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Tag Archives: basic Russian

5 Russian Phrases To Get Past Comprehension Barriers Posted by on Aug 14, 2019

three young people talking

Some approaches to learning a language, such as the communicative method, encourage teachers and students to only use the target language in the classroom. What do you do if you don’t understand what was just said or lack the vocabulary to ask the other person to repeat or explain? This post will equip you with…

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“В” or “на” with Places and Events in Russian — Part I Posted by on Jan 25, 2017

Prague train station and railyard

Phrases with prepositions to refer to a place or event are fairly frequent in all levels of Russian. At the same time, these structures are not quite regular, which can be frustrating even for experienced learners. Many cases are determined by convention more than logic, but we’ll try to group these expressions according to the…

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Five Ways Your First Language Is Messing With Your Russian Posted by on Apr 11, 2016

bicycle

The way one language expresses an idea does not always work in a different language. This sounds like a truism, however, certain turns of phrase the learner’s first language interferes with seem to affect many learners. Some of the comparisons will be English-based and, obviously, will not apply for all languages. Even so, this may…

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Basic Russian: “What Is It?” Posted by on Mar 28, 2016

This post is meant for beginner students of Russian. One of the first things we learn in a new language is asking what something is. However, there are many situations and reasons we ask “What is X?” and they require different phrases. Let’s look at the different scenarios where you may need to use…

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Basic Russian: Uses of Что Posted by on Aug 31, 2015

We have been asked by one of our readers to explain the uses of что. This seemingly simple word has several applications. We will go over the most common uses of this word. Forms The primary meaning of что is “what.” Dictionaries will tell you that it is technically a местоименное существительное, a “pronominal noun.”…

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