If there is a grain of truth in the folkloric tales, then we should believe that dragons lived everywhere on Earth. Chinese dragons are known worldwide. European knights were saving princesses from dragons for centuries during the early Medieval age. Aboriginal Americans had huge snake-like creatures that greatly resembled dragons. Even Russians had their own
Let’s face it: Russia is not the right country for white collars. And white jeans. And white t-shirts. And any white clothes at all. Because Russia is freaking dusty. If you don’t mind washing your white clothes every day, then OK, put your white jeans on and go for a walk, but don’t complain that
Each country has its own tradition of writing phone numbers. Some countries prefer dots and some use dashes, in Europe, people add a double zero before the country code, while Americans tend not to add a country code at all. Sometimes, it is really hard to understand how to deal with a row of numbers
My English teacher always suggested that students read the whole paragraph first and only then open a dictionary and look up unfamiliar words. This was very wise advice because it helped me to quit a bad habit of the word by word translating. I don’t like the question “what does this word mean?”. I prefer
Outside Russia, Russian literature is associated with names of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. No doubt, these writers deserve to represent Russia in the global culture. But if you ask any Russian whom he or she thinks about when talking about classic Russian literature, you’ll most probably get the answer “Pushkin”. During last two centuries, Alexander Pushkin
A German friend once asked me,”Why are Russian people so gloomy? Nobody smiles here”. I looked around and noticed that indeed, almost nobody in the Moscow subway was smiling. I said, “Why should they?” My friend raised his eyebrow in astonishment and changed the subject. I remembered our conversation and started searching for the answer
So two out of the three richest people in UK are actually from Russia. Does it mean that all Russians are fabulously rich? Of course not. Then who are they, those Russians, who bought the exclusive real estate in the heart of London, football clubs and yachts that cost more than the budget of a
Like in many other languages, Russian names have two forms — a full name for official communication and a diminutive or affectionate name for family and close friends. Usually, it is easy to form a diminutive form out of the full name. Thus, when you get into a person’s intimate circle, Elena turns to Lena,
Once I received a group email from my American colleague. She invited me and many other people from all around the world to a conference call. In the end of the letter, she wrote, “Be like an elephant!”. This phrase puzzled me a lot. What did she mean? Did she mean that we had to
Often enough, my students get frightened by long Russian words. A student, who normally reads fluently, stops in terror upon seeing a four-syllable word and approaches it like a horse face-to-face with a tall hurdle. I found that explaining what the long word consists of helps to disassemble or lower the hurdle. Compare two words:
