Proper Russian

Russian Grammar In Brief

2013-05-13T16:25:00.000-04:00

I used to say that grammar is not that important for acquiring a new language. This is true. Knowing linguistic slang doesn't help you to become fluent in any language including your native one. Practice does. However, as I learned from my teaching experience, for some students it is quite useful to understand the basic logic that lies behind the over-complicated Russian grammar rules. This is why I decided to make a brief observation on how the Russian grammar describes or, better to say, categorizes the world.

Words mean something more or less material. There is something in the real world, and we have a word for it - this is how any language works. Besides, words have grammatical meaning - the meaning that is needed to build an intelligible sentence, to show the relations between words in a sentence. In English, you have a word order to do this job, and endings are not that much needed (Love is all you need. vs. Need is all you love). In Russian, the regular meaning (semantic) is normally placed in a word root, while grammatical meaning is concentrated in its ending. In short: roots (and, sometimes, affixes) are for saying what you want to say, and ending are for connecting words together.

Русский (Russian) - the root Русс- is for Russ-, suffix -к- is for adjective, and ending -ий is for masculine, singular, nominative

Grammar divides everything into the two big categories - things (nouns) and actions (verbs). Verbs stand for actions. Verbs show who acts (I myself, you or someone else, a grammatical category of person), does he/she/it acts alone or in a company (number), where in time the action takes place - past, present or future. Take a Russian verb, find its ending - and you'll see what person, number and tense a verb is. For example: бегут (are running) - the ending is -ут, which is a regular ending for 3-rd person, plural (they), present tense. In the Past tense, Russian verbs have gender, but don't have person. For example: бежaла (was running) - the ending -ла is for Past, feminine for all the three persons. Я бежала (I was running), ты бежала (you were running), она бежала (she was running).

The verb ending -ут is for present, third person, plural (they)

Nouns which stand for things can be singular or plural, which is quite understandable: you either have one flower or many, one stripe of bacon or many, one hand or... Hmm.. Well, a few centuries ago, there was the third grammatical number in Russian - the dual number, but it vanished completely (good news, you have fewer endings to memorize). Also nouns could be masculine, feminine or neuter. Grammatical gender is not equal to sex, so there's no logic behind defining revolution (революция) as feminine, and pollution (загрязнение) as neuter. The third grammatical attribute that each noun has is a case. What is a case? A case shows how one thing relates to other things in a sentence. For example, if a nous is a subject, i.e. something or someone who acts, you should put a noun into the Nominative case. If a noun is a direct object, out it into Accusative. Same in English: She (nominative) see me(accusative). So, each noun has a gender, number and a case.

Things may have some features or attributes. Adjectives are what you have to use if you want to make your language more colorful and descriptive. I've heard a term “modifiers”, but I don't like it. Adjectives do not modify nouns, they describe nouns. Adjectives in Russian are not quite independent, they 'belong' to a noun. Thus they inherit grammar attributes from a noun, its gender, number and case. The rule is very simple: put the corresponding adjective into the same gender, number and case with its noun.

You can perform an action in this or that fashion. For describing how exactly you perform an action, Russian has adverbs. Adverbs is my favorite part of speech, because it has no grammar categories except of degree of congruence. You run fast (быстро), and you can run faster (быстрее).

Of course, knowing that Russian nouns have six cases won't help you to learn Russian, but, probably, my article will help you to accept the reality of Russian grammar.

Why Grammar Doesn't Matter

2013-03-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I chatted with my Russian friend who lives in the United States and teaches English as a second language. She told me about her student who insisted on practising grammar, but couldn’t build the simplest sentence when it came to real conversation.
- She asked me to practice in complex object, but couldn’t ask me if my daughter was sleeping while we talked.
- Hmm, could you please remind me what is complex object? - I replied, feeling slightly embarrassed with my ignorance.
- It is like “I saw her standing there” or “I expect taxes to increase next year”.
I sighed with relief. Of course I knew it. I use it every day. I learned it from practice. This is why its name was new to me, but the structure itself wasn’t.

It brings me to the question of what do we really learn when we study a new language. Knowing a language means being able to speak grammatically correctly. However, the key word here is “to speak”. It is quite possible to learn a grammar rule not even realizing that it is a grammar rule. The opposite situation is also possible and not rare. One of the first English grammar rules I learned in school was adding -(e)s to verbs in the third person, singular. I know this rule very well, but I can easily forget to add the right ending to a verb. So, knowing grammar rules and speaking correctly are two different skills.

The Russian grammar is overcomplicated, as a matter of fact. Does it mean that Russian is hard to learn? Well, not harder than any other language. Don't let the Russian grammar scare and discourage you. Everything is a question of practice. If you practice in speaking language, you'll improve your speaking skill. If you practice in doing grammar exercises, you'll improve your performance in doing grammar exercises, that's it.

I would not suggest anyone to ignore grammar rules completely. It is indeed helpful to understand how grammar works. It is necessary to a mature brain to see some logics (patterns) behinds things. But if you commit a few hours a day to your language practice, you’d rather read, listen, write and speak than learn grammar. It will bring you to the desired results much faster.

Photo by Sancho McCann

Competition vs cooperation

2013-02-08T12:57:00.000-05:00

Perestroika, formerly closed Soviet society has recently become more open and friendly. So friendly that Americans were allowed to invite the best English students in my school to take the TOEFL. The reward for the very best student was one year of study in one of the leading American schools. In the early 1990's, you wouldn't find a Russian teenager who wasn't dreaming about America, so all the students, including myself, tried our best to win.

Our test instructor, a nice looking young girl with a snow-white smile, explained the process, and the test began. After an hour she had to stop the testing because to her surprise, we were helping each other with the test. She couldn't understand why a student would help another to pass the test when clearly only one winner would be selected out of 20 students.

“Guys, what are you doing? I don't get it, why? Only the winner will go to America, not everyone here. Don't you understand this?”, she cried.

Of course, we did. We knew it was a competition. However, there was something more to it than that. She was an American teacher, and we were Russian students. We wanted to impress her with our English. We knew that she would judge all the students in Russia based on her experience with us, so we wanted to do our best on this test. If there was a fight, it was not between us (we were quite realistic about our abilities and understood each other's knowledge of English).

This story came to my mind when my friend, who is also Russian, told me about her experience when taking a professional test in Canada. The test was administered over the course of three days, during which students stayed on campus. And those three days were something that my friend said were, "the worst hell”. She said that other students were extremely non-collaborative. “When someone asked me for help, I tried to be helpful. I didn't mind answering their questions or letting them borrow my books. But they never answered my questions or even worse, they intentionally gave me inaccurate information. Why? We were not competing with each other, why did they treat me like that?”

In both cases the reaction of the strangers seemed overly emotional and irrationally strong, which is a true sign of culture clash. I think, the reason for the grave misunderstanding is that the Western culture is highly competitive and individualistic, while Russian culture is all about solving problems collectively. Personal success in the North America is the major value, which is openly declared in books and TV shows. This idea lies in the very core of the Western culture.

The question “Are you a team player” that is so popular among North-American HRs have no sense for Russians who are team players by culture. For centuries Russians have been valuing “we” over “I” and have ostracised individuals which are too focused on their own personal success. If this wasn't so, the idea of communism wouldn't have been so massively supported during the October revolution. It doesn't mean that Russians don't care about personal success or that every Russian is exceptionally supportive. I'm talking about a difference in perception. Sometimes we tend to cooperate where people from Western cultures see competition (I can't help but say 'we').

In order to give you the true sense of a collectivist's mindset, let me tell you about a story that was included in 1st grade textbooks for years. Once there was an old man who had three sons. He felt very ill and called for his sons. When they came, he told them to tear the broom apart. The brothers tried hard, but failed, because there were many twigs in the broom. Then the old man told them to loosen up the twigs and break them one by one. The brothers managed to complete the task very quickly. “When you are together, nobody and nothing can break you. When you are alone, you are easy prey”.

Photo by Barret Anspach

Three Keys To Successful Language Acquisition

2013-01-03T11:27:00.000-05:00

During the last few days of 2012, after all the necessary New Year preparations had been done, I reviewed some Russian grammar books written by both native and non-native speakers. I have no idea how people can actually start speaking Russian after reading a book that gives you 26 different verb conjugation paradigms and expects you to memorize which verb belongs to which paradigm with all the subsequent changes in verb stems and endings. No one is able to memorize all these endless conjugation tables. If I, being a native Russian speaker, ever thought about what paradigm I should use for each and every verb, I would be silent, may be the most silent speaker on Earth. Yet, many non-native speakers, including my dear students, speak Russian fluently. How did they manage to succeed? Three years of tutoring, as well as my own experience of learning English, allow me to define the three major factors that help to improve language acquisition. Here they are:

1. Speak, don't learn

Language is a mean of communication, not a target. Imagine that learning languages is like cooking. What if instead of just following a recipe you start reading tons of books about food chemistry, physics and the physiology of digestion? Would those books help you to become a better chef? Probably yes, but the one who practices cooking would succeed much sooner. Just try to use your new language from the very beginning – and you'll progress. Read, write, listen, and speak. And, when necessary, use your grammar books and vocabulary lists as a reference.

2. Find what is really interesting to you

Boredom kills. Our brains refuse to work when we try to focus on irrelevant topics, and we should respect that.

I took EILTS exam twice. The first time, during the speaking section, an examiner asked me to talk about ageism. Just the night before the exam, I had read an article in a magazine about this topic. The problem was new to me, I found it pretty controversial, so we had a nice discussion about whether there were any professional occupations where age is a disadvantage. I got 7.5 for speaking (with 9 as a native-like level). The next time, I had to talk about sports in elementary school. It would be hard to find a topic that was more irrelevant to me. I had no kids, I hated sports when I was in school, and, frankly, I couldn't care less about both sports activities and elementary school. I got 6.5. Oops.

I told you my story just to illustrate how important it is to find topics that are of actual interest to you. You have to be intellectually and emotionally involved in what you read (in your second language), you have to like the songs that you listen to, enjoy the movies you watch, etc. This is why I always choose what to talk about with my students very carefully. I find it stupid and humiliating to start with “simple” words and topics - “my day”, “my home” - with a student that holds a PhD in Anthropology and Political Science (unless he/she wants to). Don't be afraid of advanced vocabulary. If you are a scientists, why not to start with words and concepts that you are working on? Try to transfer your “content”, your personality, into a new language environment. Say what you usually say, but in a new language.

3. Build your own language environment

In order to acquire a language naturally, you have to surround yourself with the language. Find blogs, news sites, online forums and communities (in the language you are learning) that are so interesting to you that you'll to check them for updates frequently. Follow tweets from native speakers that share interesting information, like pages on Facebook that are relevant to your job and hobbies. We live in a world without borders.It's a matter of your personal curiosity to find the right information channels. And, hey, it's more fun learning a new language this way than memorizing abstract grammar rules.

Good luck and happy language learning in 2013!

Elephant Talk by Gina

Other articles on language acquisition:

If You Want To Speak A(ny) Language Don't Learn It

Happy New Year!

2012-12-31T11:48:00.000-05:00

Photo by Violette79

My dear friends,

I want to thank my readers for visiting and commenting this blog. I'm very thankful to my students - you were phenomenal and helped me to stay in a great intellectual shape!

In case you've missed it, here are the top 3 posts of all time:

Happy and prosperous New Year 2013!

Sincerely yours,
Eugenia

Snow Sculptures

2012-12-20T11:21:00.000-05:00

Photo by Rincewind42

Snow, more snow, even more snow! This is what you need if you want to build a snow village. In my hometown in Siberia, big trucks start bringing snow from suburbs to the city's main square starting from early December. As the permanent snow cover falls on in November, getting enough snow to build a little snow village is not a problem.

Snow can be as tough as stone, but first you have to tamp it down. Municipal workers put large wooden boxes in the place where the snow village is supposed to be and fill them up with snow. After some time, the snow in the boxes becomes more dense, and the workers continue to add more. Eventually, you get perfect snow cubes (parallelepipeds, being geometrically correct) of about three meter high. Now it's time for creative work. Snow artists take shovels, knifes and I don't know what else and make sculptures.

Every winter snow artists have a competition. The best snow sculpture is normally awarded a substantial prize, so artists try their best to make something beautiful, unusual and sophisticated. I saw a large number of witches (actually, a specific Russian witch named Baba Yaga), Moomins, huge snow cats, squirrels, mice, bears, wolves, steam trains and so on. However, there are the two New Year sculptures that are traditional: Ded Moroz (The Grandpa Frost) and his grand daughter Snegurochka (Snowgirl). Unlike Santa, Ded Moroz wears a long coat and long beard. Snegurochka also wears a long coat and a braid.

Beside sculptures, there are a few ice slides and little cottages in the snow village. An ice slide was my favourite winter entertainment when I was a kid. The last time I risked a slide was when I was 20. It was a New Year's party, and my friends came up with the idea to go to the ice slide. Well, I tore my nylon tights, but the delight of sliding down with a whoosh was worthy.

Normally, snow villages are decorated with lights. Winter is a dark season, so Christmas lights help the festive mood. Sometimes there is music, which makes it even better. Throughout winter, snow villages are favourite places to go.

Little by little, the temperature goes up, and snow starts melting. In order to avoid flooding, municipal services destroy snow villages and take the snow back to the suburbs. Usually it happens in mid March or even later, and by then snow sculptures become dirty and miserable.

Perhaps, snow villages are impractical and irrational. They eat up city budgets and take a lot of time and effort to build and maintain. But they bring magic to our lives, and municipal authorities know and respect that. Without these snow festivities, a New Year holiday would be just an ordinary day, dull and boring. This is why every year, no matter how hard living is, every Russian city erects its snow villages with a large Christmas tree and Ded Moroz and Snegurochka.

How Does It Feel When It Is That Cold

2012-12-14T09:34:00.000-05:00

Early in the morning today I called my parents in Siberia (we have 12 hours time difference, so it's not that hard to figure out what time it is there). I've been living in Ontario's southernmost city since September 2011, but I still remember what Siberian winters are like. And the talk with my mom just refreshed my memories.

It was negative 36C/33F in Barnaul today. Many cars refuse to start, public transportation is also unreliable. There is a good risk of getting stuck in a bus station while waiting for a bus, and the weather won't make the waiting comfortable. Smaller towns experience disruptions in food supplies, suburban buses has been cancelled. Electric trains, which are the most popular public transportation for many people who commute from suburbs to the city, also stopped running. But life goes on, and people stay warm in their homes. With the central heating system, Siberian houses are always well-heated, at about +25C.

Some people who have never lived in a cold place, think that cold is when it is snowing. Siberian people know that it is never cold when it is snowing. The real cold is when it is sunny, no wind, and the mercury plummets to the very bottom of the thermometer. Snow is good, snow means nice winter weather. Sunny frost is what is really dangerous.

When it is below minus 30C, it becomes harder to breathe – your nostrils stick together, because your breath is humid. Your eyelashes become icy, as well as your hat, and scarf. If you cover your face with a hand (which is in a mitten), your mitten will become icy too.

For pedestrians, a normal strategy is to walk quickly from one door to another, from one shop to another. Frost urges everyone to move faster, but running is a bad idea, because you will need to breathe in faster, so your nose won't have enough time to warm up the air, and you may hurt your throat. Talking while outside is also not a good idea – you may draw in more cold air with your mouth.

Paradoxically enough, when the temperature is that low, people rarely catch cold – the frost kills everything, including viruses and bacteria. The flu season starts later, when it becomes warmer.

Cold air makes synthetic clothes cling together, and plastic becomes stiff too. This is why Siberians value wool, fur and other natural materials so highly.

Cold weather is beautiful. The view of a frosty sunset is breathtaking. But taking a picture of it may be problematic, because your camera may refuse to work, and if you have a DSLR, its lenses may freeze and stop moving. Mobile devices are also no good in a weather like that. First, it is just impossible to use a touchscreen when your hands are in mittens. Second, mobile batteries lose their charge very quickly when it is about minus 30. I used to wear my mobile phone somewhere in an inner pocket, so it wouldn't freeze and would remain charged for a longer period of time.

I hope the wave of cold weather will be over soon in Siberia, and people there will enjoy their New Year parties. My parents like to take a walk to an ice sculpture town at night, on December 31. In Siberia, almost every city and town, no matter how big, boast of ice sculptures during the winter. I'll talk about them next time.

It was -35C when Paul Philippov took this photo of me

Perfective and Imperfective Aspects

2012-08-10T18:30:00.000-04:00

Once I heard a joke: you can say that you ate a pie in any language, but only in Russians you may let other people know whether you left anything for them. This joke express the idea of distinction between perfetive and imperfective aspects pretty accurately. If there's nothing left in the dish, you can assume that it was a perfect pie and it was eaten entirely. Here you have to use a perfective verb “съесть” [syest'], since the action was completed. However, this is not the only meaning of the perfective aspect, and the more you think about it, the more confusing it gets. Let's try to make a complex thing simple.

The first thing about the verbal aspects is: every verb in Russian has an aspect. It means that every verb is either imperfective or perfective. There's no verb in Russian that doesn't have an aspect. There's no verb in Russian that could be both perfective and impervective (well, actually, there are a few perfective verbs that are absolutely like their imperfective counterparts, but it is not important here).

The distinctive feature of all perfective verbs is that they represent an action as a whole, and this action exists in the limited space of time. The idea of the limit is quite abstract here. It could be the idea of getting something done (съесть - to eat something to the last crumb, прочитать - to read a book to the rear cover, вымыть – to clean or wash something entirely etc). It also could be the idea of stopping doing something without getting any noticeable result. You have stopped doing something, thus, you are not doing it anymore, therefore, use a perfective verb (Я поела суп– I have being eating a soup for some time and then stopped eating and started doing something else; я почитала книгу – I have being reading a book for some time, but I'm not done with the book, I have just switched to another activity; я помыла руки – I just state that I have washed my hands, but I can not give any guarantees that they are absolutely clean). Also, the idea of the limit may refer to the beggining, and there are a bunch of perfective verbs that represent the starting of doing something (Она запела – she started singing; они побежали – they started running; он приуныл – he became sad). In every example that I gave above, the action is represented as something whole that happened (or will happen) once, non-repeatedly.

Imperfective verbs, on the other hand, represent an action as something that happens regular or as a process. Russian imperfective aspect is a mix of English indefinite and continuous tenses. Thus, он пьёт пиво could mean that either he is drinking beer at this very moment (hey, leave me some!) or he normally doesn't refuse the idea of getting some beer in proper circumstances. The exact meaning should be clarified from the context.

Why do Russians (almost) never get confused when choosing a right aspect? For the same reason why native English speakers have (mostly) no difficulties with choosing between definite and indefinite articles. When you hear your native speech from the earliest childhood, you just use the grammar intuitively. Start to think about it, and you won't be able to say a word.

Does it mean that there's no way for non-native speakers to master the aspect usage? No, it doesn't. Like with any other grammar rule, practice will make you perfect. But before your brain gets enough statistics through listening, reading, writing and speaking in Russian that the right aspect just comes to the end of your tongue automatically, you have to perform some analysis for each verb you use in your text (or at least, when you feel unsure). Is an action you describe with a verb a process or is it something that happens on a regular basis? If yes, then use imperfective. Is it something that happened once (or will happen just once), it has its beginning and/or its end? If yes, then use perfective. It should work in most cases.

Photo by Krissy Venosdale

What Do You Call Your Loved Ones?

2012-06-02T17:12:00.001-04:00

Russian has many ways of expressing your affection for someone. One of the most common is adding a diminutive suffix to someone's name. This is the way that loving parents address their kids, or close friends (usually girls, because it sounds really girlish) or lovers address each other.

Mashenka (Машенька) – the affectionate form of Maria (Masha)
Olechka (Олечка) – the affectionate form of Olga (Olya)
Dimochka (Димочка) – the affectionate form of Dmitriy (Dima)

Once I knew a local rock band, where the male musicians addressed each other with the most cutesy names possible. They looked quite brutal all in black leather and steel, but they called each other “Volodienka”, “Maksimushka”, “Zhenechka” just for fun, because it sounded very comical.

Another way to let other person know about your warm feelings is to use specific affectionate words (or “tender words” as we call it in Russian) like solnyshko(солнышко, sunny), radost' moya (радость моя, my joy), lapochka or lapushka (лапочка, лапушка, sweety, honey). This is how lovers may refer to each other in private or with close friends. Addressing your loved one with these words publicly may be considered immodest and frivolous, since showing private feelings in public is not encouraged in the Russian culture.

Words like dear (дорогой) or sweatheart (милый) sound a little bit too formal. It would sound unnatural if I called my husband “my dear” when waking him up in the morning. However, those are the right words to use at public events.

Quite often close relatives and lovers use animal names to address each other like zaika (зайка, little hare), kiska (киска, kitty), rybka (рыбка, little fish) and so on. These names are also formed with the affectionate suffixes. Actually, any animal that seems cute enough may give a name for the affectionate nickname. I once read that some members of the Tsar's family called each other “seledka”(herring) and even started their letters with “My dear herring.”

Is herring cute? I don't think so. Yet it can become an affectionate nickname.
Photo by Jacob Bøtter

It is not uncommon for people to invent special nicknames (home names) for each other, and only the closest circle, or even just the two will know what those names are and where they came from. It gives a wonderful feeling of being even closer to someone, being someone special to them. My parents gave my sister and me nicknames, but they were used only within our family. When I was a teenager and my sister was about to get married, my parents warned me not to call her with her home name when her fiancé could hear. One of the reasons for this precaution was because her nickname sounded funny, and another reason was that home names were only for our immediate family, and not for strangers.

What words and names do you use to address to someone you love?

Am I Equal to Myself?

2012-05-07T13:12:00.000-04:00

When acquiring a new language you learn much more than just new words for familiar things. You acquire a new way of thinking about the world and a new way of seeing things. “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” Ludwig Wittgenstein said when discussing the idea of linguistic determinism. What are the exact ways the language determines our vision of the world is the topic of numerous researches. What I would like to discuss here is does a speaker represent himself or herself differently when speaking different languages?

Since my birth I was surrounded by Russian speakers and the Russian cultural environment. No doubt the Russian language has had the greatest impact on the way I see the world and communicate with it. I’ve been using the Russian language to represent myself to society since I started talking. With all the capacities available in Russian I expressed my likes and dislikes, I set up social distance when communicating and follow other people’s settings and so on by choosing the specific language means. Let’s call the individual language preferences in self-representation “linguistic identity”.

Now I have moved to Canada, and the only person who can speak Russian with me is my husband. Since I like meeting new people, I take every chance to socialize in the new place. Obviously, I have to use English and its means for building, developing and maintaining relations and for representing myself to others. I’ve found that my English identity is not quite equal to my Russian identity.

I can partly attribute the difference between my two identities to my limited vocabulary; however, I suspect, the problem lays much deeper. In English, for example, I am less judgmental than in Russian. In Russian, many words initially include the judgmental meanings, and you can’t help but judge about things. I think, I’m less discriminative in many aspects when speaking English. Sometimes I feel that I miss gender - and status- specific grammatical features in English that I broadly use in Russian. In fact, it’s another me, who speaks English.

Do you think we indeed develop another identity when learning a new language? Or do you think the impact of the language is overrated, and it makes no difference for your self-representation what language you speak as long as you do it fluently? Please share your opinion with me in your comments.

Here is a short thought-provoking video of Rob Bryanton who talks about the complicated relations between language and mind.

Same Letter For Five Different Sounds

2012-04-26T13:58:00.001-04:00

In an ideal world, each language has its alphabet absolutely similar to its sounds, i.e. an alphabet system where one sound would correspond directly and solely to one letter and vice versa. In reality, however, the alphabet is one thing, and phonetic system is another. Quite often, one letter may refer to many different sounds, depending on what position it takes in a word, and one sound may be represented by a bunch of letters.

In the Russian language, the most interesting case is the letter “Г” (like G in 'go'), which may represent five different sounds. Here they are:

1. [g] when it comes before the vowels а, о, у, э, i.e. letters that does not imply palatalization of the preceding consonant. Also when comes before voiced consonants. Examples: гол [gol] (goal in a football or hockey), гул [gool] (hum), гром [grom] (thunder).
2. [g'], soft g, when it comes before letters that imply palatalization of the preceding consonant, like и or е. Examples: ген [gen] (gene), гимн [gimn] (anthem).
3. [k] when the last letter in a word or when comes before unvoiced consonant. Example: рог [rok] (horn), ЗАГС [zaks] (registry office in Russia)
4. [v] in the endings of adjectives and pronouns in Genitive. Example: его [yivò] (him/his), злого [zlòva] (of smb. angry)
5. [ɦ] in some idioms/ interjections. Examples: Прости Господи [prasti ɦòspadi] (Lord have mercy, lit. Lord forgive me), ради Бога [radi bòɦa] (for God's sake).

While the first three sounds comes from the very nature of the Russian phonetic system (the regular opposition of hard and soft sounds and the rule of un-voicing the voiced consonants in the end of words), the latter two sounds are nothing else but tradition. The г ->в change is irregular and works only for adjectives and pronouns. In Russia's South and Ukraine, [ɦ] is common, so in the idioms, which mostly refer to the God, it's the influence of the Southern dialect, however, besides the idioms, Russians normally pronounce [g] in the words mentioned above.

The good news is that other Russian letters are more predictable and represent less sounds than Г. Happy language learning!

The Russian letter Г/G drawn by Ankita. All the things in the picture start with Г: Глаз (an eye), Галстук (a tie), Галоша (a rubber shoe), Гвоздь (a nail).

Spring and Flowers

2012-03-07T15:36:00.000-05:00

We, Russian women, are quite romantic. Most of us like being presented with flowers. And March 8th is the right day to give us a bunch of flowers, because it is the International Women's Day, which is an official holiday in Russia.

In Russia, it is still cold and snowy in March, however there is a special scent of Spring in the air, a scent of melting snow, that puts everyone in a romantic mood. This is why most women dream about flowers in March. Gently coloured flowers like tulips, narcissuses or snowdrops are the signs of changes for good – for better weather, for Summer leisure, for something new. The traditional flower of the March 8th is mimosa (acacia dealbata), however, any flowers would be appreciated.

Photo by Roger Ferrer Ibáñez

I studied at the department of philology, which is usually dominated by female students. We have only a few guys there. It was late afternoon, March 7th, and we were enduring a long and exceptionally boring lecture on first aid treatments. It is mandatory for all students to learn first aid at the university. Suddenly the doors opened, and one of our guys entered bringing a large basket of snowdrops with him. During the next 15 minutes he managed to give every girl in our department (roughly 60) a bunch of snowdrops, and, of course, the first flowers were for the lecturer. It was a very nice gesture by him. He turned the boring, endless lesson into the memorable event. Should I say that since then our hearts were attracted to the guy?

Photo by Tatiana Bulyonkova

There is one little thing that you should know if you are going to present flowers to a Russian woman. In Russia, you may present only odd amount of flowers. Even amount of flowers are for funerals. If you give a Russian lady two or four flowers, she may feel offended, because you compare her to a corpse. I don't know why it is so. Some women think this is just a stupid prejudice, but is it a good idea to learn by practise if your lady shares the prejudice? I don't think so.

I wish everyone very good spring weather, love and inspiration! And happy Women's Day to all ladies!

Rediscovering Pączki

2012-02-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

When the Soviet Union collapsed and small businesses started blossoming in post-Soviet Russia, a private bakery opened near my parents' house. Every day when coming back from school I could smell the scent of fresh bread, one of the most seductive scents in the world. I saved my pocket money to buy a delicacy called “ponchik” (пончик, a type of doughnut) there. Since then the word “ponchik” has become a synonym for ingenious joy and delight for me.

A few days ago, my husband spotted an advertisement in a local Canadian newspaper inviting everybody to join in a Pączki's Day. Many European (and particularly Eastern European) bakeries are celebrating Pączki's Day this Tuesday by offering a good choice of doughnuts, or pączki. It turned out that the word for this kind of doughnuts came to Russian from the Polish. The polish letter “ą” sounds like a nasal [on], so pączki is nothing other than my favourite ponchiki!

Russians don't celebrate Pączki Day (Fat Thursday), but we eat pancakes (блины, bliny) throughout the week, instead. This Sunday is Maslenitsa (масленица), when many people enjoy eating an unlimited amount of pancakes with various jams, sour cream, caviar and much more. There are many various recipes for bliny, but what makes Russian (and Ukrainian) bliny different is that they are normally bigger, thinner and made without yeast.

Bon appetite all, who have Pączki's Day or Maslenitsa this week!

Photo by Andrei Zmievski

Bliny
Ingredients:

Flour - 1 cup
Milk - 3 cups
Baking soda - 1/2 ts
Sunflower oil - 2 tbs
Eggs - 2
Salt and sugar to taste.

Mix eggs with 3 cups of milk. Add salt and flour and mix thoroughly. Pour vegetable oil into a saucer. Heat the pan. Grease it. Pour thin layer of batter evenly. Cook until light brown, about 2 minutes, flip on the other side with a thin knife and cook another 30 sec. Serve with butter, sour cream, caviar or jam. Enjoy.

Hard Worker

2012-02-17T10:18:00.000-05:00

Morphemes are the parts that form words. For example, in the word “disagreeable” there are three morphemes: the prefix dis-, the root -agree-, and the suffix -able. Each morpheme has its meaning and contributes it to the entire meaning of the word on the whole. In Russian, it works more or less the same way. However Russian also has a special morpheme, the ending (flexia), that adds the specific grammatical meaning to a word and links words together. These ever-changing endings cause many troubles to students, yet it is amazing what a beautiful system endings form and what a great job these small particles do.

An ending carries grammatical information about a word. If it is a noun, ending shows:

whether it is a single object or represents many similar objects (singular or plural);
2) if it is a subject of the sentence (Nominative case);
3) the relations the noun to other words, where it is not the main subject of the sentence.

Sometimes, a noun's ending indicates its gender, but you always should double check it with your dictionary.

For adjectives, ending links an adjective to a corresponding noun by putting an adjective into the same number, case and gender.

A verb's ending shows if the action described in the sentence takes place in the past or present/future, if a speaker is talking about himself/herself, you, or another person, and also if the action is real or the speaker just expresses his or her will or wish. All these things are shown with just two or three letters!

Endings link words together into one sentence, helping you to understand the relations between those words. Because endings bind words unambiguously, Russian has flexible (almost free) word order. In English, you have to put words in a proper order to form an intelligible sentence. In Russian, the word order is not that strict because endings allow you to understand how words are interconnected.

The ending is normally the last morpheme in a word, but it is the very heart of the Russian grammar system. Most morphemes carry only verbal meaning (like dis- for negation or -able for capability), while endings ensure narration and code grammatical information about words.

You might think “Well, that's nice. But how am I supposed to memorize all these endings and start speaking Russian?”. Well, my answer is, do just like all Russians do – use Russian in your everyday life. There's no way to learn the complicated (yet logical) system of Russian flexias other than just speaking.

Photo by Ruby Gold

Language Mutates

2012-01-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

The Russian language is changing. It is changing really fast. I don’t mean new (imported) words or new slangs -- these mostly harmless things come up regularly and disappear soon. I don’t mean the popular linguistic game with the alternative spelling called scums’ language (язык подонков). Russian language is changing deeply at the level of meanings. Let me explain.

Language is a very dialectical thing. Its development is the result of two opposing trends. They are, on one hand, acquiring and adapting ever-changing reality and, on the other hand, remaining unchanged. Both trends are equally strong and equally important. Because language is flexible and productive, we can invent not only new things, but also their names. We discover the world around us and rearrange our environment, we make simple ideas more and more complex. Yet language serves our needs with amazing efficiency. To be capable of describing reality adequately, language needs changes. However, if it could change limitlessly and freely, we wouldn’t understand each other. Language is a convention between people about words and rules. Why is a cat “a cat”? Only because all English speaking people agree to label this animal with that word. If one part of a society changes rules too frequently, it will no longer share the same conventions with the rest of society, so a Babylon-2 disaster will come about in short time. Keeping the balance between the two needs -- the need for changes and the need for immutability -- is what any (spoken) language manages very, very well.

Some changes are really useful, like, say, adapting new words from other languages (these days, mostly from English) along with new things, like “Internet”. But some changes really upset me. Let me give you an example from a very interesting article of my colleague Irina Levontina. There is a word “накануне” (na-ka-noon-eh) that means a night/day before some event. There is another word, “вчера” (fche-rah), that means yesterday. The first word has one remarkable nuance -- it should be used only when you mention some event. In the sentence “I hadn’t napped the night before the exam” it would be proper to say “накануне” (the night before the exam). What I hear on TV is that journalists use this word instead of “yesterday” without referring to any specific event. They probably think that it sounds more official, but, in fact, they are using this word incorrectly. “The thunderstorm that hit Moscow the night before can come again today” they say. The night before what? Why not just say “yesterday”? It seams that a lot of Russian speakers do not see the difference between the two words any more. It is a slight and subtle mutation, but there are a lot of them in modern Russian.

Why am I talking about all this stuff here? Because I’m trying to find a right answer to the question: when learning a foreign language, should a student learn a classic (stable) version of the language and be able to read books in this language or should (s)he try to speak on one language with the street? What language would you prefer to learn - the one of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or the one your Russian friend is speaking?

Photo by hnumus

New Year’s Resolutions Vs. Wishes

2012-01-01T18:55:00.002-05:00

Have you heard about New Year’s resolutions? If you are from North America, you certainly have. In case the tradition of annual resolutions is not so popular in your country, this is a commitment that a person makes to one or more personal goals. “Next year, I will learn another foreign language” is a good example of a New Year’s resolution (and one of the most popular ones). What makes resolutions different from everything else is that they should be something that you could strive for as a person.

In North America, you are supposed to try hard to achieve your goals, but Russians hardly make any resolutions at all. We wish each other good health, joy, peace and happiness, and a lot of things (normally, less abstract, like a pile of money, a new car, a new romance and so on) to ourselves. It doesn’t mean that a person who wishes for a new car has a plan on how to get it or is going to work hard to achieve this goal. This is a desire, and, in a big part, a hope for good luck.

The concept of luck is very important in the Russian culture. During the ages of economic instability and multiple social and political crises, many people in Russia have learnt that success is often not a result of hard work, but rather of good fortune. Why commit your time, energy, or mental capacities for anything that could be smashed in a moment by forces that are much, much stronger than you? Just to mention a few, poor weather can destroy your yields, corrupted authorities can acquire your business, and financial crisis can annihilate all your savings.

However, if you can not take control by rational means, you always have a bunch of irrational tools, like signs and superstitions of all kinds. I know many well-educated young men and women who read their horoscope regularly. Many online and printed media in Russia offer their suggestions on the way you should spend New Year’s Eve in order to attract Good Luck and scare away any misfortunes. Just this morning, my mom told me, half joking, that I made an awful mistake by choosing a chicken for New Year’s Eve dinner, because eating chicken during New Year’s Eve this year may attract bad luck.

Ancient Russian pagan beliefs, like fortune-telling and card-reading are popular too. The Twelve Days of Christmas (Святки, Svya:t-ki) that start in Russia on January 7th is the best time to probe for fortune and make specific magical rituals. At the age 13-15, my friends, teenage girls, and I tried to tell our fortune with the help of a wax candle and water. The shape of a wax drop in the water was a hint - what it reminds you of is what will happen to you next year. Looking deep into the reflections of two mirrors and watching for subtle shadows was also a popular fortune-telling technique. Of course, coffee grounds would meet success among us, but it was hard times in Russia, and the best you could get was instant coffee, which has no grounds.

Language is an obedient servant of the mind. There’s no direct translation for “New Year’s resolutions” in Russian. The closest is “новогодние обещания” (New Year’s promises), though “новогодние желания” (New Year’s wishes) is more common.

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions?

Photo by Chris Campbell

Magic Winter

2011-12-24T10:20:00.000-05:00

Do you like snow? If you drive, and your car spends nights in the open air, you probably don't. Indeed, who likes shovelling, cleaning front and rear windows and having no control over the car on an icy road? Yet winter is a beautiful and magical season.

In Russia, people mostly like snow, and drivers are not an exception. The first snow (in my hometown in Siberia, it normally happens in mid October) puts people in the festive spirit. In late autumn, the sky in northern countries is grey, and the sun is a rare guest. White snowflakes reflecting pale winter sunlight give a city the new, lighter look. Snow hides dirty and ugly things and decorates streets and houses.

Sometimes, when it is humid enough, there is “иней” (ee-ney, a hoar frost) in the trees: they are tiny ice crystals that glitter in the sunlight.

Photo by Tatiana Gerus

Icy pictures that suddenly appear in the windows are another natural winter decor. When the frost is relatively mild, about -5C/23F, snowflakes are large and fluffy. They look very beautiful at night, in the warm light of street lamps and neon signs. After a blizzard, when it gets really cold, a view of a bloody red frosty sun and even bluish snow cover catches your breath. Snow, like a sea, looks different in different weather, but it is always beautiful.

Photo by ezioman

Besides the aesthetics, there is a pragmatic reason to like snow. Poor road pavement in Russia is an everlasting problem everywhere, except perhaps Moscow. When the thick snow covers roads, they become more even, without pits. Driving in winter in Russia is easier than in summer; just do not press your brakes when a car slides.

People in Russia love winter also because it is a season of holidays. New Year is a time when magic comes to life. The common belief is that the way you spend a New Year Eve is the way you will live the upcoming year. For example, it's a bad omen to argue during the New Year's Eve – it means you will be arguing for the next 12 months. People enjoy the New Year's Eve as much as possible: they cook a lot of food, dress up nicely and try to attract good luck by doing “right” things. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chinese calendar became very popular in Russia, mostly among ladies, so many women check what colour of their party dress should be, what kind of food is “proper” and so on (I'm not sure if people in China believe all this stuff). There is also a belief that if you put some money in your pocket at midnight, you will have a sufficient amount of money during the year.

I wish you the Merry Christmas and the best of luck in 2012!

Photo by Евгений Антонов

If You Want To Speak A(ny) Language Don't Learn It

2011-12-07T15:44:00.001-05:00

From time to time I feel great temptation to share my own learning and teaching experience with other people. The way we learn something is critically important to the final outcome.

How do we learn languages? Normally, we memorize some basic words and phrases, then we learn some grammar rules and try to compose phrases using wrong words and making predictable mistakes since the interference from the native language is so strong. Why is it that after years of studies many still fail speaking fluently? Do they fail because they are stupid and lazy? Definitely not. At the very beginning of our lives we learnt our native languages perfectly well, so we are capable of learning languages. Probably, the way we acquire a new language is not the most efficient. Most likely, it is quite inefficient. We didn't learn the native language as a sum of vocabulary and grammar rules. We never thought about the grammar at all, and yet we succeeded.

How do kids acquire their first language? They use it from the very first minute. They hear voices of people around and react to them. Meanwhile their brains collect statistics of the word usage, grammar structures and pronunciation (neurologists believe every healthy human brain has a capability to collect and analyze the language statistics by nature). Then kids try to express their emotions, needs and wants with sounds mimicking the speech of other people and adjusting their grammar and word usage according to our reaction to their speech. So the more a kid speaks the better he gets at it. We have to learn from our own childhood experience how to acquire a language; after all, it was successful once.

Photo by Nina

Of course, it is impossible to recreate the circumstances of our early pre-language childhood, but what we can do is to change our learning strategy. Stop learning and start using seems to be a more efficient way to acquire a new language, and this is not so hard to do.

First of all, it is useful to remember that there is a difference between using a language passively (listening and reading) and actively (speaking and writing). When learning a new language, one should develop both active and passive language skills. It is relatively easy to improve reading and listening in our age of the Internet. Passive skills are all about consuming language. For developing listening skill, you can watch movies, listen to online radio broadcasting and the music you like, memorize lyrics with no efforts (this is, actually, how I learnt English). It is not a big deal to find a good book to read (please note that this should be the book you really want to read) and/or to subscribe to blogs on topics that are interesting to you.

Active language skills means that you produce some text (oral or written) and address it to your audience. Finding an audience that is ready to help a non-native speaker with corrections is not so easy, but again, there is the Internet with its powerful resources like Lang-8 or iTalki. I would also suggest a website www.forvo.com that is a social pronunciation dictionary. I use it each time when I hesitate how to pronounce this or that word.

So why not use the advantage of the Internet epoch? Why be so persistent in methods that rarely lead to success instead of trying a natural way of acquiring a language? If you want to learn dancing you go to the dancing studio, pick up a partner and dance, improving gradually. Buying a book “Waltz and Tango course” instead would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Language is a practical skill too, just like dancing, however, nobody has found learning a language from books absurd. Let us be like children, forget that learning is hard work (it is!) and enjoy discovering a new language, tinkering with it, exactly like we tinkered with our first language many years ago.

Lowercase This

2011-11-15T23:43:00.001-05:00

The first thing I learned about German language was that all nouns in German are written with a capital letter. This rule puzzled me a lot, but nobody could tell me why is that. Probably, old Germans respected objects more than actions and attributes for some reason. The difference in capitalization between English and Russian languages was not so obvious, so I noticed it relatively late, only when I started corresponding with native speakers via email a lot. Here are some examples when English requires a capital letter, but Russian doesn't.

1. I = я. I don't like any speculations about whether it is good or bad to put “I” in the first place and thus always capitalize this pronoun. That is not a question of linguistics, after all. I feel quite comfortable writing “I”, however, writing “я” with the capital letter in Russian would disturb me. I would feel like I'm trying to attract too much attention to myself.
Please note, that in Russian, when (officially) writing to a person who you don't know well enough, or who is (significantly) older than you, or who is at a higher position than you, write “you” from the capital letter – “Вы”.

2. Names of the months are written with a lower-case letter in Russian. “January”, but “январь”. I find it is more convenient to write months with a capital letter, but in Russian you have to use lower-case.

3. Names of days of the week are lowercase as well. "Sunday" is "воскресенье", even if it is a special Sunday.

4. In titles, only the first word is written with a capital letter. English/American Titles Look Too Dramatic To Russian Eye.

5. In names of organizations consisting of more than one word, only the first word is capitalized. For example: “Altai State University” in Russian is “Алтайский государственный университет”, “Ministry of Truth” is “Министерство правды”.

6. Nations and languages in Russian are also written in lowercase. “Russia” is “Россия”, but “Russian” is “русский”. “Europe” is “Европа”, but “European” is “европейский”. The logic is that a name is a name, it is unique, but the words derived from the name are not unique and they refer to many things. There is one and the only Russia, but a lot of things that are Russian, so Russian is not about a unique object. The same is true for possessive words: Sasha (Саша) is a name, it is unique, while Sasha's (сашин) refers to a bunch of objects, so it is lowercase.

At school, I was taught to write the word “motherland” with a capital letter (Родина). I don't know if the tradition to of capitalizing this word is still alive. Do you write “motherland” with a capital letter?

Photo by Thomas R. Stegelmann

Is The Bolshoi a Brand?

2011-10-30T11:40:00.000-04:00

The Bolshoi Theater under reconstruction. Photo by Andrew Griffith

The Bolshoi Theater reopened with a grand gala concert after a six years closure for renovation. Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on the reconstruction, but who counts pennies when the talk is about the main landmarks of the Russian capital and a symbol of Russian culture? Journalists argue if there was an improvement in terms of acoustics, stage light and so on. I am not going to concern myself with
these topics, since I don't have a professional or informed opinion. What really caught my eye was the word “brand” referring to the Bolshoi.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, 'the Bolshoi is one of our greatest national brands.' Some journalists considered the word that comes from marketing offensive for the Bolshoi, which is supposed to be the temple of culture. Others argued that the president is probably right and the Bolshoi is nowadays nothing but a brand, like Vodka, Matrioshka, Perestroika and other stereotypical things that are associated with Russia in the mass media.

A reader may wonder why the stylistically neutral word was such a big deal for journalists? Are they just criticizing the president?

Most likely, they are not. There are two reasons why even loyal Russians may dislike the word “brand” when speaking about the Bolshoi. The first reason is that the word “brand” came to the Russian language from English just recently and refers mostly to consumer goods. As examples, Nike is a brand, as well as Kleenex. Therefore, to the Russian ear, saying “Bolshoi is a brand” is like putting the theater in one row with popular footwear and toilet paper.

Another reason lies deeper. In Russian culture, merchants and traders were generally considered (and sometimes still are) as people who could not understand art. Being a merchant is somewhat seen as being absolutely opposite to the artists in the common mind in Russia. This is nothing but an unfair prejudice. Many successful merchants in Russia were among the greatest patrons of fine arts and supported artists generously. Anyway, making money is dirty work, while dancing and painting pictures is something spiritual, noble and lofty. The word “brand” obviously belongs to the world of money and profit and is an offense when referred to in the realms of art.

I'm not a native English speaker. I do not feel a deep background for each English word I know, so I can not be an unbiased judge here. What do you think, is Bolshoi a brand? Is it Ok to call a theater a “brand”?

Russian Dragon

2011-10-21T13:22:00.000-04:00

If folkloric tales hold even a fraction of truth, then dragons lived everywhere on Earth. Chinese dragons are known world-wide. 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 dragon called Zmey Gorynych (Змей Горыныч).

The first name "Zmey" means "a snake". There are two interpretations as to what the second name, Gorynych, means. From a formal point of view, the name is a patronym. Some linguists believe that Gorynysh is derived from "gora", which in Russian is "a mountain". Other linguists think that the name is derived from the verb 'to burn' (гореть). Both versions seem convincing, since Zmey Gorynych lived in mountains and caves and spat fire, burning everything in sight.

Zmey Gorynych is a male creature with three heads and wings. We don't know much about his wings, but somehow he flies. In some folklore stories (bylinas), when a hero cut one of Zmey's three heads off, another three immediately sprout in its place. Some dragons (probably Zmey Gorynych's distant relatives) had 5, 7, 9 or even 12 heads.

However, the main problem with Zmey Gorynych was not his fire-breathing ability. The dragon demanded for young virgins every year and committed mass destructions if his demand was not satisfied. Once, he kidnapped a niece of Kiev's king, which later proved to be a fatal mistake. A superhero ('bogatyr' in Russian, 'богатырь') named Dobrynya Nikitich promised the king to rescue his niece and, like any superhero, he was very persistent with his intentions. He killed Zmey Gorynych in a three-day, three-night uninterrupted battle and brought the girl safely back to Kiev.

There is a common belief that Zmey Gorynych was a personification of the steppe tribes that were terrifying Russia for centuries. What puzzles me is that in many bylinas, the steppe tribes are referred to as “pagan force”, so why would one tale use a mythical creature while another directly name the source of danger? Also, we should keep in mind that the idea of fighting a snake or a dragon is common for many European folklores, both Eastern and Western, could still be seen as a symbol, but of something more abstract, like evil itself.

A few weeks ago, I found a ceramic Gzel-style statuette of Zmey Gorynych on the Internet and couldn't resist buying it. The little dragon is now guarding my home from evil spirits.

Russian Accent

2011-08-27T10:26:00.000-04:00

Mr.John Well wrote an interesting observation of Russian pronunciation errors in English. This article is helpful to me, because I am eager to get rid of my Russian accent. However, this post could help English speakers who are learning Russian to figure out what proper Russian pronunciation is, because all Russian pronunciation mistakes in English are nothing but the interference of Russian. Here are my comments:

“Occasional slipups in the contrast between iː and ɪ”. In Russian, there are long and short vowels. Since the XIV century or so, Russians have stopped distinguishing short and long vowels, so the habit of pronouncing all vowels equally long is hard to quit, since it counts centuries of language practice.
“No distinction between the DRESS and TRAP vowels”. True. I can hear the difference only if I try to hear it. In Russian, both sounds are alike. Actually, Russian simply doesn't have sounds that could fit them completely.
“No distinction between the LOT and THOUGHT vowels”. In Russian, there's no sound ʊɔ. This sound is easy to pronounce, but I forget which word has which [ɔ]-like sound. Since my brain is sure that there's no difference between the two, it memorizes words as if they have [ɔː]. By the way, the American accent is easy to recognize by this ʊɔ-sound. When Russians are mocking Americans, they start pronouncing words with ʊɔ, like Vʊɔdka
“The GOAT vowel was pronounced by one of our guides (female, perhaps in her late 50s) as ɛu”. Again, in Russian, we do not have diphthongs like these, our vowel sounds are always one pure sound. My teachers taught me to pronounce this sound exactly like this.
“Excessive prevocalic vowel reduction, à la russe, e.g. kəmpaˈzɪʃn̩ composition instead of ˌkɒmpəˈzɪʃn̩.”. In fact, this is how non-native speakers should treat any prevocalic vowels in Russian. The rule of vowel reduction is the basic one.
“Voicing assimilation, also à la russe, e.g. ˈbɫɛɡ ˈbɔːks black box.” Another very important pronunciation rule: in Russian, always voice the final consonant if the next one is voiced. Unfortunately, I follow this rule automatically when speaking English.
“Failure to use compound stress in open compounds, e.g. parking lot with the main stress on lot.” This mistake reveal a deep conceptual difference between Russian and English. For English speaking people, it is OK to say “parking” instead of a parking lot, “contacts” instead of contact lenses and “rentals” instead of rental apartments. In Russian, the first words are adjectives. Sometimes we do use adjectives as nouns (i.e. столовая – dining – is initially an adjective), but not as often as in English. From the Russian point of view, “lot” is more important than parking, this is why lot is stressed.
“Failure to deaccent function words, e.g. There is not enough space for all of us instead of There’s not enough space for all of us.” It's an interference of the Russian intonation. In Russian, we would stress “us”. When speaking foreign language, you load your mental CPU with finding the right words instead of pronunciation, so the intonation that is natural comes first.
“ in our country repeatedly rather than in Russia” — Yes, we do love words “we”, “us”, “our”. This is how we feel, this is how we used to think about our life in this country. “We” is much bigger than I here.
“today in the afternoon”. In Russian, we first state the date (today) and then the time (afternoon).

I enjoyed these accurate and profound observations greatly. I highly recommend it to Russians who learn English and to all the people who learn Russian.

Russian Not-Questions

2011-08-24T11:26:00.000-04:00

Have you noticed that grammatically correct phrases are sometimes not quite natural for native speakers? I'm sure you have. Vice versa, real communication can sometimes generate grammatical nonsense, but this nonsense is more adequate to the situation that any other grammatically irreproachable phrase. Here is my favorite example from the real Russian communicative practice.

In Russian, we often ask questions with negative particles; however, the meaning of such questions is positive. These questions are actually not of the “don't you?” kind. They are something different. When your Russian friend asks you “Ты не видел мою книгу?”, you should not be confused with the mention of “не”(don't) here. In English, this question is just “Did you see my book (anywhere here)?” Another example: “У тебя есть эта книга?” and “У тебя нет этой книги?” are absolutely equal questions (Do you have the book?) despite the obvious grammatical fact that the first is positive and the latter is negative. “Не” here is closer translation of “by any chance” than to “not”.

So why “не” (not)? Here, the negative particle does not negate anything. Russians use it to make their questions a bit more polite; so as to be not so pushy. It's like saying “I'm sorry for disturbing you with my question” or “I'm asking you about this just because I suppose you could be helpful, but you are not obliged to help me, so please feel free to say no”, but way shorter. The negative particle in the questions like these leaves you room to refuse or deny something in a non-offensive way.

How to form not-questions? Just add “не” before the verb, or use “нет” instead of “есть” when asking about having or not having something.

When to use “не”? Well, it is not necessary. You may ask questions in direct way. But if you want to improve your speaking skills to the level of a native speaker, you may add “не” any time you feel unsure if your interlocutor can answer your question or when you want to show that you wouldn't mind a refusal in the response. Please note an intonation here. The pitch increases on verbs; same intonation as any other simple questions.

Photo by Colin Kinner

Imperfective Verbs of Motion

2011-08-03T21:54:00.002-04:00

Photo by Billy Liar

I want to be frank with you, Russian verbal aspects are very hard to master for non-native speakers. Even students whose Russian is fluent, confuse imperfective and perfective verbs. Normally, Russian grammar books explain the difference between the two aspects as continuous connotation vs completed action. This is a correct, but not a complete explanation.

Let's take a look at the English grammar. English verbs have continuous, indefinite, and perfect groups of tenses, which means that any action could be considered as something actually happening at this very moment, something that happens (normally and regularly) or something that has already happened and we all see the results. The very same range of meanings could be expressed in Russian, but via different means. The Russian perfective aspect is close to the English perfect tenses. Perfective verbs always describe something that has happened. The action has been completed, it has resulted in something. Perfective verbs contain latently or implicitly the idea of a limit — the end or the beginning of the action, its finish or its start.

Example: Она начала есть — She started eating. Начала (started) is perfective here, because the action of “starting” had being completed, there is a limit for this action.

In contrast, Imperfective verbs describe the actions that have no limits. Imperfective verbs describe either the action that is happening or the action that happens regularly. So the Imperfective aspect unites continuous tenses and indefinite tenses, and quite often the same verb could be used for expressing both continuous and regular action. However, sometimes, the Russian language has two different imperfective verbs — one for continuous and another for indefinite. This is true mostly for verbs of motion. For example, there are two verbs идти and ходить, which mean “to go”, but the first is for continuous action and the latter is for indefinite. The difference between ехать and ездить (to go by a vehicle) is the same.

Examples: Я иду на работу (I'm going to my office, I'm on my way to the office). Я хожу на работу каждый день (I go to work every day).
Я еду на автобусе. (I'm riding the bus). Я езжу на автобусе каждый день (I ride the bus every day).

Another difference between the verbs in these pairs is that the first verbs (иду, еду) have the only one direction — they are about moving toward something. But, хожу and eзжу are multi-directional, they mean that you visit some place and then return or go to some other place. If you think about it a bit longer, you'll see that English verbs of motions when put into the present/past continuous tense also describe the action of movement in one direction, otherwise, it would be something other than a continuous tense.

This article was intended as some encouragement for those who are learning Russian. As you may conclude from the post, there are no hard or easy languages. Most languages operate with identical meanings and ideas. It's only the means or methods by which these meanings are expressed that are different.

Dust

2011-07-28T01:24:00.000-04:00

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 I haven't warned you. When you come back home you'll see stripes of dirt in your favourite Levi's. I don't mean that Russians are dirty or that you don't have to wear white stuff when visiting Russia. Dust is a real problem here, and this is a by-product of the infrastructure — bad roads, lagging technology and, quite often, poor city management.

In Summer, if it is dry and hot, dust is everywhere — on roads and grass, on cars and buses, on benches and shop windows. When it rains, dust becomes mud. Why it is so dusty here? In Russia, it is partly there is a large gap between road and grass, and the soil becomes dust easily. I don't know why, but Russian cities lack good lawns. Even cultivated lawns have a lot of bare soil. The biggest surprise to me was to see thick grass or wheat fields right near roads in Europe, with no centimeter of deserted land. The next shocking experience was to see snow-white trucks with oily-black tires. In Russia, the normal color of trucks is … yes, dusty-grey.

In 2000-2008, Russia was experiencing a construction boom. Unfortunately, construction technologies in this country leave a lot to be desired, so construction sites are another major source of dust. In Toronto, Canada, I saw pouring trucks cleaning roads while workers were maintaining the pavement. One guy was demolishing the old pavement, and the special truck poured water in order to keep the area clean. I hope, one day this technology will be adapted in Russia too.

What amuses Russian tourists in Europe and North America is that people there often sit right on the ground. Even in white jeans. “It is so clean there, that people sit right on the ground, can you imagine that?” is one of the most common phrases Russian tourists say to their friends when coming back home. Please never try to sit on grass in Russia. First, people may think, you are a homeless and antisocial person. Second, you'll hopelessly dirty your pants. This is kind of an acquired instinct here to not sit on the ground. I live in a very clean town. We have large flowerbeds here, no garbage in bushes, and very rarely there are dog feces on the ground, but still my shoes get covered with dust after every walk.

Once my Russian habit of taking my shoes off when entering somebody's home surprised my European hosts. “Are you from Japan?” they asked me, smiling widely. Oh, this habit has nothing to do with etiquette or spiritual traditions. Russians put shoes off because we believe deeply in our hearts that home is clean and the outside is dirty. When I was to very clean, nearly sterile Germany, I still put my shoes off every time I entered my guest apartment, though I knew well that the outside there was as clean as the inside.

And yet, I love wearing white clothes in Summer. It is stylish, it reflects sun rays and keeps the skin cool. I just know that I need to wash it every time I wear it, which is not a big problem.