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Tag Archives: emphasis

Word Stress Patterns in Russian Posted by on Jun 26, 2019

old Soviet Smena camera

Word stress (ударе́ние) is probably one of the most challenging things about the Russian language. Where the emphasis falls in a word is highly variable in Russian, and there is no single rule set, unlike in such languages as Spanish. To put things in perspective, this is also the case in English. If you speak…

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Add Emotion to Your Russian: Emphatic Particles (Part II) Posted by on Mar 2, 2017

rows of umbrellas at the beach

Last time, we looked at three particles used for emphasis in Russian. These particles convey the speaker’s attitude and make your speech and writing much more lively. Let us look at a couple of other particles. Ведь Ведь is used to reinforce a viewpoint or to show that, although it contradicts previously presented information, it…

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Add Emotion to Your Russian: Emphatic Particles (Part I) Posted by on Feb 22, 2017

parents with daughter in a field

Whenever I read English translations of Russian literature, they strike me as rather matter-of-fact. This may be because Russian often not only describes reality but also expresses the author’s attitude towards it. One way of doing that is through particles (частицы). Take a look at this excerpt from the story “Записки на чинаровых листьях” (“Notes…

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Word Order and Logical Emphasis Posted by on Mar 20, 2014

One of the first things a learner of Russian hears about the Russian sentence structure is that, unlike in English, the word order (порядок слов) is relatively free. While understandably daunting for the beginner, this order not only allows for greater flexibility, but also helps with the logical emphasis in the sentence. What does that…

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