Tag Archives: reading in Russian
Why Are Russian Place Names So Long? Posted by Maria on Oct 29, 2018
Perhaps one of the things you noticed when visiting Russia is how long the city and street names were. Maybe you never quite learned to sound out the name of the metro station closest to your hotel. “Novo… whatever,” you’d say, before taking off. Why do Russian names have to be so bulky? The answer lies…
“What Would You Do In 1917?” Russian Writers On The Anniversary of the Revolution Posted by Maria on Nov 14, 2017
November 7 marked the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. The Russian magazine Дружба народов (Friendship of the People) asked several writers about their outlook on that event. Each person was asked the following questions, abridged here: С кем вы? Кого́ защища́ете и про́тив кого́ выступа́ете? Каки́м хоти́те ви́деть бу́дущее Росси́и? Как вы объясня́ете свой…
Conquer the Backwards R — Learn to Read Russian (Part II) Posted by Maria on Nov 28, 2016
Last time, we looked at some letters of the Russian alphabet that either look and sound or just sound like their Latin counterparts. This time, we will look at letters that have similar sounds to other languages and, finally, some unique letters. Letters That Sound But Don’t Look Like Latin Letters A lot of these…
Conquer the Backwards R — Learn to Read Russian (Part I) Posted by Maria on Nov 21, 2016
Every so often a reader of this blog will be frustrated about not being able to read Russian characters. While we will occasionally include transliteration and audio, learning to read Cyrillic is much easier that you think! There are several reasons why reading Russian is beneficial, and we will look at some relatively painless ways…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part II Posted by Maria on Nov 12, 2015
We are continuing last week’s discussion of some Russians’ reaction to the Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics have voiced their concern that the award is becoming more political and that non-fiction, documentary writing is less deserving of this award. Let us continue looking at quotes from the article we…
Reading Russian Press: Russians’ Fear of Uncomfortable Literature – Part I Posted by Maria on Nov 5, 2015
I thought it might be interesting to look at recently published articles in the Russian press. Rather than having me summarize them, we are going to include quotes from the article and go over the language and message in these quotes. This week, I propose looking at the New Times article titled “Призы́в к смягче́нию…
Reading Poetry in Russian Posted by Maria on Jun 11, 2015
A couple of weeks ago we read famous passages from Russian literature (see Part I and Part II here). These works were mostly realist novels written by male authors well known abroad. I would like to wrap up this series with something a little different — poetry by authors lesser known internationally, one of whom…