Archive for 'Culture'
The curious case(s) of shashlik Posted by bota on Aug 4, 2021
*All images are by author Шашлы́к и падежи́ (shashlik and cases) are quintessentially Russian things and a lot has been said about each one but always separately. What do you say if we take the best of both worlds and revise Russian cases while talking about the most perfect summer dish? That’s right, I want…
Patience à la russe Posted by bota on Jul 27, 2021
Patience is a virtue and also a fascinating word in Russian: терпе́ние. Let’s look at how to use that word and its derivatives in a sentence. Towards the end we will talk about translating the imperative “потерпи́” and a few idiomatic expressions with “терпе́ние”. Терпе́ние — patience It means «выноси́ть страда́ние» (endure suffering) but used…
Things That Get Called Russian – Part 2 Posted by Nadya on Jul 23, 2021
We continue to discuss what people around the world call Russian, except the Russians themselves. Black Russian – Чёрный русский Black Russian is a classic cocktail (коктейль) based on vodka and coffee liqueur. It was created in 1949 by Gustave Tops, a Belgian bartender (бармен). The cocktail recipe is simple: for five parts of vodka…
Russian idioms with ‘как’ Posted by bota on Jul 7, 2021
What Russian word connects geese, archaic measuring units, and a 14th century military commander of the Golden Horde? The answer is “как” and today we will cover just a few commonly used Russian idioms with this word. And while ‘как’ can mean a number of different things in Russian (and is one of the 100…
Russian euphemisms about death Posted by bota on Jun 22, 2021
A lot of фразеологизмы (idioms) about ‘death’ in Russian rely on verbs of motion that depict a person leaving this life and world. The 5 euphemisms below all mean ‘to die’ but I will write the literal translation in parenthesis to make them easier to remember. My goal, though, is to not just help you…
Death in Russian, continued Posted by bota on Jun 14, 2021
Remember this blog where I mentioned the Russian tradition of bringing an even number of flowers to the funeral? We will talk about that and other traditions surrounding Russian funerals as well as vocabulary that relates to death in general. Flowers So, the even number of flowers comes from old-time beliefs that even numbers symbolize…
June 12 – Russia Day Posted by Nadya on Jun 10, 2021
June 12 is Russia Day. What exactly are we celebrating on that day? Not Independence Day Russia Day (День Росси́и) is one of the newest national public holidays in Russia. It has been celebrated since 1992. This day marks the formation of the Russian Federation (Росси́йская Федера́ция) as a sovereign (сувере́нный/незави́симый) country after the collapse…