Tag Archives: learn Russian
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…
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…
When You Must Contradict Posted by yelena on Sep 6, 2012
This is in case your child says не хочу (don’t want to) a bit too often. Sometimes even the most cheerful and positive of us встают не с той ноги (get up on the wrong side of a bed). Or maybe it is the right side of the bed, but then something happens during the…
Verb of the Week: посвящать/посвятить Posted by Natalie on Aug 17, 2012
Всем привет! [Hello all!] It’s been a while since we have done a verb of the week, so I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about yet another wonderful Russian verb (because there’s nothing like a little Russian grammar to spice up your Friday, right?). I opened my verb book…
Filler Is Like Filler Does Posted by yelena on Aug 14, 2012
It occurred to me the other day that one of the (many) subjects we haven’t discussed on the Russian blog is the subject of fillers. Somehow we have been, like, totally overlooking the lorem ipsum of Russian language and it’s basically time to, you know, just do it. Here’s the first thing you need to…
Let’s Fake It Until We Make It Posted by yelena on Jul 23, 2012
(If you don’t feel like reading the entire post, skip to the end for a fun challenge) Writing for the Russian blog is, without any doubt, one of the most interesting and rewarding things I’ve done up until now. Not only do I get to better my English (how else would I learn the difference between…