Tag Archives: русский язык
All the пост in one post! Posted by ryan on Mar 1, 2022
For a while now, and especially in the past few days, Ukraine has been in the headlines. How much do we know about this incredibly diverse country, the largest located entirely in Europe? Today I would like to explore the country going into the season of Lent, as this largely Christian country, mostly Orthodox in…
V biblioteke (at the library) Posted by bota on Sep 13, 2021
Смо́тришь в кни́гу ви́дишь фи́гу? (Looking into a book but seeing nothing – see note below) That certainly won’t be the case with Transparent’s Library Sign-up month. See here if your local library offers Transparent Language Online so that you can access Russian courses. Remember to read the official rules here and поторопи́тесь — вас…
Two very neat Russian words Posted by bota on Jul 15, 2021
*All images from Google Translate are by author This blog is simple. I have two Russian words that I find very neat and a little underappreciated. We will talk about what they mean, how they are used, and attempt to make sense of their English translations. And if you are a native Russian speaker or…
Russian idioms with ‘как’ Posted by bota on Jul 7, 2021
What Russian word connects geese, archaic measuring units, and a 14th century military commander of the Golden Horde? The answer is “как” and today we will cover just a few commonly used Russian idioms with this word. And while ‘как’ can mean a number of different things in Russian (and is one of the 100…
Russian euphemisms about death Posted by bota on Jun 22, 2021
A lot of фразеологизмы (idioms) about ‘death’ in Russian rely on verbs of motion that depict a person leaving this life and world. The 5 euphemisms below all mean ‘to die’ but I will write the literal translation in parenthesis to make them easier to remember. My goal, though, is to not just help you…
April fun with paronyms Posted by bota on Apr 23, 2021
What better month than April to cover a few words that confuse even native Russian speakers? Ведь не даром говорят, «Непостоя́нен обма́нщик-апре́ль: на дню семь пого́д». (There is a good reason people say that “April-liar is fickle because it changes the weather seven times per day”.) Here are a few trickster paronyms, one pair for…
Are conjunctions necessary? Part II Posted by bota on Apr 5, 2021
We’ve talked about Russian sentences without conjunctions before, but we’ve yet to discuss my favorite Russian punctuation sign “тире́” (dash) and its role in these бессою́зных предложе́ниях (sentences without conjunctions). There are six instances where you can use “тире́” (dash; typed as an m-dash sign) in place of a conjunction. I’ll provide examples for each…