Archive for 'Russian for beginners'
Here’s to our mothers! Posted by Rob on May 15, 2013
In the US and several other countries, второе воскресенье мая (“the second Sunday in May”) is День матери, Mother’s Day. In Russia, moms have usually been honored on Восьмое марта (“the 8th of March,” aka “International Women’s Day”), though technically there is a День матери in late November. ˇˆ^ √¬ ^~~√ˇˆ^~ ტპձ պՁԺზ ჭნწ჻ უ…
Eat me! Drink me! Off with his head! Posted by Rob on Apr 26, 2013
As we all know, shortly after the inquisitive Alice falls вниз по кроличьей норе, she discovers a little glass table with a tiny golden key on top of it, along with an enticing bottle of something that turns out to be shrinking potion: К бутылке была привязана бумажка, а на бумажке крупными красивыми буквами…
I get knocked down, but I get up again… Posted by Rob on Apr 24, 2013
In last week’s post, I mistakenly used the verb сваливать/свалить with the meaning “to physically knock down” — which seemed logical to me because, after all, the root verb валить means “to topple” and the noun валежник refers to “fallen tree branches.” Regular reader Fitzmat corrected me that сваливать/свалить, despite its etymology, is not generally…
Time for a little spring cleaning (Emphasis on “a little”) Posted by Rob on Apr 19, 2013
Here in the Washington DC area, весна немного опоздала в этом году (spring was a little late this year) — I mean, we were still having a steady spell of ненастье (chilly wet weather) right through the end of March, followed by several unpleasantly знойныe ночи (sultry hot) nights in April. А теперь на дворе…
Shouldn’t, oughtn’t, can’t, better not: Negative “modals” in Russian Posted by Rob on Feb 27, 2013
Long before Hollywood pop-culture began flooding from “Pindostan” into the ex-USSR, the distinctively Latin American genre known as telenovelas (теленовеллы or телесериал) had attained cult status in Russia (particularly, but not exclusively, among women). So in this post, let’s picture a scene from an imaginary теленовелла. Our beautiful (but naive) heroine María Simplemente has just…
Q: What’s huge, gray, and shines like a light-bulb? Posted by Rob on Feb 20, 2013
A: An electric elephant. Or, in Russian: Что это: Огромное, серое, и светит как лампочка? — Электрический слон. The Elephant Joke genre occurs in many different languages — generally, these jokes tend to “travel well” because their humor rarely depends on untranslatable puns, or on pop-culture references that quickly go stale. And one finds them…
The same-ish, yet kinda different… Posted by Rob on Feb 6, 2013
Hello, it’s good to be back! Я целую неделю лежал в постели, с всеми признаками гриппой. (“I spent the entire week in bed with all the symptoms of flu.”) У меня были кашли, насморк в голове, лихорадка, и хуже всего, меня постоянно тошнило. (“I had coughing, head congestion, a fever, and worst of all, constantly…