Tag Archives: russian nouns
Ugly Word You Need to Know Posted by yelena on Aug 20, 2013
To learn lots of Russian words quickly, it’s critical to understand how they are built. And to better understand how Russian words are built and how they change, it is important to learn some most common Russian prefixes and suffixes. For example, today’s word is безобразие. It is built with the prefix без- or бес-…
Here’s to our mothers! Posted by Rob on May 15, 2013
In the US and several other countries, второе воскресенье мая (“the second Sunday in May”) is День матери, Mother’s Day. In Russia, moms have usually been honored on Восьмое марта (“the 8th of March,” aka “International Women’s Day”), though technically there is a День матери in late November. ˇˆ^ √¬ ^~~√ˇˆ^~ ტპձ պՁԺზ ჭნწ჻ უ…
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…
Instrumental Case Revisited Posted by yelena on Jun 19, 2012
A couple of days ago, вечером (in the evening), I sat down с фотоальбомом (with a photo album) in my hands. I love looking through old pictures, especially those снятые моими родителями (taken by my parents). For some reason I have lots of photos from when I was младенцем (a baby) and then again, в…
Russian No-nouns Posted by yelena on Jan 31, 2012
This post’s idea comes from Richard who mentioned that he was confused by the noun нежить (lit: the undead) that he encountered reading Nabokov’s story “The Wood Sprite”. Indeed, the noun нежить (undead) sounds exactly like the verb нежить (to pamper), but the meanings of the two words couldn’t be more different. False cognates…
A Little Bit of Grammar: Irregular Plural Nouns Posted by Natalie on Mar 16, 2011
«Дорогие читатели» [Dear readers], «нам пора» [it is time] for us to do a little grammar. Some people love grammar, some hate it, but it is a necessity of learning a language. Today we are going to talk about irregular plural nouns. Judging from the comments, we have readers of all levels, so I…
All Good Things Come In… Plural! Posted by josefina on Apr 11, 2010
A little something about the most interesting phenopluralia tantum in Russian language.