Archive for 'language'
“Dreamin’ is free…” Posted by Rob on Oct 10, 2012
So goes a line from an old Blondie song — you could translate it as можно видеть сны бесплатно (“one pays nothing to dream”). And “dreams” are the theme for today, because позавчера мне снился странный-престранный сон. (“The day before yesterday I had an oh-so-strange dream.”) Although maybe кошмар, “nightmare,” would be more apt! Во…
Word-Wide Webs Posted by yelena on Oct 4, 2012
One of the challenges in learning Russian language is expanding your vocabulary. With over сто тридцать тысяч слов (one hundred and thirty thousand words) in the Russian language, figuring out where to start can be a bit frustrating. One option is to narrow it down to, let’s say, the 1000 most commonly used words and memorize…
“Sit down, stand up, lie, lay, lain!” (Verbs of Position) Posted by Rob on Oct 3, 2012
[Note: My original post made a few errors with prepositions and noun cases that have now been fixed!] I think I’ve mentioned that my first-year college Russian textbook illuminated the verb лежать included the grimly Dostoyevskian example sentence: Труп лежит на полу. The corpse is lying on the floor. Well, that’s one verb I’ll…
We must cultivate our garden! (or, more about tools) Posted by Rob on Sep 26, 2012
In Monday’s post, I talked about some of the basic ручные инструменты (“hand tools”) that might be employed by a плотник (“carpenter”) or a сантехник (“plumber”) — as well as some of the verbs that go along with these tools. Today, we’ll take that theme out into to the огород (“backyard vegetable patch”), with some…
Going Negative with Accusative and Genitive Posted by yelena on Sep 25, 2012
How about this phrase Не вижу смысла (It doesn’t make sense to me). The verb видеть is transitive, so according to the rule the noun смысл must be in accusative. Yet смысла is not accusative, but genitive case (check out the complete declension table). Besides, if I were to say Я вижу смысл в чём-то (Something…
To everything (Turn, turn, turn!)… Posted by Rob on Sep 19, 2012
♪♫ …there is a season (Turn, turn, turn!): A time to sow, A time to reap, A time for war, A time for peace, A time to learn confusing Russian verbs with an indecent number of syllables, A time to say “Фиг с этим!” and study Esperanto instead…♪♫ Hi, everybody — can you guess what…
«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…