5 Verbs To Talk About Scams And Deception in Russian Posted by Maria on Mar 15, 2018
Have you ever been cheated or scammed? Would you know how to talk about it in Russian? Below are five common ways of talking about being the victim of deceit. 1. Обмануть The most neutral term for deceiving someone is обмануть (imperf. обманывать). The related action is called обман (deception), and the person doing the…
3 Kinds of Negation in Russian Posted by Maria on Mar 7, 2018
Are you tempted to use the infamous “nyet” in front of any word to make your sentences negative? Do you get confused between не, ни, and нет? Then read on to learn some common uses of these words. 1. Нет Negation of the Entire Sentence This is probably the most famous and the easiest of…
4 Online Courses For Learning Subject-Specific Vocabulary in Russian Posted by Maria on Mar 1, 2018
Perhaps you have mastered the basics of everyday conversation but still can’t talk about your specific area of knowledge in Russian. Say, your university degree is in physics, but you don’t know how to say “pump” in Russian. One way to build your subject-specific vocabulary is to sign up for an online class in an…
Before and After: Prepositions of Time in Russian Posted by Maria on Feb 22, 2018
We’ve looked at conjunctions that let you express temporal relationships in a sentence. Now let us look at some prepositions you can use to indicate when something happened. Previous events До + genitive case До is used before a noun or a pronoun to refer to the time before something else happens. Рефера́т на́до сдать…
Do Native Speakers Ever Struggle To Pronounce Russian Sounds? Posted by Maria on Feb 12, 2018
Perhaps you struggle to pronounce certain sounds in Russian. Can’t roll your Rs? Have a hard time making soft consonant sounds? First, be sure to check out our pronunciation tips. Second, you’re not alone! There are native speakers who have articulation challenges and need to see a speech pathologist (логопед). Let us look at some…
Who Gets Called “Russian”? Posted by Maria on Feb 5, 2018
How often have you heard the phrase “So-and-so is Russian”? What was meant by “Russian” in that case? Was the person a citizen of the Russian Federation? Did they live in any of the neighbo(u)ring countries? Did they speak Russian? This post will examine the many ways “Russian” (русский and other related words) is used…
Beyond Хорошо: 5 Ways of Saying “Good” In Russian Posted by Maria on Jan 29, 2018
Do you still answer “хорошо” when someone asks you how you are doing or how you liked that film? Here are some words to help you express positivity with more nuance. Note on grammar: different phrases will require different forms of the word. For example, when someone asks you “Как дела?” (“How are you?”) you…