess what…
«Икра» (“caviar”) without any fish eggs! Posted by Rob on Sep 17, 2012
In this video post, I’m gonna play “Julia Child” and walk you through the recipe for one of my favorite Russian hors d’oeurves — баклажанная икра, or “eggplant caviar,” which is essentially a chunky version of Middle Eastern babaganoush. In fact, the word баклажан (“eggplant; aubergine”) is itself from the Middle East, and was borrowed…
Ba-ba-ba-bird is the word… Posted by Rob on Sep 12, 2012
A couple months ago, I did a post about an imaginary game show called «Назовите эту птицу», the object of which was to guess the identities of six feathered “mystery panelists.” But in writing the post, I had considered more than a dozen different birds before eventually culling the list down to six. And while…
Could I get a volunteer from the audience? Posted by Rob on Sep 5, 2012
A couple months ago, I agreed to do some volunteer work for my sister’s church. I’m not religious, but my sister and her husband are католики (“Roman Catholics”), and they requested some help making art for “Vacation Bible School” — i.e., a week-long summer program of religious education for children at the church, including my…