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Reading “Мастер и Маргарита”: Chapter 14 Posted by yelena on Sep 17, 2010
It looks like we haven’t talked about Master and Margarita for a while. «Приступим к четырнадцатой главе» [Let’s get to Chapter 14] . It is intense and sinister, don’t you think? Yet there are also quite a few «юмористические моменты» [comical episodes] that can make even the most serious reader smile. Here also we encounter…
Russian Fairy Tales From A to Z – Part 1 Posted by yelena on Sep 13, 2010
For the past couple of months we’ve been concentrating heavily on just one book – Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. How about we switch gears for now and take a short break from the novel. I’m inviting you «в гости к сказке» [to visit fairy tale land]. Let’s start with the beginning. Russian fairy tale land…
Hooray, There are No Articles in Russian! Posted by yelena on Sep 10, 2010
There is a good Russian saying «чем дальше в лес, тем больше дров» [lit: the further one gets into the forest, the more firewood there is] that means the further in, the more complicated things get. Russians have lots of modern-day endings to this saying – funny, silly, and yes, some are rude. I’ll…
Reading «Мастер и Маргарита»: Chapter 13 Posted by yelena on Sep 6, 2010
This is mimosa, one of the first flowers that appear at Russian markets in late winter and early spring. There’s much discussion whether the flowers Margarita carried the day she met Master were indeed «мимозы» [mimosa flowers]. After all, Bulgakov never named them, not in Chapter 13 anyway. He only described them as «отвратительные, тревожные…
Russia Cannot Be Understood by the Mind Alone… or Can It? Posted by yelena on Sep 3, 2010
The infamous line “Russia cannot be understood by the mind alone” is one of those must-know Russian phrases that comes up pretty much constantly in many situations. It lends itself happily to a collection of jokes and funny images that, like the photo above, seem to confirm that Russia is indeed a land of…
Celebrating the First of September Posted by yelena on Aug 30, 2010
I live 5 houses down from «начальная школа» [an elementary school]. It’s a pretty useless piece of trivia, except that every year since we moved into our house, I have had an acute case of «ностальгия» [nostalgia] at about this time of year. «Моя ностальгия – по Первому сентября» [I am nostalgic for the First…
Learning Russian for Travel Posted by yelena on Aug 20, 2010
So far summer 2010 hasn’t been the best for travel to Russia. In addition to the usual visa-related headache, we have a heat wave, drought, wildfires, hurricane-force winds, and low air quality because of all the fires. «Такое вот лето фиговое.» [Such rubbish summer.] A once-popular and often-cited line from an old song – «у природы нет плохой погоды» [nature…