These are my articles about the Russian language – its grammar, word usage and more.
The passive voice is a very convenient grammatical category. When something has happened, we usually can tell who did what, but sometimes, we don’t want to name the agents. We may want or need to report the event itself, but would prefer to shift our focus away from the actors to the action itself. This
I was wondering if you had a post or if you could make a post about emotions. I want to learn more ways to respond to ‘Как дела?’ than simply “Я хорошо” and such. If not, could you direct me to a place where emotions in Russian are listed? Спасибо! Hi! Here are some options
When I was a teenager, I explored the Western rock music. Among other old names, I discovered The Doors and Jim Morrison. Mind you, the Soviet Union banned Western culture in general. Most of the musical heritage of the West became available to Russians only after Perestroika. I sang along to People Are Strange, and
If you are learning Russian, you might have heard that in Russian, word order is flexible. What exactly does this mean? To what degree is Russian word order flexible? And does it make Russian a bit easier to learn since you don’t have to memorize a specific word order for simple sentences and questions? At
Every time I start my car, a dash camera (yes, I have a dash camera in my car) says: “Starting driving recording”. This phrase drives me crazy, because to my Russian ear they are the three unconnected nouns! It takes me a second to build connections between the three words and figure out what is
What’s the difference between настоящий естественный and реальный ? Could you give some example phrases to illustrate the distinctions, and some collocations? Настоящий – 1) real as opposed to fake. Это настоящий Хеннеси, не подделка! This is real Hennessey, not a counterfeit. 2) It can also be used an amplifier, similar to English ‘real’: Это
When I was a child, I was an insatiable reader. I read everything I could get my hands on. Once I found the Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy and spent a couple of weeks reading that incredibly long novel. Of course, the book was in Russian, because in the Soviet Union, books in English were
I often hear from students of Russian that verbal aspect (perfective and imperfective verbs) and verbs of motion are the two grammar topics most difficult to comprehend. As a native speaker, I can only guess how scary and confusing it can be when one has to choose which verb of motion to use and whether
I’m a German native speaker and I can’t roll the R at all. It really bothers me and I feel awkward while speaking Russian because it just doesn’t sound right. Am I worrying too much? One of my Russian teachers said that there are even Russians who can’t roll the R at all, but I
The question of why some words look suspiciously similar in Russian and English first arose when I started learning English at the age of 11. I was so puzzled by this fact that I asked our Russian teacher to explain the mystery to me, and she told me that many centuries ago, there was a
