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Tag Archives: useful Russian phrases

To everything (Turn, turn, turn!)… Posted by on Sep 19, 2012

♪♫ …there is a season (Turn, turn, turn!): A time to sow, A time to reap, A time for war, A time for peace, A time to learn confusing Russian verbs with an indecent number of syllables, A time to say “Фиг с этим!” and study Esperanto instead…♪♫ Hi, everybody — can you guess what…

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«Икра» (“caviar”) without any fish eggs! Posted by on Sep 17, 2012

In this video post, I’m gonna play “Julia Child” and walk you through the recipe for one of my favorite Russian hors d’oeurves — баклажанная икра, or “eggplant caviar,” which is essentially a chunky version of Middle Eastern babaganoush. In fact, the word баклажан (“eggplant; aubergine”) is itself from the Middle East, and was borrowed…

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Doing Business по-русски Posted by on Sep 14, 2012

It’s the end of the week, so let’s do something fun. How about watching cartoons? Some time ago I found a cartoon on YouTube called Бизнес по-русски (Russian-style Business). Of all the episodes I could find, I liked Труба (Pipe) one the most. The story is of обычный россиянин (an ordinary Russian) who comes up…

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Ba-ba-ba-bird is the word… Posted by on Sep 12, 2012

A couple months ago, I did a post about an imaginary game show called «Назовите эту птицу», the object of which was to guess the identities of six feathered “mystery panelists.” But in writing the post, I had considered more than a dozen different birds before eventually culling the list down to six. And while…

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Could I get a volunteer from the audience? Posted by on Sep 5, 2012

A couple months ago, I agreed to do some volunteer work for my sister’s church. I’m not religious, but my sister and her husband are католики (“Roman Catholics”), and they requested some help making art for “Vacation Bible School” — i.e., a week-long summer program of religious education for children at the church, including my…

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Time to Lighten Up Posted by on Aug 28, 2012

What can be easier that learning Russian verbs? Russian adjectives, of course! And to switch gears, let’s choose лёгкое слово (easy word). In fact, why not talk about this exact adjective – лёгкий. To begin with, лёгкий might describe an object that is light as in Лёгкий танк весит меньше, а двигается быстрее, чем тяжёлый…

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“Didja hear the one about…?” (Some Russian анекдоты) Posted by on Aug 22, 2012

Russian анекдоты are not only a fascinating source of insight into Russian culture, but often provide a great opportunity to learn some important grammar and vocabulary. Here are just a few examples I’ve collected from the Internet — hover your cursor over the yellow-highlighted terms for some additional commentary on word usage. Political humor, of…

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