With a bit of practice the beginning Russian student begins to recognize when a Russian word may have been borrowed from another language. For instance, кв- often corresponds to qu- in English; thus кварц means quartz. Or English th- sometimes corresponds to Russian т-; thus thesis becomes тезис. So when a student spots the word геркулес, he may recognize that г- corresponds to h- and immediately assume that it refers to Hercules, the Greek god. Imagine his shock, then, upon learning that the most common usage of the word is for oatmeal, the breakfast cereal. That's right: геркулес means limp, sticky oat flakes:

Геркулес was originally a Soviet brand name for oatmeal, though nowadays it is used of oatmeal generically. Why would oatmeal be connected with the image of the Greek who was famed for his strength? There is a cultural reason, actually:

In the US we generally prepare oatmeal in boiling water with a bit of salt added. Once it is in the bowl in front of us, we often add a bit of milk or sugar or a handful or raisins. In Russia the oats are often boiled up in water or milk with a simply astonishing quantity of sugar mixed in. And then comes the best part... the Russians then slice off an enormous chunk of butter and drop it on top of the oatmeal. The residual heat melts the better into a glorious golden pool that stretches across the entire bowl, and every single spoonful delivers the marvelous buttery taste. You can literally feel your carotid artery clogging with every heavenly spoonful.

(BTW, the idea that butter clogs your arteries is of course a complete falsehood propagated by the CIA to rob us of the joy in our lives. All educated people know that butter lubricates the veins and arteries and makes the blood flow more smoothly...)

Finally we should mention that although you will find the Greek hero's name occasionally spelled Геркулес in Russian (from the Latin version), but you also find Геракл (from the Greek version). Since Hercules is one of the most commonly depicted Greek personages, below you will see one of the most famous Hercules statues in Russia. It is on the grounds of the Summer Palace, which was built mostly by the empresses Elizabeth the first and Catherine the second. The palace is located a short distance from St. Petersburg in a town called Pushkin, formerly Царское село. The statue is a copy of the famous Farnese Hercules. Wow. Those Russian empresses liked their men beefy. I guess Hercules must have eaten a lot of геркулес...

Let's say a young Russian student is composing an essay and decides to write “I want to earn a billion dollars” in Russian. He knows the word for million is миллион, so he figures a billion must be биллион, but, being an enterprising student, he quickly double-checks his Russian dictionary. He is pleased to note that the word is exactly as he expected, so he writes «Я хочу заработать биллион долларов.» Alas, he has made an error. Even though you can find the word биллион in Russian dictionaries, people rarely use it. Instead they say миллиард:

If you are translating from English to Russian, you must be quite careful if the source document has the word billion in it. In the US the word billion always means 1,000,000,000. That's not necessarily true in other English-speaking countries. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in England the word meant 1,000,000,000,000. (In the States we call that a trillion). The US system is known as the “short scale” system of naming numbers, and the old British version is known as the “long scale.” In 1974 the UK officially switched from long scale to short scale, but there are still people in Britain who use the word the other way. That means that a good translator will take the time to determine the nationality of the author and the country in which the source was published before he finalizes his translation, and even then it's a good idea to see if the source document has some internal confirmation of which meaning is intended.

Recently we discussed the noun tan; now, I would like to continue on the topic and discuss the usage of the verb "to tan".

In Russian the imperfective and perfective forms are the following: загорать and загореть.

Personally, I always try to be careful with tanning. I can only remember a few times in my life that I've gotten badly sunburned. However, as we say in Russian, it was редко, да метко, "rarely but to the point". Every single time it happened, it was a handful. One summer, I remember, I was reading outside; the sun wasn't even out - it was cloudy! Nevertheless, I got burned so badly, I couldn't sleep the following night! What can I say? Just my luck!

American business can't exist without charts. We make pie-charts and bar charts as if presenting data in charts somehow makes the data true. (The most amusing idea is that an idea is somehow scientific because it is presented in a chart.) That, of course, is complete foolishness. You can lie on a chart as easily as you can in person or in a letter or by text message. Nonetheless, when ethical people produce them, charts are valuable visual aids to processing data. Thus you should know that the Russian word for chart is график.

For instance, you can have the graph of the function y=x³-9x (which is expressed in programmer's fashion as y=x**3-9*x):

A bar chart in Russian is called a столбиковая диаграмма or a столбчатая диаграмма:

A pie chart is called a круговая диаграмма or a секторная диаграмма:

Nowadays one of my favorite sites is graphjam.com, which comments on popular culture by putting things in chart form. For instance:

Enjoy!

With approaching summer and rising temperatures, all the thick layers of warm clothing will soon be coming off. Along with them, the naked truth will come out: what these few cold sunless months have done to your skin. That is what some lucky people worry about, the ones who are actually able to tan. I, personally, cannot do so. I gave up a long time ago and made peace with my sad white existence. I live in Arizona, where the sun shines most of the year, so you might think my skin would cooperate… You’d be wrong.

In Russian tan is called загар. It is a noun of male gender. Its diminutive form is загарчик. However, загарчик is usually used as a joke, to describe bad or even unfortunate tan cases.

The adjective formed from загар is загoрелый.

Unfortunately, sometimes we want that perfect tan so much that we forget what a few extra minutes in the sun can do to our skin. However, if you have overdone it, I know the best way to treat it! Brace yourself: it’s sour cream! All of my American friends make fun of my folksy methods; but the truth is that it really works! Just apply fresh sour cream on your sunburned skin and leave it for a few minutes. Not only does it feel refreshing and calms down the burning sensation but it also helps the burns subside faster. The trick is to apply it as soon as possible. Ever since I can remember, my family has used sour cream to treat the sunburns. So, I hope you all will be careful and won’t get sunburned. However, if it happens, you should try this method. Trust me, you won’t regret it!