Jokes about “what if people spoke a language taken from textbooks” abound. Clichés, awkward dialogue, nonsense – these are all things that learners of any language encounter on a daily basis. One reason textbooks lack authenticity is that they only show us how to name and describe things, whereas in real life, we almost never
Russian Quick Fix: Impersonal Sentences
Acquiring a new language is a long journey, especially if your mother tongue is significantly different from your target language. Russian is fairly hard for English speakers as well as for speakers of other non-Slavic languages. Yet, there are some tricks that may help you to improve your Russian almost instantly. Well, maybe “instantly” is
Acquiring a new language is a long journey, especially if your mother tongue is significantly different from your target language. Russian is fairly hard for English speakers as well as for speakers of other non-Slavic languages. Yet, there are some tricks that may help you to improve your Russian almost instantly. Well, maybe “instantly” is
Word Order In Russian
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
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
Parts Of Speech
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
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
I Like It, I Need It
When an English-speaking person wants to report his or her likes and dislikes, (s)he normally says, “I like it”. The sentence is pretty simple: “I” is a subject, “like” is a predicate and “it” is an object. The same goes with “I need it”. We now have a person who intentionally and responsibly reports his
When an English-speaking person wants to report his or her likes and dislikes, (s)he normally says, “I like it”. The sentence is pretty simple: “I” is a subject, “like” is a predicate and “it” is an object. The same goes with “I need it”. We now have a person who intentionally and responsibly reports his