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Tag Archives: vocabulary building

Beyond Хорошо: 5 Ways of Saying “Good” In Russian Posted by on Jan 29, 2018

man giving thumbs up

Do you still answer “хорошо” when someone asks you how you are doing or how you liked that film? Here are some words to help you express positivity with more nuance. Note on grammar: different phrases will require different forms of the word. For example, when someone asks you “Как дела?” (“How are you?”) you…

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Knowledge Transfer: Verbs With The Root -вещ- Posted by on Nov 26, 2015

I thought it may be interesting to look at a “family” of words related by a shared root. One such family refers to all things knowledge and knowledge transfer. Knowledge The basic form is ве́дать, a bookish/archaic way of saying “to know.” Он не ве́дает, что твори́т. (He knows not what he’s doing.) The word…

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Verbs with Prefixes: Вернуть Posted by on Oct 22, 2015

It appears that our “verbs with prefixes” series has turned out to be a surprise hit, so let us do another installment! This time, we are looking at the verb верну́ть (to return). As always, these are just some of the meanings. The imperfective counterpart to вернуть is возвраща́ть. Нали́чных в кошельке́ бы́ло мно́го, но их…

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Expand Your Vocabulary: Verbs With Prefixes – Играть Posted by on Aug 27, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at combining prefixes and verb roots to expand your Russian vocabulary. One of the verbs that I was asked to cover was игра́ть. This is an excellent suggestion for a versatile and useful verb to have in your arsenal. The primary meaning of играть is, as you…

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Expand Your Vocabulary: Verbs With Prefixes – Брать Posted by on Aug 13, 2015

One way to learn more verbs in Russian is to take a common verb you already know and look up its derivatives with the most common Russian prefixes. Here are some of the most widespread Russian verbal prefixes. These are only some of the meanings, and they do not cover everything. However, you can…

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Four Resources for Natural-Sounding Russian Posted by on Feb 20, 2014

We struggle with sounding idiomatic in our second language(s). We may master vocabulary and grammar and be able to express ideas in a way that is technically not wrong, but… так не говорят (you don’t say that). Naturally, learners are encouraged to watch TV, listen to music and podcasts, and travel to the country of…

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