Archive for 'Culture'
Russian Phrases for a Road Trip Posted by yelena on Nov 9, 2012
Image Source: Flickr Summer, the official road trip season, is over. But the big holiday season не за горами (is just around the corner) meaning more поездки (road trips). Which is a great reason to learn words and phrases for the road. Of course, if you happen to go on a road trip in…
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…
Watching a Movie – Falcon Posted by yelena on Oct 12, 2012
In my previous post about Georgia (and why we, the students of the Russian language and culture should care about Georgia), I promised that come weekend we’ll be watching a movie and gave you a few hints as to which one. The famous Georgian director, Георгий Данелия (Georgiy Danelia), directed and the famous Georgian…
More About Georgia Posted by yelena on Oct 9, 2012
While the recent парламентские выборы (Parliamentary elections) in Georgia are still fresh in our minds thanks to Natalie’s recent post, let’s talk some more about this country. But wait, Georgia is not Russia! Russian is not its official language. It seems that unless you are interested in geopolitics, Georgia is outside of the scope of…
«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…