Archive for 'Russian for beginners'
Работа не волк, or talking about work Posted by Maria on Mar 31, 2014
Work is a place where we spend at least 8 hours a day, so it can never hurt to learn to talk about it in Russian. By the way, the title literally means, “work is not a wolf (and will not run into the woods),” meaning that you shouldn’t work too hard or too much…
Comparative Degree in Russian Sayings Posted by Maria on Mar 24, 2014
Within the larger subject of degrees of comparison, I would like to concentrate on the smaller group of adjectives and adverbs that form their comparative form with the -ше suffix. As you remember, the more prevalent pattern for forming the comparative is the -ней/нее suffix, such as холодно – холоднее. However, a number of high-frequency…
Word Order and Logical Emphasis Posted by Maria on Mar 20, 2014
One of the first things a learner of Russian hears about the Russian sentence structure is that, unlike in English, the word order (порядок слов) is relatively free. While understandably daunting for the beginner, this order not only allows for greater flexibility, but also helps with the logical emphasis in the sentence. What does that…
University system in Russia Posted by Maria on Mar 13, 2014
Education is a funny subject to talk about. One the one hand, it’s one of the first things we learn about in our first year or so. On the other hand, because the emphasis is usually on talking about our experiences as a student, we may never learn much about the educational system of the…
Things to do/try when in Russia Posted by Jenya on Mar 11, 2014
So you made the decision to go to Russia or, perhaps, somebody made it for you. Either way, now is the perfect time to put some thought into what to do while you are there. There is no shortage of things you can do or see in Moscow or Saint Petersburg but if you find…
Popular Nutritious Russian Dishes and Food Items Posted by Jenya on Feb 18, 2014
If you haven’t spent a significant amount of time in Russia, it would be pretty hard for you to give an accurate account of what Russian cuisine is like. Russian cuisine (русская кухня) is a massive aggregate of traditional Russian dishes (русские блюда), Russian adaptations of dishes that came from neighboring cultures, and dishes…
Introducing and Repealing Rules Posted by Maria on Feb 17, 2014
Many times when I would start to have Russian conversations with learners of Russian, the conversation would quickly slip into discussions about Russian politics. This is only to be cherished, of course; however, the problem is that learners often lack the vocabulary to talk about current events and, therefore, switch back to English. Let’s go…