Hooray, There are No Articles in Russian! Posted by yelena on Sep 10, 2010
There is a good Russian saying «чем дальше в лес, тем больше дров» [lit: the further one gets into the forest, the more firewood there is] that means the further in, the more complicated things get. Russians have lots of modern-day endings to this saying – funny, silly, and yes, some are rude. I’ll…
«Прости» [Sorry] Seems to be the Hardest Word Posted by josefina on Sep 8, 2010
«В северной Калифорнии» [in northern California] where I’m presently living «не купить Ленина в шапке в стиле Санта-Клауса» [(one cannot/it is not possible) to buy Lenin with a hat in the style of Santa Claus]… This picture is yet another nostalgic trip down Ural Memory Lane – the «я люблю Урал!» [I love the Urals!]…
Reading «Мастер и Маргарита»: Chapter 13 Posted by yelena on Sep 6, 2010
This is mimosa, one of the first flowers that appear at Russian markets in late winter and early spring. There’s much discussion whether the flowers Margarita carried the day she met Master were indeed «мимозы» [mimosa flowers]. After all, Bulgakov never named them, not in Chapter 13 anyway. He only described them as «отвратительные, тревожные…
Russia Cannot Be Understood by the Mind Alone… or Can It? Posted by yelena on Sep 3, 2010
The infamous line “Russia cannot be understood by the mind alone” is one of those must-know Russian phrases that comes up pretty much constantly in many situations. It lends itself happily to a collection of jokes and funny images that, like the photo above, seem to confirm that Russia is indeed a land of…
Same-Same but Different III: Homographs Posted by josefina on Sep 1, 2010
Can it really be true that we’ve saved the best for our final, third, part of “Same-Same but Different”? After two posts – one on «омонимы» [homonyms] and another about «омофоны» [homophones] – we made it all the way to the truly troubling and trickiest of them all: «омографы» [homographs]. Here and now is when…
Celebrating the First of September Posted by yelena on Aug 30, 2010
I live 5 houses down from «начальная школа» [an elementary school]. It’s a pretty useless piece of trivia, except that every year since we moved into our house, I have had an acute case of «ностальгия» [nostalgia] at about this time of year. «Моя ностальгия – по Первому сентября» [I am nostalgic for the First…
Same-Same but Different II: Homophones Posted by josefina on Aug 28, 2010
Two days ago we discussed «омонимы» [pl. homonyms] here on our blog. As a part of that process I tried to be funny but was probably only silly when I used the popular phrase «гнать самогон» in a sentence so it wouldn’t mean «гнать самогон» as in ‘to distill moonshine’ – like it usually does…