How do Russians deal with the last names and first names of foreigners? The general rule makes sense: the name declines if it ends in a sound that is typical for a male/female name and if it matches the gender typical of such names.

Not too surprisingly, if the foreigner is male, and if his first name and last name end in a consonant typical of a Russian masculine first declension noun, then the first and last names decline just like masculine first declension nouns. For example, Brad Pitt's name declines like this in Russian:

Likewise if a female foreigner's names end in a letter typical of a second declension noun, the names decline like second declension nouns. Thus Christina Aguilera's name declines like this in Russian:

If either of a man's names ends in a sound that is not typical for a masculine first or second declension Russian noun, then that name is not declined. The other name may still decline. Here's how the names of Antonio Banderas and Gérard Depardieu work:

If either of a woman's names ends in a sound not typical for a second declension noun, then that name does not decline. The other name may still decline. As example we see Paulina Rubio and Jane Fonda:

If a foreign name ends in a sound atypical for Russian male and female names, then usually the name doesn't decline at all, e.g. the names Вупи Голдберг, Мелани Гриффит, Пинк, and Антонио Сабато never change their endings.

A few general examples:

(Can you believe that Julio Iglesias, the idol of menopausal women everywhere, even has an official website in Russia? Click here to immerse yourself in the degradation.)

The generalizations we just discussed take care of most foreign names in Russian. There are lots of other possibilities, but they are too many to enumerate in a short blog entry. Suffice it to say that every once in a while names surprise you.

Quirky exceptions:

• Heaven knows why, but—in terms of official written Russian stylistics—Polish last names in -ski are usually transliterated into Russian not as -ский but as -ски, and they do not decline, thus «фильмы Романа Полански» “the films of Roman Polanski.” If you are writing a formal report in Russian or giving a formal presentation, that's how you have to treat them. But those rules don't hold up later in the day. Even overeducated native speakers of Russian with a fetish for film will say фильмы Романа Поланского when socializing after their big presentation.
• Likewise, although first and last names in -а are generally declined, officially speaking last names that end in -иа are not declined in überformal contexts, thus you'll hear «книги Джона Гарсиа» “the books of John Garcia” if someone is making a formal presentation, although afterwards, when their students are fawning over them at the parties after the conference, the same speaker will say книги Джона Гарсии.

One last thought: the Russians themselves are not always sure how to handle foreign last names and whether to decline them or not, or even how to spell them. When I looked at the Russian Wikipedia entry today for author John David Garcia, I saw that in the title of the page they spelled his name Гарсиа (standard transliteration of the name), but in the body of the article they tended to write Гарсия.

Today let's think about the verb отвечать/ответить. Notice that it's imperfective form is a first conjugation verb, and its perfective form is a second conjugation verb:

The first meaning of the verb is “to answer, respond”:

If you answer a person, the person appears in the dative case:

If you answer a question, then вопрос is the object of the preposition на in the accusative case:

If you combine both the person to whom you are responding and the question, then you have two options. The person can appear in the dative case outside of the на phrase, or you can turn the person into a possessor of the question inside the на phrase:

Every once in a while it's simply a great joy to know an incredibly obscure piece of Russian vocabulary. The wife of one professor of Russian I know prides herself on knowing the Russian phrase for werewolf. (There are quite a few shape-shifters in Russian folklore.) So imagine my geekoid linguistic pleasure when the other day I ran across the phrase that means the circle of bricks or rocks that lie on the ground encircling the trunk of a tree. Such a circle is called приствольный круг. Heck, I don't even know what that is called in English.

I wish I could say that the phrase was connected with some exotic folk tale where Баба Яга the boney-legged witch captured a streamful of русалки mermaids and forced them to dance around a tree until they turned into stone, but in fact it is much more straight-forward than that. The root ствол means the trunk of a tree or bush. The prefix при- means nearby. Круг simply means circle. Thus пристволный круг means “a circle near a trunk.”

When talking about emotional life, there are differences in how Russians and Americans express emotions. Upon arrival into the US, it was striking just how often people used the phrase “I love you”, even in a casual phone conversation. I thought, "Wow, people here are capable of experiencing such intense emotional lives; we say it seldom in our country, so, we lag emotionally behind".
After living a while in the US though, it became obvious that saying this phrase so often does not imply wider (or deeper) range of emotions that people actually experience. I was told by native English speakers that they use "I love you" phrase as a part of cultural traditional politeness rituals rather then in a sense describing their trully experienced emotions. Well, that makes sense.

In Russia, on the contrary, we don't talk much about deep emotions; when we feel them, we let it come forward through actions rather than through words (показать любовь на делах, а не на словах). I think in our culture there is an unspoken consensus about the power of silence (or silent action), sort of like “Silence (or actions) speaks louder than words”.

That seems to capture the national sentiment about pouring into words our deep emotions.
So, in the light of said above (в свете вышесказанного), one can sum it up like this: if you fall in love in the US, say "I love you" to your beloved, the more often the better! However, if you fall in love with a Russian, that would not be so necessary. Instead, be ready to act in a loving fashion and to demonstrate your love not with words but with deeds! Like, get her the moon from the sky if she asks for it, instead of just saying "Я люблю тебя"!!

Каша means any type of boiled grain. No ethnic group eats more boiled grain than the Russians. And we're not talkin’ just plain old cream of wheat. We're talkin’ oatmeal, buckwheat, rice, barley... you name it.

Probably the most popular version is манная каша cream of wheat, which is also called манка. In the States we like to think that grain products are healthy for us, but манка is usually boiled up in sugar water, sweet as can be, and then served in a bowl... and then you slice off, oh, say, a quarter kilo of butter and set it on top of the steaming cream of wheat. It then melts into a magnificent golden puddle that covers the манка. It's gloriously delicious. My carotid clogs at the very thought.

Овсяная каша is oatmeal; it is also called овсянка. Гречневая каша is porridge made from buckwheat (not related to wheat); it is also called гречка. Everyone who serves in the Russian army eats copious quantities of гречка, and once they are out of the service, they never want to see the stuff again.

Каша is not always sweet, and it's not just for breakfast. Any of the каши can be boiled up with meat or other main dish ingredients, thrown into a casserole dish with mushrooms, and then baked in the oven for supper, like the рисовая каша с овощами, rice kasha with vegetables, pictured to the left (recipe | mirror). Каша is also used as stuffing in пирожки.