Archive for 'Russian for beginners'
“In eight o’clock of morning, at January 8th, on the 2013…” Posted by Rob on Jan 8, 2013
…this post are scheduled for to be auto-publishing’ed over blog Transparent! 😉 A Russian learning English might make these exactly these sorts of stereotypical blunders with English предлоги (“prepositions”) — saying “at January 8th” instead of “on January 8th,” for instance. But an English speaker learning Russian faces faces exactly the same problem of…
How to Tell Time in Russian Posted by yelena on Nov 29, 2012
Image source: wstryder via Flickr I always thought one of the most useless sections in my old English-Russian разговорник (phrase book) was the one that taught how to tell time. After all, years ago most of us wore часы (watches). But now that we rely on cell phones to tell the time, the topic once again becomes…
“I am the very model of a conjugation paradigm…” Posted by Rob on Nov 20, 2012
As every student of Russian knows, learning verb conjugations can be a bit daunting. Grammarians claim that Russian has only a горсточка неправильных глаголов (“a handful of irregular verbs”) — but for a foreigner, there are countless verbs that might as well be irregular because of their conjugational oddities, even if a linguist would insist…
How to Count to a Billion in Russian Posted by yelena on Nov 15, 2012
Image source: Wikimedia Commons Do you know how to count to a million in Russian? Recently, we posted about counting до двадцати (to twenty) in Russian. And a while ago we talked about counting to 100. But суровая действительность (the harsh reality) dictates that we learn numbers well beyond the first сотня (hundred). Here’s why. Budgeting for…
The care and feeding of pets (but especially rats!) Posted by Rob on Nov 13, 2012
Может быть, вы думаете завести какого-нибудь питомца? (“Maybe you’re thinking about getting some kind of pet?”) But perhaps a cat or a dog wouldn’t fit into your образ жизни (“lifestyle”) — or your apartment. In that case, allow me to recommend the lovable серая крыса (lit., “gray rat”), commonly known in English as the “Norway…
There’s a chill in the air… Posted by Rob on Oct 15, 2012
Осень пришла (“fall has arrived”), at least officially, and at least for those of us на северном полушарии (“in the Northern hemisphere”). Двадцать второго сентября было равноденствие (“The 22nd of September was the equinox”). Cмотря где живёшь, ещё не очень холодно днём. (“Depending on where you live, it’s still not very cold during the day.”)…
“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…