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The Russian art of spitting Posted by on Feb 18, 2022

As it turns out from Bota’s blog from Tuesday, today is День Пельме́ней in Russia! This dish, of course, is one of my personal favorites, not only to eat, but also to make. But what if you take a bite of a пельме́нь and realize you don’t like it? Or maybe you’re a вегетариа́нец vegetarian…

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Pelmeni in Cursive     Posted by on Feb 15, 2022

pelmeni

The most important February holiday is upon us: восемнадцатое февраля — День Пельменей! (Pelmeni day or Russian Dumpling Day) Фото автора Polina Tankilevitch: Pexels *Если вы не знаете, что такое пельмени, быстро прочитайте этот вкусный рецепт от Елены! (If you do not know what pelmeni are, go ahead and read this delicious recipe from Yelena.) This time-tested…

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Racing through prefixes (part II) Posted by on Feb 11, 2022

Why stop where we did? There are still a number of possibilities with гнать. Today I would like to continue the race from last week and demonstrate more prefixes and their meanings within the context of physical motion. So, once again, погна́ли! Прогна́ть/прогоня́ть The prefix про– usually means motion through something. Проходи́ть, for example, means…

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Using English slang in Russian Posted by on Feb 3, 2022

nesting doll

Англицизмы или Американизмы — не новая тема в русском языке. (English and American English loanwords is not a new topic in Russian). However, it is one thing to hear about it on the news, for example when a Russian politician calls to ban English loanwords from the Russian language. It is a completely different story…

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Racing through prefixes Posted by on Jan 31, 2022

One of my favorite ways to learn verbs in Russian has always been to sit down, choose a verb, and run through all its possible prefixes, choosing example sentences to really cement the meaning in my mind. I have found this exercise especially useful with verbs of motion, which can have a broad range of…

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Familiar Unknowns II Posted by on Jan 27, 2022

king of the world

We continue to cover Russian idioms that make you say “What?” even though you are 99% sure you have heard them before. For Part I see here. Кануть в лету Definition: to be forgotten or to be long gone, to disappear. No, unfortunately we are not talking about summer (лето). Nor is this idiom about…

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The joy of grammatical mistakes, or a few of my lightbulb moments Posted by on Jan 25, 2022

Как уст румя́ных без улы́бки, Без граммати́ческой оши́бки Я ру́сской ре́чи не люблю́ These lines, from Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel in verse «Евге́ний Оне́гин» Eugene Onegin, pretty well explain what I would like to cover in today’s post. Much of learning a new language has to do with restructuring your thinking to express ideas using a construction…

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