Does Russian Sound Different in European Russia and the Far East? Posted by Maria on Oct 13, 2016
Very often I hear people say that, Russia being so large, there must be distinct regional accents. A person from Moscow surely speaks differently than someone from Novosibirsk. However, in the case of Russia we find that the variation is not nearly as drastic as one would expect. As explained in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The degree…
Agree To Disagree: Expressing Opinions in Russian Posted by Maria on Oct 10, 2016
So you have looked at some basic phrases and know how to introduce yourself and ask how the other person is doing. Exchanging pleasantries may get old pretty quickly, so let’s learn to exchange opinions. Below are some phrases that will help you express your views on a variety of subjects. Я думаю This is…
Not In My Back Yard: Describing Russian Community Spaces Posted by Maria on Oct 3, 2016
Since Russian cities are often laid out differently from those in Western Europe, North America and elsewhere, the labels applied to various parts of the city may be specific to the Russian language and lack exact equivalents in other languages. The situation may be similar in other countries that use the Russian language. Подъезд The…
Tricky Russian Typography – Part II Posted by Maria on Sep 26, 2016
Last time, we started talking about punctuation that may be tricky to enter for Russians primarily used to handwriting; specifically, we covered direct speech. We are continuing to some other tricky cases. Dash At least in the US, a lot of attention is paid to distinguishing hyphens from n-dashes from m-dashes and the proper use…
Tricky Russian Typography – Part I Posted by Maria on Sep 21, 2016
We have talked about keyboarding in Russian and some peculiarities of Russian punctuation on this blog. Let us expand on these subjects with an overview of characters that may not be easy to enter on a keyboard. Generally speaking, until very recently Russian literacy dwelled primarily in the handwritten domain. That is, of course, books…
Вокруг да около: Expressing Proximity In Russian Posted by Maria on Sep 15, 2016
Let us talk about ways of expressing proximity in Russian. There are a few of them; however, not all of them are interchangeable. Рядом Рядом + с + object in the instrumental case means “next to something.” Рядом can also be used on its own to mean “nearby.” Рядом с нашей школой был парк (There was a park…
Трое в лодке: Collective Numerals in Russian Posted by Maria on Sep 8, 2016
If you look at the Russian translation of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in A Boat, you may be surprised to read “Трое в лодке, не считая собаки.” Why “трое” and not “три”? In my last post on forms that don’t exist in Russian, I briefly touched upon the category of collective numerals. Since they have…