Tag Archives: Russian grammar
Beyond «рука» and «нога»: Words for (outside) body parts Posted by Rob on Aug 15, 2012
When you first begin studying Russian, one of the things they tell you is that рука can be translated as either “hand” or “arm” — and similarly, нога can mean either “foot” or “leg.” Well, that’s pretty darn convenient for the beginning student, with fewer new words to memorize! But wait — what if you…
I Am In It to Win It Posted by yelena on Aug 9, 2012
The Olympic Games are not over yet. There are still a few medals to win. Yesterday was a particularly good day for российские атлеты (Russian athletes) who won четыре медали (four medals). So let’s talk about why спортсмены со всего мира (athletes from around the world) train so hard; let’s talk about the two…
Hang on, I want to weigh in on something… Posted by Rob on Aug 8, 2012
In her excellent Friday post about telephone-related expressions, Natalie mentioned the verb вешать — which is literally “to hang,” and in the context of telephones can mean “to end the phone call by hanging up.” So I wanted to take a closer look at вешать, along with some other verbs (and a few nouns) that…
A couple more words from the birds Posted by Rob on Jul 18, 2012
When I was working on last Monday’s “Name That Bird” post, in which a panel of six avian “mystery guests” offered подсказки (“hints, clues”) to their identity, I considered a longer list of birds but ended up cutting some of the feathered panelists just to avoid making the post too long. For instance, фламинго and…
If You Don’t Have Ozhegov Posted by yelena on Jul 17, 2012
A few days ago I was at a weekly чаепитие (tea party) with my Russian friends when the conversation turned to Russian books. After discussing how difficult and expensive it is to buy интересные и качественно изданные книги (interesting high quality of print books), we talked about books we all brought with us years ago…
Reading the Russian News: Opposition Protests Posted by Natalie on Jul 13, 2012
Доброе утро, дорогие читатели! [Good morning, dear readers!] Каждый день, я читаю новости на русском [Every morning, I read the news in Russian]. It is a habit I got into last year, when we had to bring a news story to Russian class every day. I am sure I have said this before, but…
Verb of the Week: открывать/открыть Posted by Natalie on Jul 6, 2012
I was actually planning on doing a post about a Russian pop song I like, but I think we ought to end this week with some грамматика [grammar]. I have prepared another post with a verb of the week. This week’s verb is relatively easy to understand: открывать/открыть, which means “to open.” The imperfective…