Bidzina Ivanishvili and the Elections in Georgia Posted by Natalie on Oct 5, 2012
Всем привет! [Hello all!] I have been very, very busy recently – since I want поступить в аспирантуру [to apply to graduate school], I have been madly working on my essays, writing samples, and taking the GRE, the exam that applicants to many American graduate schools need to take. The good news: I have managed to…
Word-Wide Webs Posted by yelena on Oct 4, 2012
One of the challenges in learning Russian language is expanding your vocabulary. With over сто тридцать тысяч слов (one hundred and thirty thousand words) in the Russian language, figuring out where to start can be a bit frustrating. One option is to narrow it down to, let’s say, the 1000 most commonly used words and memorize…
“Sit down, stand up, lie, lay, lain!” (Verbs of Position) Posted by Rob on Oct 3, 2012
[Note: My original post made a few errors with prepositions and noun cases that have now been fixed!] I think I’ve mentioned that my first-year college Russian textbook illuminated the verb лежать included the grimly Dostoyevskian example sentence: Труп лежит на полу. The corpse is lying on the floor. Well, that’s one verb I’ll…
We must cultivate our garden! (or, more about tools) Posted by Rob on Sep 26, 2012
In Monday’s post, I talked about some of the basic ручные инструменты (“hand tools”) that might be employed by a плотник (“carpenter”) or a сантехник (“plumber”) — as well as some of the verbs that go along with these tools. Today, we’ll take that theme out into to the огород (“backyard vegetable patch”), with some…
Going Negative with Accusative and Genitive Posted by yelena on Sep 25, 2012
How about this phrase Не вижу смысла (It doesn’t make sense to me). The verb видеть is transitive, so according to the rule the noun смысл must be in accusative. Yet смысла is not accusative, but genitive case (check out the complete declension table). Besides, if I were to say Я вижу смысл в чём-то (Something…
The right tool for the job Posted by Rob on Sep 24, 2012
Once upon a time, when мы с товарищами снимали небольшую квартиру недалеко от Киевского вокзала (“some friends and I were renting a small apartment not far from the Kievsky train terminal”), the door on one of the kitchen cupboards got a bit wobbly, because a петля (“hinge”) was loose. Alas, although it was a furnished…
Walking a Dog or More About Transitive and Intransitive Verbs Posted by yelena on Sep 20, 2012
Last week I did a post about whether to use nouns in accusative or genitive case after verbs. If you missed the post and don’t feel like reading it now, here’s the rule in the nutshell: If a verb is transitive, then use the accusative case. If a verb is intransitive, then use the genitive…