Tag Archives: russian slang
Pet Peeves in Russian Posted by Maria on Feb 2, 2015
Many of us have turns of phrase in our language that give us rage. In English, some examples would be “irregardless,” “I could care less,” and other things people consider redundant, incorrect, or plain inane. Russian has such phrases, too, so let’s look at what many Russians find infuriating. I’ll use examples from the spoken subcorpus…
Colloquial Praises Posted by Maria on Oct 23, 2014
If you took Russian — or any language, for that matter — you probably eventually arrived at a point when your teacher encouraged you to use words other than хороший (good) to praise things. Hopefully, you started using замечательный, чудесный (both mean wonderful), восхитительный (delightful), великолепный (magnificent), прекрасный (great, beautiful), отменный (select, top-notch), отличный (excellent) and…
5 Most Common Russian Gestures Posted by Jenya on Mar 25, 2014
When you are lost for words, especially if we are talking about foreign words, it is pretty common to resort to gestures. With this in mind, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shed some light on the most common Russian gestures. The information on their origin seems to be pretty conflicting. However…
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi: When in Russia… Posted by Jenya on Feb 11, 2014
Some of you might wonder where Sochi is and why the winter Olympics take place in a city with palm trees? The city of Sochi is about 800 miles south of Moscow and is “located on the Black Sea coast near the border between Georgia/Abkhazia and Russia.” Due to its subtropical climate, the winters in…
Answers to Sex in PGT Research Questions Posted by yelena on Mar 30, 2012
In my recent Sex in ПГТ post I suggested some questions for independent research. If you haven’t done it yet, but plan on doing it this weekend, then you should probably not read this post right now. As they say in movie reviews, Spoiler Alert. So let’s start with the last question first: Practice…
Sex in ПГТ Posted by yelena on Mar 27, 2012
While it’s too early in the week to have a proper Russian movie night, let’s watch this very short video called Секс в п.г.т. Note: Whenever you see this sign * it means there’s a related question at the bottom of the post. Ok, so the first word секс is pretty easy to understand (sex)…
One Hard-Working Russian Word Posted by yelena on Oct 18, 2011
Do you know that in Russia the expression “birthday suit” translates as «костюм Адама» if talking about a male and «костюм Евы» if talking about a woman. But «фиговый листок» means exactly the same thing, a fig leaf, in its proverbial sense. Just be careful with the stress or you end up saying “worthless leaf”…