Archives for: "July 2010"
Окрошка
Sometimes Russians seem insane, particularly in their desire to drink hot tea and eat hot soup for lunch in the middle of summer. But they have one soup that is cold that they also like, and it is called окрошка. We don't have any special name for it in… more »
Мастер
On Saturday I was sitting just outside the men's section of the place where I get my hair cut here in Kazan, when a guy walked up and asked «Сколько там мастеров?» A second-year student of Russian would probably have translated the sentence "How many… more »
Пломбир
Although the generic word for ice cream in Russian is мороженое, you also need to know the word пломбир. Ordinary мороженое per Russian standards contains 2.5 - 4% milk fat, which in the States we used to call "ice milk" instead of "ice cream," although… more »
Майонез
The most essential sauce of western cookery is doubtless mayonnaise, which in Russian is майонез. It is a perfectly regular noun, so it's declension causes no difficulty. Although the Russians' love of alcohol is legendary, and their love of sour cream… more »
Диалог № 1
In our first years of learning Russian we spend a lot of time learning conjugation and declension, trying to figure out how to weave sentences together with subjects and direct objects and prepositional phrases. It's an amazing grammatical dance that… more »