President Putin’s proposed amendments to the Russian constitution have received a lot of attention. Leaving politics aside, let’s look at the language and style of an introductory paragraph. «Российская Федерация, объединенная тысячелетней историей, сохраняя память предков, передавших нам идеалы и веру в бога, а также преемственность развития российского государства, признает исторически сложившееся государственное единство». Here’s …
Recently I was reading a Facebook post in Russian with an interesting example of a motion verb in the past. Here it is, without the verb: Потом я прилетал из Америки и сразу (went) ____ в “Мемориал” еще раз, и еще раз. Без бабки не появлялся, конечно. Then I flew in from America and immediately …
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Have your Russian courses given much time to pronunciation? In my experience, beginning Russian courses spend some time on the basics like hard vs. soft consonants, reduction of unstressed vowels, and voicing. After that, it’s all we can do to manage case endings, aspect, verbs of motion, and more… Yet developing a natural pronunciation does …
What’s your favorite study method for new vocabulary or other material? Flashcards? Reviewing the book? Copying out word lists? I’m working on a project that takes a different approach, and I’d love to get your comments on it. A little background: in preparation for a trip, I’ve recently started learning Mandarin Chinese. At yoyochinese.com, I’ve …
Retrieval Practice: a Key to Success with Russian? Read More »
Можно.. нельзя.. льзя?? You may have learned the words можно (‘permitted, allowed, may’) and, as its opposite, нельзя – ‘not allowed, not permitted, forbidden.’ Have you ever wondered why the opposite of нельзя isn’t just… льзя? Marina Koroleva (that’s Королёва!) had a nice column in Российская газета about this a while back. She begins with …
Дорогие друзья, Russian is a beautiful, subtle, expressive language, but it can be challenging. So on this blog I’ll be sharing my favorite tips, gathered over my 30 years of studying Russian and 15 years teaching the language. Today’s topic is mnemonics: memory techniques to help you remember complex information. You’ve probably been faced with …
