In The News: Russian Director Eldar Ryazanov Dies Posted by Maria on Nov 30, 2015
A sad story was reported by the media this weekend — film director Eldar Ryazanov (Эльда́р Ряза́нов) has died at 88. Let us look at how this story was covered in various publications. Ryazanov’s Death Slon reports, “Росси́йский режиссе́р Эльдар Рязанов сконча́лся в Москве́.” Сконча́ться is a respectful, official way of saying “die, pass away.” According…
Knowledge Transfer: Verbs With The Root -вещ- Posted by Maria on Nov 26, 2015
I thought it may be interesting to look at a “family” of words related by a shared root. One such family refers to all things knowledge and knowledge transfer. Knowledge The basic form is ве́дать, a bookish/archaic way of saying “to know.” Он не ве́дает, что твори́т. (He knows not what he’s doing.) The word…
Regional Expressions In Russia Posted by Maria on Nov 19, 2015
Even though Russian is fairly uniform and cannot boast the same dialectal variety as some other languages, regional differences do exist. They tend to be more subtle so that most people in the region may not realize the word is a regionalism. Of course, there are the cases everyone talks about, like Moscow vs St…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part II Posted by Maria on Nov 12, 2015
We are continuing last week’s discussion of some Russians’ reaction to the Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics have voiced their concern that the award is becoming more political and that non-fiction, documentary writing is less deserving of this award. Let us continue looking at quotes from the article we…
More Interesting “Facts” About Russia Posted by Jenya on Nov 11, 2015
As I was researching facts about Russia that I could write a blog about, I came across some more interesting and funny ones. These strange Russian “facts” were more entertaining and write about; hope they are entertaining to read as well. It’s bad luck to return to your house after you’ve already left Should you…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part I Posted by Maria on Nov 5, 2015
I thought it might be interesting to look at recently published articles in the Russian press. Rather than having me summarize them, we are going to include quotes from the article and go over the language and message in these quotes. This week, I propose looking at the New Times article titled “Призы́в к смягче́нию…
Fear of Speaking a Second Language Posted by Jenya on Nov 4, 2015
I can remember back to when I began learning English in school about 10 years before actually coming to America. It was fun, exciting, and quite difficult. My parents had always told me that I needed to learn English in order to have a brighter future. Before I’d graduated our version of high school, I’d…