Archive for 'language'
One After Another: Past Temporal Clauses in Russian Posted by Maria on May 2, 2016
In this post, we will look at the ways you can introduce temporal clauses in Russian. We will concentrate on past verb forms. Translations are used to illustrate the meaning of the Russian phrases and may not reflect your local dialect of English. Previous Events If we want to describe one action that happened before…
Indo-European Roots of Russian Posted by Maria on Apr 28, 2016
Learners of the more popular Germanic languages — English and German — and the more popular Romance language — French, Spanish, and Italian — may be tempted to think of all Indo-European languages in terms of these high-visibility languages. I’ve once heard someone say “Russian is so different from Indo-European languages.” Some languages of Western…
Show Me The Money: Slang Expressions for Cash in Russian Posted by Maria on Apr 21, 2016
As you imagine, money is as popular a subject in Russian as it is in other languages. Apart from the neutral word де́ньги, there are multiple slang ways of referring to your hard-earned cash. There are many slang words for money in English and other languages, too; each country will have its variations, to boot…
Five Ways Your First Language Is Messing With Your Russian Posted by Maria on Apr 11, 2016
The way one language expresses an idea does not always work in a different language. This sounds like a truism, however, certain turns of phrase the learner’s first language interferes with seem to affect many learners. Some of the comparisons will be English-based and, obviously, will not apply for all languages. Even so, this may…
Four Alcohol-Related Concepts You May Struggle To Express In Russian Posted by Maria on Mar 2, 2016
What? Struggling to talk about alcohol in Russian? Surely, with the fourth-highest per capita alcohol consumption in Europe, Russia must have developed an extensive booze vocabulary, much like the proverbial, if debunked, words for “snow” in Eskimo languages? Well, yes and no. 1. Shots You know those small glasses of straight liquor college kids do…
Mixed Reactions: Chemical Russian Posted by Maria on Feb 1, 2016
Although English firmly holds the first place as the language of research and scientific publications, a lot of research used to be — and some still is — carried out in Russian. For any readers who may be learning Russian for scientific reasons, I would like to share some key concepts from the field…
Act A Fool: Proverbs With Дурак In Russian Posted by Maria on Jan 25, 2016
As the famous saying goes, «В Росси́и две пробле́мы: дураки́ и доро́ги» (“Russia has two problems – fools and bad roads”). There is a wealth of proverbs for a variety of occasions talking about fools. Дурака́м зако́н не пи́сан This literally means “There’s no law written for fools.” What’s implied is that the person…