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This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.

The summer of our discontent – Moscow 2010

By Vlada 27 August 10

More info from a Russian tutor in London, or something that you may want to know but will not learn in your Russian course. Just what exactly happened in Moscow (and most of the European part of Russia) this summer?

I was going to write an article about Russian fairy tales in my next blog post but it has turned out this summer, yet again, that Russian reality is much more interesting than fairy tales! So I can’t help commenting on the hottest summer in Russia since records started 130 years ago…

August in Russia is a traditional time for disasters. I have no rational explanation for it, but it’s true. Abominable acts of terrorism, natural disasters, accidents on a large scale, coups d’etat – you name it, we’ve had it in August of other years. So what did this August bring us? Terrifying and devastating fires!

At the end of August Muscovites and lots of Russians living in the European part of the country breathed a huge sigh of relief. The incredible heat wave (38-40 degrees Celsius) lasting for two months has ceased. No more wet towels and sheets; smoke masks and fans.

I flew back to Moscow to see the extent of the fire damage, and to hear terrifying stories about the smog and heat. To my satisfaction, it was business as usual – I couldn’t see any signs of the ordeal Russians had been through (apart from the fact that everyone’s flats were still desperately hot – the latent heat takes weeks to dissipate).

All the same, there’s no doubt it was a full-blown ecological disaster. Here are just some of the facts.

• Without any warning from the Met office, unusual heat settled in Moscow and all the areas around it in the middle of June and lasted, without any breaks (although, mercifully, with a couple of thunderstorms) until the middle of August. Daytime temperatures reached +40 and sometimes +42 degrees Celsius.

• Forests around Moscow are rich in peat. Normally, peat should be covered with water forming a peat bog. But in some areas peat used to be mined, for fuel (instead of firewood) and for agriculture. To make peat mines, bogs were drained and later abandoned without being refilled with water. When the weather gets hot, the temperature inside a peat deposit becomes so high that peat ignites and starts burning, giving out suffocating smoke.

• Peat can burn in the ground, so there is no flame visible, and the smoke from it rises above the ground. It is very difficult to put out or control.

• Peat fires are not new to Moscow – they happen every year when the weather gets hot. This year they ran out of control because of the unusually long heat wave. In living memory, a very similar thing occurred in 1972, with smoke covering the whole city for days.

• When peat fires spread, they destroy hundreds of hectares of valuable forests, killing wildlife and people, devastating villages and crops. This is exactly what happened this year. Not only a lot of animals and birds perished, but some villages were burned to the ground leaving their inhabitants homeless. There are now campaigns in the media to help those who lost their homes and livelihoods. The government promises to build new houses for the fire victims as quickly as possible…

• The beginning of August was the worst. Thick smoke came into Moscow from the south (where there were most forest fires) turning it into a ghost city. It was impossible to see anything or to breathe properly outside. Combined with the 40 degree heat, it created a model of hell’s antechamber. People didn’t dare leave their homes, streets were empty. Ambulances were struggling to cope with the volume of calls from people with heart and breathing problems. Mortality in the city increased threefold. Morgues were full. The price of air conditioners and fans soared.

• Those who did venture out acquired a black sooty moustache under the nose after being outside for a while, and felt sick after inhaling too much carbon monoxide. The concentration of carbon monoxide in the air was 6 times higher than the acceptable level.

• An insignificant but curious fact: my family’s cat, a beautiful and treasured pet, fainted with heat stroke, to the horror of his owners, and had to be brought back to life with smelling salts and water. After that, he was sprinkled with water regularly and made to drink.

• People on the tube were seen fainting. The best places to be were big air-conditioned shopping centres and especially food shops where the staff sprinkled water around and washed everything to keep soot off the groceries.

• Some of my friends only went out at night (the fortunate ones who work as university lecturers, on a summer break with no need to go to work every day) – the best time to leave the house was at 3 am when the temperature was ‘only’ about 30 degrees.

• Everyone who could leave the city did so, going to visit relatives outside Moscow or on holiday if they were lucky enough to get a last minute holiday package.

• However, Russians are very stoical and resilient people who do not succumb to panic and fear easily (we’ve been through so much that a few puffs of smoke is not a big deal). Even on the worst days, Moscow functioned as normal: public transport ran as usual, people went to work, shops and restaurants were open and even the street vendors were out. You could get a take away if you ran out of food and were too scared to venture outside. It would be delivered with a bit of soot on top but still edible!

The question now widely discussed in the media is – why could it not be prevented or predicted? And was it the first disaster of this scale caused by global warming, or has it all happened before? The answer is – it could be prevented but wasn’t, through habitual Russian carelessness and lack of organisation. “A Russian man will not cross himself until thunder strikes”, says an old Russian proverb. We like to react to events when they have already happened, not before they are likely to happen. Why couldn’t the Met office warn us? Probably for the same reason!

And has it happened before? Yes, many times, but not as bad as this year in people’s living memory. I am just old enough to remember the summer of 1972 (very vaguely, I was a young kid), with smoke and fires all around Moscow. But here is an extract from a historical record from 1533, documented by the famous Russian historian Karamzin. “... from the 29th of June till September not a single drop of rain fell on the ground. Bogs and brooks dried up; forest fires were raging; the sun was dull and could not be seen long before the time of sunset. In broad daylight people could not even recognise each other’s faces and were suffocating from smoke. Travellers could not see their way; birds could not fly in the air…” Imagine the crop failure and the famine that must have come after that!! Sounds much more scary than the summer we’ve just had!

So if you are going to Moscow in August, check the latest news and the weather forecast. But remember, it will be business as usual as long as it is possible to breathe at all! Even your Russian course, were you to plan one, would not be cancelled…

Learning languages

By Vlada 26 July 10

What does it take to become a good linguist? More notes from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in your Russian lessons.

We’ve all heard of polyglots – people who can learn (and retain!) many languages. Apparently, a polyglot is someone who fluently speaks 8 or more languages. But do such people really exist? And what does it take to master a foreign language, just one, but completely different from your own? In 20 years of Russian and English teaching (and a lifetime of learning!), I’ve worked with a lot of talented linguists, and here are my observations. For a good linguist, it is important to have:

• A good memory. Being able to memorise, and more importantly, retain words and sounds. To become fluent in a language, you will need to learn at least a thousand words and their forms. Is it realistic for anyone? Yes, it is. People are not born with a good or bad memory. Memory can be trained to be good, and paradoxically, the more you learn the better your memory becomes! So people who have a lot of experience in learning and using foreign languages can usually memorise words quickly and in large quantities.

• A lot of patience and practice. To retain a word in your memory takes repetition and practice. That is why it is not realistic, in my experience, to speak many languages to a very high standard (unless you are a linguistic genius – but I’ve never seen one!) – you simply won’t have a chance to use them often enough, and when you don’t use them, they slip away.

• The ability to listen and imitate. Musicians are usually very good at languages because they can hear very well the sounds of the language and can imitate them. Studying phonetics and knowing how sounds should be formed will help, but having a good ear means having a good accent.

• Logical thinking. It’s important to understand how a language system works, especially in languages with complex grammar, like Russian. Just to decide which ending to use for a noun, one needs to recreate a whole logical sequence in one’s memory, recalling a word, and then choosing its correct form judging from the word’s gender, number, and case.

• Ability to “play it by the ear”, and try to develop a “feel” for a language. When you’ve used a language for a while, you can sometimes instinctively predict what a word should sound like. Not a hundred percent reliable, but a good linguist is not scared of making mistakes!

• Does age matter? It is true that the older you become, the more difficult it is to learn a new language, simply because your head is so full of other things! But with a bit of effort and persistence one can learn a language regardless of age. My oldest students are in their 70-s (and maybe even 80-s, I am not sure), and they cope perfectly well. And on the contrary some people in their teens and 20-s find it hard to concentrate and retain information. So it’s more about your learning skills and mental discipline than age. Also, in my experience older learners may take a longer time to learn not because their brain cannot hold the extra information, but because they are too busy, always thinking about lots of things at the same time: work, family, kids, houses, travel, – all sorts of worries come first.

• Motivation and interest in the culture and people of the language. A language cannot be learned in isolation from a culture it belongs to. With it always comes a whole set of values, history, literature, music, the way of life of the people who speak it, and who created it. It is usually the student’s interest in the whole culture, or a particular aspect of it (or person associated with it!), that is the driving force of the language learning.
My students of Russian sometimes ask: is it possible to speak many languages to the same high degree of proficiency? Theoretically, yes, but in 20 years of language teaching in two countries I have never seen anyone who could speak more than 3 different (not closely related, like Russian and Ukrainian) languages to native speaker standard. One can know 5 or 6, and use them from time to time, but they would make all sorts of mistakes that would an educated native speaker would not.

Another question that comes up in Russian lessons: is it possible to get rid of your foreign accent? In my experience, almost, but not quite, if you started learning a language as an adult. You have to study a bit of phonetics, be a good imitator and have a good musical ear to perfect your accent. How important is it? It’s up to each learner to judge. A slight foreign accent may add charm and character to your speech. After all, as my teachers used to say, most of us are not training to be a spy! On the other hand, if you are a professional linguist, a teacher or interpreter, a heavy accent will not contribute to your professional credibility. I have seen foreign students of Russian (speakers of Western European mother tongues) whose accents are so good that I would not be able to place them and it would take a few minutes of careful listening to realise that Russian is not their first language.

To cut a long story short, there are no bad linguists – there are lazy ones! As we say in Russian, “hard work and patience will grind anything”, even the solid rock of Russian grammar… So if you’ve never learned languages before, do not be put off – just do it!

History of the Russian Language

By Vlada 9 July 10

Where does the Russian language come from? More info from a Russian teacher on something that you might want to know but will not learn in a Russian lesson.

Russian comes from the same source as English. It’s an Indo-European language, with its origin in Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language. But that’s a very broad classification, covering the whole “family” of languages. Narrowing it down, Russian is classified as a Slavic language, belonging to the Eastern branch of Slavic languages, along with Ukrainian and Byelorussian. In the Middle Ages (from the 6th to the 10th century) the Slavs, who occupied a large territory of Eastern Europe, from the Balkans in the south to the very North, had a common language – Old Slavonic, or Church Slavonic. Although the actual spoken languages of Slavic tribes may have differed from each other, the written version could be understood by all the Slavs. Even today, the grammatical structure of different Slavic languages is very similar, and it originates in Old Slavonic. I remember the bitter complaints of my fellow students at University who had to study Old Slavonic, about it being fiendishly complicated and awful to learn! (I didn’t have to learn it, fortunately or maybe unfortunately… my main subject was English, so we had to learn Old English!) If you compare words and grammar of different Slavic languages, you will see that it was clearly one language at some point in history which then split into several branches.

In the 9th century, two Greek missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, had to translate and write down Biblical texts in Old Church Slavonic, to convert Slavs to Christianity. For this purpose, Cyril devised a new alphabet, now known as the Cyrillic alphabet, based on the Greek alphabet, with a few additional letters invented to represent specific Slavic sounds.

Old Russian was one of the Slavic dialects, spoken in Eastern Europe, today’s Russia, until the end of the 13th century. Around this time the Russian language started to separate from the other Eastern Slavic languages (Ukrainian and Byelorussian). At the same time, the prevailing written language was still the Old Church Slavonic, introduced and supported by the Orthodox Church (Russia was christianised in the 10th century, having been a pagan culture before that). With time, written and spoken languages separated, but Old Slavonic remained as the literary and official language until the 18th century. By that time, it was almost incomprehensible for most ordinary people!

In the early 18th century, the Czar Peter the Great (who was determined to westernise Russia) introduced and promoted a large number of foreign words from Western languages that were borrowed and incorporated into Russian. This resulted in the mixture of the archaic Old Slavonic with borrowed Western words and colloquial Russian, which started being used in writing. Peter also simplified the Cyrillic alphabet, getting rid of some unnecessary Greek letters.

The famous Russian poet and Scientist Mikhail Lomonosov who lived in the 18thcentury, wrote about 3 different styles of Russian which were in use during his time: the high one, for high poetry and religion, the middle one, for literature, poetry, prose and science, and the low one, for personal communication and low comedy. The Middle Style, which combined features of East Slavonic dialect and Church Slavonic, became the basis of the modern Russian language. In the middle of the 19th century, modern Russian, based on the Moscow dialect, was formed and became the official language of the Russian Empire.

The first person who started writing in the modern colloquial Russian was Alexander Pushkin, the most famous Russian poet, the Russian equivalent of Shakespeare. He is considered the “father” of modern Russian. Poets before him used a very artificial bombastic language that no one spoke in real life!

Russian was the official language of the Russian Empire (which used to include Poland and Finland!), and later the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 80-s the individual nation states have been reviving and bringing back their native languages. However, Russian remains the “lingua Franca” of the whole post-Soviet territory and Eastern Europe. In a recent census, 153 million people considered Russian to be their mother tongue and another 61 million said they spoke it fluently as a second language. The number of Russian speakers in the world is about 220 million.

So, we are looking forward to seeing you in our Russian lessons, so that you could join the club!

Learning Russian Vocabulary

By Vlada 25 June 10

How many of all those words that you are trying to learn in Russian lessons, are actually Russian? And how many of them do you have to learn? More notes from a Russian teacher on something that you might want to know.

The biggest dictionary of the Russian language (“The Contemporary Dictionary of the Russian Language” in 3 volumes) lists about 250 thousand words. The vocabulary of Pushkin (Russian equivalent of Shakespeare) is about 20 thousand words. An ordinary person needs a couple of thousand words to communicate successfully.

How does Russian everyday vocabulary compare with English? My personal observation is that in Russian there are more simple everyday words describing things and actions than in English. Thus, for example, what can be expressed in English with a simple verb “to clean”, in Russian would be rendered by different verbs, according to HOW you clean it (with water, or with a dry brush) and WHAT is being cleaned (cleaning a house is different from cleaning a car or cleaning your teeth etc). Some verbs are so narrow in meaning that they can only describe one particular action, for example, “umyvatsa” means to wash one’s face, and nothing else! Talking about having many words for one thing: students like to ask – are there many words in Russian for snow? Interestingly, no! There is only one, “sneg”. However, we do have several for a snow storm… On the other hand, it looks like in English there are more “sophisticated” difficult words, often borrowed from foreign languages. And that is why the most comprehensive English dictionary (The Oxford English Dictionary, 291 thousand words) lists more words than a Russian one.

Where do all those words come from? Russian (as well as English) belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, which originates from Sanskrit. So very simple basic words are often similar to other European languages: names of relatives, numerals, common animals, simple words like “water”, or “sun”. But that won’t be a great help for an English speaker: there aren’t many of those simple words, and the similarity is often very vague.

Following the language classification further, Russian is a Slavic language, so the main bulk of vocabulary is Slavic. For those who already speak a Slavic language, such as Polish, Czech or Bulgarian, learning Russian words is much easier than for a native speaker of a Western European language. That said, there are a lot of “false friends” in Russian for speakers of other Slavic languages. A classical (and a very amusing!) example is the word “uroda” which in Polish and Ukrainian means “beauty”, but in Russian – a complete opposite, “ugliness”! In Soviet times, among very few foreign magazines available, was a Polish glossy called “Uroda”, dedicated to fashion and beauty. What were Russian supposed to think it was about?! Or another good one: a “sklep” in Polish is a shop, and in Russian – a crypt. You can see how these words developed – “uroda” is something extraordinary (good or bad!), and “sklep” is a place of storage (foods or bodies!)

But the Slavic vocabulary in Russian was “diluted” by additions from other languages. With the Tartar invasion in the 13th century came Turkish words (they say all the worst swear words in Russian come from that period in history) And with the epoch of Peter the Great, who loved all things European, and especially German and Dutch, came a lot of German words. The Russian for “potato”, for example, is “kartofel” and a sandwich is “buterbrod”. As time went by, and we developed connections with other cultures, more and more non-Slavic words entered the Russian vocabulary. Catherine the Great, Peter’s granddaughter, loved everything French and decided that all her courtiers should speak French to her and to each other. And what a Russian monarch says, Russian people do! As a result, from that time until the communist revolution in 1917, Russian aristocracy and all well-educated people were bilingual in Russian and French, brought up by French governors and tutors. They would talk French to each other, and Russian to commoners and servants (quite handy – the servants could not overhear and then gossip!) As a result, a lot of French words became part of the Russian language – albeit often distorted in meaning. So a “planchette” is a military note pad, and a “plafond” is a round glass lampshade (possibly attached to the ceiling but not the ceiling!). A “portefeuille” is a briefcase, and “manto” is more like a cape than a coat. The coat is “paletot” – a very old French word which is not used any more.

In more recent times, with the advance of modern technology and the Internet, we have been borrowing more and more English words. Traditionally, English words in Russian are names of sports, some breeds of dogs, and more recently, all the computer terms and words related to the world of media and high technologies. Scholars complain that Russian is now littered and ruined by a host of completely unnecessary English words, that have a perfectly good Russian equivalents. But they sound “cooler” and more sophisticated, so journalists and politicians love to use them, and they get spread around. Should that be regulated and restricted? Perhaps, but a language is a living organism created by its native speakers, and not by learned scholars. Despite what the French Academy might think, you can’t regulate it. It will regulate itself!

So good luck in learning it all! Or maybe just a couple of hundred words to start with, and a couple of thousand to finish. It’s a nice sounding language though. You won’t regret it!

Learning Russian grammar

By Vlada 27 April 10

More info from a Russian teacher in London: a lesson ABOUT the Russian language as opposed to lessons OF Russian.

What should you know about learning Russian if you are considering taking a Russian course?

This is another article in my series of my blogs about the Russian language. This time, let’s talk about Russian grammar. What are the main features of Russian grammar that you need to be aware of, if you are about to start learning Russian?

I am afraid most English speakers who have never learned a Slavic language before underestimate the complexity of Russian grammar. The reason is that in a beginner Russian course grammar is usually presented in a simplified way while the course is centered around vocabulary, useful phrases and reading skills. This is a totally justified approach because for a beginner it is more important to get to grips with the alphabet and basic vocabulary than to tackle grammatical complexities. Also, at a beginner level in Russian some grammar aspects are actually easier than in Western European languages! For example:

• The verb “to be” is not used in the present tense, which makes a learner’s life much easier. So if you want to say “This is a table”, all you have to say is “This table” – as simple as that. Or, “I am a student” equals to “I student”. All you have to do is FORGET about “am”, “is”, and “are”, rather than learning those forms. How good is that?!

• There are no articles “a” and “the”, so again, all you have to do is forget about them. Unlike Western European languages, Slavic ones do not have articles. The whole concept is completely alien to us, and Russians who are learning English always struggle with using “a” and “the” correctly. If you listen carefully to a native Russian speaker talking English (especially someone whose English is not very advanced!) you will notice that some articles are missing, and some will probably be used incorrectly and inconsistently.

• There are very few irregular verbs. The overwhelming majority of verbs conjugate in a regular way, sometimes with small variations. For comparison, while learning English as a foreign language, you have to learn about 120 irregular verbs (3 forms) by heart!

Russian belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, the same as all Western European languages, so all the grammar concepts are familiar and easy to understand. In fact, its grammatical composition is very similar to Latin. So for those students who are familiar with Latin grammar, Russian grammar will be nothing new.

The complexity of Russian grammar lies in the fact that grammatical forms are incorporated in the word itself, unlike in English where a lot of auxiliary words are used and grammar forms consist of several words rather than one. So as a result, the minute you reach an intermediate level, you will have to learn a lot of endings for different parts of speech and operate little logical sequences in your mind, of the type: this is a noun, it’s masculine, it’s singular, it must be the genitive case, so the ending is – “A”! It means that you’ll be doing a lot of memorizing and a lot of practice. It’s a great exercise for your brain and memory! After a while, once you’ve said the same thing a hundred times, it becomes automatic, and you don’t have to strain your brain any more. As the saying goes: “Repetitio mater studiorum”.

Here are the key features of Russian grammar:

• Gender, which is very important for Russian grammar. There are 3 genders – masculine, feminine and neuter. Masculine and neuter words have the same endings in most cases, and feminine ones have different endings.

• Case: there are 6 cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Instrumental and Prepositional (Locative). Each case has certain meanings attributed to it, which are quite logical and correspond to the Latin case system (for example, Genitive is the same as possessive, and Accusative is for direct object etc). Changing the word ending for case is called declension. In Russian, practically all parts of speech decline: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and even numerals. They all have their own endings in different cases. The only part of speech that does not change is the adverb.

• There are 3 types of declension for nouns, depending on their gender and the type of ending in the nominative.

• Adjectives do not have their own gender or type of declension. They follow those of the noun they “belong to”.

• Verb categories include the 3 tenses – present, past and future, and 2 aspects – perfective and imperfective. In the present tense, verbs conjugate (that is, change their endings according to the person of the subject – I, you, he, etc), and you will have to learn 6 personal endings in the present tense. There are 2 types of conjugation but they are very similar. Most verbs are regular, which is good news! The past tense is really simple: there is no conjugation. Instead, there is a very simple set of endings for masculine, feminine, neuter and plural. In the past and the future, there is a choice of 2 aspects: imperfective for regular or long actions, and perfective for short and completed ones. The future tense is the most complicated one: there are 2 kinds of future, depending on whether you need to use an imperfective or perfective verb.

• All this may sound complicated, but it’s logical and generally the verb system is easier than in English! The only down side is that every time you learn a new verb you will have to learn “two for the price of one” – the imperfective and perfective infinitive forms.

• Conditional mood is very simple. It is basically the same as the past tense, with the addition of one little word that stays the same. And there is no subjunctive!

• The most grammatically complex part of speech is the participle. Participles have every conceivable grammatical category: they can be perfective or imperfective, past or present, passive or active, and they have genders and cases and decline like adjectives. A complete language student’s nightmare! The good news though is that they are a feature of written and formal style, so we don’t use them much in colloquial speech.

• Another interesting feature of Russian grammar is that the word order is flexible, and you can put words in a sentence wherever you want, without being incorrect. You can say “I know him” or “I him know” or even “Know I him” or “Him I know” and all these phrases will be grammatically correct. The former two are completely interchangeable, and the latter two are emphatic, with the word in the 1st position in the sentence being the most important. So in Russian it’s more about using the correct case and ending, than sticking to the fixed word order!

Russian grammar has of course been changing through the centuries. Just like all modern languages (and English especially!) it has a tendency to become simpler. For example, we used to have 7 cases and somewhere along the way we have lost one – the Vocative case, which other Slavic languages still have.

Is Russian grammar difficult to master? As a teacher who has been running Russian courses for many years, I can assure you that while Russian grammar is highly “synthetic” (all based on endings and word changes), it is also logical and can, no doubt, be learned and used very successfully by anyone who is willing to dedicate some time and effort to it. As you can see from the description above, it has its moments, but it also has some simple features. The complicated system of cases for nouns, adjectives and pronouns is balanced out by a relatively simple system of verb tenses and the absence of subjunctive.

Let me also assure you that it’s worth it. You will be rewarded when you have mastered the complexities of Russian grammar and can appreciate the beauty of the language. Russian is not a verb-based language, so not a language of action, like English. Russian is great for poetry, songs and literature and less good for business correspondence. That is why all Russians love poetry: it is romantic, musical, often sad but soothing. It’s a language of contemplation and description, which perhaps reflects the Russian national character. But that’s quite another story and a topic for another article.

So, good luck with your Russian lessons, and happy learning! And remember that even if you don’t get it 100% right, people will still understand you and will appreciate your effort!

Russian alphabet and spelling

By Vlada 20 April 10

More info from a Russian teacher in London: a lesson ABOUT the Russian language as opposed to lessons OF Russian.

What should you know about learning Russian if you are considering doing a Russian course?

This is another article in my series of my blogs about the Russian language. This time, let’s talk about the Russian alphabet and spelling.

Most English speakers who have never learned Russian before are daunted by the prospect of having to learn the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. I can see why: it looks exotic and completely different, so just the look of it can put you off! But is it difficult to learn for someone doing a beginner Russian course? The answer is a definite No! Let me assure you that of all things that you will have to learn in your Russian course the alphabet will be one of the easiest and the most fun things to learn. Here are some facts about our alphabet, for those who are interested in learning Russian:

• The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. Two of them are silent and serve to modify the sound of the letter before (the soft sign) or after (the hard sign).

• It is called Cyrillic because it was invented (or, rather, compiled from other existing alphabets) and popularized, by St Cyril, and to a lesser degree, by his brother St Methodius. Cyril and Methodius were highly educated Greek monks from Thessaloniki who became Christian missionaries in Eastern Europe in the 9th century AD. The initial purpose of the new alphabet was to translate the Biblical texts into Slavic languages.

• The Cyrillic alphabet is a mixture of several alphabets: some letters are the same as in Greek, some are the same as in Latin, there are even a couple taken from Hebrew, plus a few “original” ones, that might have been “recycled” from an older alphabet. So if you are familiar with the Greek alphabet (even with the symbols from your school lessons of physics!), it means you know half of the Russian alphabet already!

• There are 10 letters representing vowel sounds. The rest of the letters are consonants, and two letters are silent.

• The handwritten version of the alphabet looks different from the printed one at first sight, but if you take a closer look you will see that most letters are exactly the same as the printed ones, they are just “curvier”, so that you can join them up in handwriting. However, about 6 of them do look different.

• The question that my students often ask is – do I have to learn the joined up writing? Strictly speaking, no. At this day and age, we type more than we write by hand. And when we do, we often do not stick to the classical version of handwriting, mixing the styles. So printed letters will do, everyone will be able to read them perfectly well. However, this kind of writing will not look very sophisticated!

• Russian spelling is based on the phonetic principle (one letter represents one sound), which makes it reasonably easy. It is in fact a compromise between a phonetic approach and the rules of word-formation and grammar. It has, of course, a number of exceptions and arguable points (it wouldn’t be a living language if it didn’t!)

• There have been several reforms of Russian spelling and the alphabet. The current spelling is the result of the major reform of 1918, which was carried out by the Bolsheviks after the October revolution of 1917, but was in fact prepared by scholars long before the revolution. Four letters were deemed to be unnecessary and were abolished. To be fair, those letters did make spelling and reading more difficult. So if you take a book published before 1918, the text will look even more exotic than modern Russian writing! All the books printed after 1918 follow the “new” spelling rules, so all old books had to be edited carefully to bring them up to date. What a gigantic task it must have been, in the absence of computers! It is said that Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (a huge book that has about 1500 pages) became 80 pages shorter because of the 1918 spelling reform!

• Russian punctuation follows strict rules (there is no such thing as the author’s choice of punctuation!) and is similar to French and German punctuation.

• Russian word stress is unpredictable but we do not use the stress marks while writing. However, you will see accents marked in all materials and textbooks for foreign students of Russian, just to make reading easier.

• There is one letter, E with two dots over it, which may cause difficulties in reading for foreign learners of Russian. The thing is that E without the dots represents a different sound from the one with the dots but in modern spelling the dots are not marked! The exception is made for books for children and foreign students. This is a tendency that has developed in the last 15 years, and I think the reason for omitting the dots over E is fast computer typing: this letter is in the far corner of the keyboard, and most people save time by not using it! So as a speaker of Russian you are supposed to know which words contain which kind of E. I can see that this is frustrating for anyone learning Russian, but if it’s any consolation, Russians struggle with it too: since the use of the dots became optional even in documents, people have been complaining that their surnames have been mispronounced!

• The Cyrillic alphabet is used to write in about 50 different languages, mainly in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Such languages as Belarusian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrghyz, Mongolian, Serbian use Cyrillic. Most of them use a version of the alphabet which is slightly different from Russian, with additional letters from Greek or Latin alphabets, and variations of standard Cyrillic letters.

• And finally, as a teacher who has been running Russian courses for many years, I can tell you that an average learner takes 2-3 lessons to master the Russian alphabet, and a couple of months of practice to be completely confident with reading and writing. That’s if you do a standard extensive course with one lesson a week, where only a part of the lesson is dedicated to practicing the alphabet.

So, good luck with your Russian lessons, and happy reading!

Learning about the Russian language: Facts and Figures

By Vlada 23 March 10

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or a lesson ABOUT the Russian language as opposed to lessons OF Russian.

What are the main points about the Russian language – the language that we at Just Russian are striving to learn or teach? How many people speak it? Where does it come from? What should you expect if you have decided to learn Russian or if you’re just considering taking Russian lessons?

You will find the answers to these and many other questions in my new series of blog articles about the Russian language.
Let’s start with some key facts and figures:

• Russian is the most widespread language of Eurasia, and the most widely spoken Slavic language. In Europe, more people speak Russian as a mother tongue than any other language.
• Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages (which means that it is related to all Western European languages) and is one of three modern East Slavic languages, together with Ukrainian and Belorussian.
• Russian is spoken by about 165 million people as a mother tongue and by about 114 million as a second language.
• Russian is the 6th most widely spoken language in the world.
• It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
• It is spoken in most of the ex-Soviet states, such as Byelorus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and the Baltic states, either as a native or a second language.
• In some areas of Ukraine and Belarus, 2 languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas this resulted in a language mixture called Surzhyk in Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus.
• In the Soviet times (1920s – 1991), each of the republics of the Soviet Union had its own official language, but the unifying role and superior status was given to Russian. Since the break-up of the USSR in 1991, the newly independent states have been encouraging and developing their native languages. However, the role of Russian as the post-Soviet language of international communication has continued.
• In Soviet times, Russian was mandatory for school children in the ex-USSR states and Soviet allies: Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, Mongolia, Cuba. However, younger generations are not learning it any more, giving preference to English (with Mongolia being an exception).
• Russian is spoken in large Russian-speaking immigrant communities in Israel (about 750,000 people), the USA (about 700,000 people) and Canada.
• Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation but it is not the only language spoken in the country. In some regions it shares official status with other languages belonging to ethnic autonomies within Russia, such as Bashkir, Tatar, Yakut.
• Written examples of Old East Slavonic, the predecessor of Russian, come from the 10th century.

... and a few facts about the history and the structure of the language:

• The Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet has 33 letters and is phonetic in principle, which makes it relatively easy to learn. It is called Cyrillic after St Cyril, a 9th century Greek monk who, together with his brother Methodius, devised this alphabet (or, rather, a much older version of it!), incorporating elements of Greek and Latin into it, as well as introducing a few new letters.
• Russian grammar is close to Latin in structure, and is based on a system of noun cases (6) and verbal conjugations, which makes it relatively difficult to master.
• The core of Russian vocabulary is Slavic, so native speakers of other Slavic languages will find it easy to learn, while native speakers of other languages would have to memorize large quantities of completely new words. There are, however, quite a lot of words borrowed from French, German and English in the last couple of centuries.
• Russian punctuation rules are similar to French and German ones.
• The modern Russian literary language traditionally dates from the time of Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), the most famous Russian poet and writer. Pushkin hugely influenced Russian literature by introducing a simpler style of writing based on the colloquial Russian of the time, as distinct from his predecessors who used very old-fashioned “literary” grammar and vocabulary.

To be continued.

Russian holidays and celebrations Part 3

By Vlada 16 January 10

More country info from a Russian tutor, or something you might find interesting but may not learn in a Russian course

In previous blog posts, I described the Russian public holidays of the first half of the year. In summer, we don’t really have any public holidays, apart from one, not a very well established one, the so-called “Day of Russia”.

The Day of Russian Independence (The Day of Russia) – the 12th of June

This is one of the “youngest” public holidays in the country. The Day of Russia, or the Day of Russian Independence, as it was first called, was established in 1994 by Boris Eltsin, the first Russian (and not Soviet!) president. Before that, Russia was one of the Soviet republics and not an independent state, but after perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union all the Soviet republics, one by one, became independent countries. So the 12th of June celebrates this significant moment in history for Russia.

Because this is a new holiday, there is no tradition of celebrating it. So most people just enjoy a day off in summer, without attaching any significance to it.

The 1st of September – “The day of Learning”

The 1st of September is traditionally the first day of the school year, for children and all students. It is not a public holiday but a high profile day in the life of the country which has a strong tradition of education. Kids come back to school (usually reluctantly!) after a three month long summer holiday, carrying bunches of flowers for their teachers. There are festive speeches and presentations, usually in the school yard in the open air, and not much learning is done. It’s a day of introduction to school life, of settling admin questions and meeting new teachers and classmates.

For college and university students it’s the beginning of the new academic year which is divided into two semesters and ends in June. For young people, this day symbolises the end of summer (everyone’s favourite season), and return to “normal life” after a long summer break. For their parents it’s the start of numerous worries related to the kids’ education. On the whole, it’s a cheerful occasion, which, paradoxically, is not looked forward to by anyone!

The day of National Reconciliation: the 4th of November

This, again, is a new holiday, the meaning of which is obscure to most people. I suspect that the real purpose of this public holiday is to fill the gap that appeared when the 7th of November (the Day of the October Socialist Revolution) was scrapped after perestroika. It used to be a huge public holiday, with a big military parade in Red Square (with the famous missiles and tanks intended to scare the rest of the world), an occasion consisting of 2 days off. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the complete change of state ideology, the communist revolution celebration was abolished. But no one wanted to lose a public holiday, so a new one had to be invented around the same time. It must have been quite tricky, because the holiday that finally replaced Revolution Day celebrates something that happened a long time ago and most people who didn’t pay much attention in history lessons do not know much about it.

According to the church calendar, the 4th of November is the day of the Kazan (a city in Russia) icon of the Virgin and it used to be a public holiday in Russia from 1649 until the communist revolution. So strictly speaking, it’s not a new holiday, but a well forgotten old one! On this day in 1612 the People’s Militia led by two civilians – a commoner Minin and a prince Pozharsky ¬ liberated Moscow from the Polish occupants who had to seized the city and put their own Tzar on the throne. The people’s militia in those days was the manifestation of the nation’s unity in the face of danger, of everyone making an effort for the country regardless of their social status, religion or age. So the new holiday, established in 2005, was called “The Day of National Unity”.

Having mentioned all these public holidays, I should mention that the most important celebration for Russians is not a public one! The most important celebration of the year, with the biggest gifts and parties, is one’s birthday. Russians get rather surprised and often disappointed when they discover birthdays are not as important in the UK. So if you deal with Russians on a personal or business level (especially a personal one), try to find out the important date and treat it as a special occasion.

Russian holidays and celebrations Part 2

By Vlada 30 November 09

More country info from a Russian tutor, or something you might find interesting but may not learn in a Russian course

In the previous blog post, I described Russian public holidays of the first half of the year. After the New Year celebration marathon, the next long holiday “spree” is in May – from May Day to Victory Day. But before that, one little cheeky informal celebration creeps in:

April’s Fools Day – the 1st of April

This is not an official public holiday and not a day off but Russians love it. It’s a chance to be foolish and tell silly lies trying to shock and surprise people. The motto of the day is “Pervoye Aprelya – Nikomu Ne Ver’!” (It’s the 1st of April, don’t believe anyone!”) Practical jokes are played and ingenious lies are told among friends, colleagues and families. In newspapers and on the telly there are fictitious stories about all sorts of things, with pictures and video footage: hairy fish are caught in the Moskva river (I saw that particular news item myself, with quite convincing footage of a furry carp being caught), Big Ben in London will be rebuilt from scratch because it’s falling down, there is a dog in a remote village that can talk, etc. Sometimes the jokes are so plausible that it’s impossible to tell them apart from the other news items, so the next day the papers admit which stories were the April Fools. On the 1st of April people tell each other that they are changing jobs, getting divorced, moving out of the country – you name it! You are supposed to be on alert all day and stop the pranksters with the phrase “Pervoye Aprelya – Nikomu Ne Ver’!” I used to do it a lot in my jollier and younger days, and foreign friends proved to be especially gullible: one seriously believed that I was going to give up teaching to become a dog trainer in a circus…

So if you happen to be in Russia on the 1st of April and someone tells you that your house is on fire or your boss has fired you (or, even better, or maybe worse, has fallen in love with you) you know what to say!

May Day – the 1st of May

The 1st of May is a traditional Soviet holiday, still very much loved. Originally, it was called “The International Day of Worker Solidarity” in Soviet times and celebrated the workers’ liberation from the capitalist regime. Because of the bulky name, it is best known as simply the 1st of May.

The 1st of May was first celebrated on the territory of the Russian empire as early as 1890 in Warsaw, and in 1891 the celebration came to the capital – St Petersburg. Obviously, before the revolution of 1917 it was celebrated secretly, in the Bolshevik “underground”, persecuted by the authorities.

During the Soviet period it was a big celebration with a traditional parade in Red Square, televised for the whole country: not the famous November military parade, but the “workers’” one, with people from different state enterprises with a lot of flags and huge fake flowers walking past the Lenin Mausoleum where the leaders of the country stood and greeted them. I took part in one or two with my father when I was a kid and of course loved it! I was given an enormous bunch of some red paper flowers unknown to botanists, which was much taller than me, and I had fun running around with it, singing and shouting “Hurray” all the way across Red Square. I would assume now that the grown ups around me who were doing the same were all drunk, but I couldn’t tell at the time. And then in the evening there were (and still are) huge fireworks all over the cities fired high up into the sky by the famous military “Katyusha” machines, multiple barrel rocket launchers. I must say, when I first saw the Guy Fawkes Day fireworks in the UK, I was surprised with how small and tame they were in comparison to Russian ones!

At present, the official name of this holiday is “The holiday of Spring and Labour”, and people get 2 days off work, using them mostly to do some gardening (it’s that time of the year!). So most city dwellers who have dachas go there for a long weekend to clear up the post-winter mess and plant some crops and flowers for the new season. The streets of Moscow are usually quite empty on those days because everyone has gone to the country.

Whatever it is called, this day is associated with Spring and the awakening of Nature from the winter gloom (after all, in most of Russia proper spring doesn’t start until May), and that’s why people love it: it’s the grand opening of the season of picnics, dachas, and outdoor living.

Victory Day – the 9th of May

This public holiday is very close to the previous one, May Day, so predictably lots of people take a couple of days off in between and have a whole spring holiday season, going to the country – whether to have fun or plant potatoes. The 9th of May is associated with spring, good weather and beautiful flowers: daffodils, tulips, lilacs and lily of the valley which people bring from their dachas.

Victory Day is dedicated to the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945 and the end of the Great Patriotic War – the part of the Second World War that took place on Soviet territory and directly involved the Soviet Union. It was the bloodiest war in Russian history (rich in wars and revolutions!) that claimed the lives of over 20 million Soviet people. On this day in 1945 two ordinary Red army soldiers, a Russian and a Georgian, put up a red flag on top of the Reichstag in Berlin, symbolising the end of Hitler and his empire. Every Russian family, including my own, has a member or a relative who was killed in that war, so this celebration has always been a slightly sad one. However, as time goes by and generations change, there are fewer and fewer people who remember the war, so it’s now a less emotional occasion than it used to be.

As ever, there used to be a parade in Red Square – this time a military one, but without any heavy missiles to scare the world, just different regiments of the Army marching along, with music, slogans and the ever present members of the government on the Mausoleum. This tradition continues up to the present day, with the recent big celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory in 2005 when lots of world leaders came to Red Square to take part.

The festive atmosphere is brought into the evening with huge fireworks, just like on the 1st of May.

My personal recollection of Victory day (Soviet style) is great weather, people sporting summer outfits and enjoying it after the long winter, and some old pensioner veteran always sitting on a bench near the block of flats playing the accordion, a very Russian instrument, badly but enthusiastically, war movies on the telly all day and concerts of the Red Army choir at night. It is still reassuringly the same, apart from the war veterans being seen around because there are fewer and fewer of them left…

To be continued.

Russian holidays and celebrations Part 1

By Vlada 28 October 09

More country info from a Russian tutor, or something you might find interesting but won’t learn in a Russian course.

In Russian lessons, students often ask me about traditional Russian holidays and celebrations. So here are a few facts:

Russians like a good celebration – any excuse to have one is welcome! If you look at a traditional Russian calendar you will see that almost every day is dedicated to someone or something: there is a day for medical workers, a day for teachers, scientists, computer programmers – every profession and sphere of activity is celebrated. On top of that, there are religious Orthodox holidays and days commemorating various historical events – so plenty of reasons for celebration! Not all these days are public holidays of course. If they were, people would not have any time to work! But generally there are more days off in a Russian working person’s year than in most other countries. And we like our days off to be a cause for celebration, not just “bank holidays”. We even have holiday “spree” times when the whole country comes to a standstill. The biggest one is the New Year celebration; it’s the first holiday of the year, so it will be the first one on my list.

The New Year, Christmas and the “Old New Year”

This is the longest holiday “spree” of the year. Most people start celebrating on the 25th of December (the Western Christmas, a working day in Russia, but a good pretext to start a holiday season), and carry on till the so-called “Old New Year” on the 13th of January. From the 31st of December till the 10th of January most businesses and state institutions are closed, children are on school holidays, and if you need to get something done in Russia, this is not the time to go.

The New Year (and not Christmas) is the biggest celebration of the year. The New Year (Novy God) is traditionally a home celebration, when families and close friends stay at home, eat, drink, exchange gifts and watch a lot of television. The traditional food includes Russian salad (called “salat Olivier” in Russian), as well as several other salads, pies, a meat course with vegetables and a lot of sweets and desserts. In all kitchens across the country people frantically chop salads and watch one particular movie, a new year romantic comedy which has been shown every New Year Eve for the last 30 years. (It’s a very good film called “Ironiya Sud’by, ili S Legkim Parom!” It used to be really funny until everyone learned it by heart… and now it’s become a tradition to show it.) A couple of minutes before midnight the president appears on TV with a short speech, in which he outlines what happened in the country in the last year and wishes all Russians a happy new one. The Kremlin clock (the Russian equivalent of Big Ben) strikes 12, at which point glasses should be filled with champagne and people make their secret wishes for the New Year while the clock is chiming… The New Year begins with a glass of champagne and the most entertaining TV night of the year. All TV channels go out of their way to prepare the best New Year programme, inviting all the most popular pop stars, comedians and presenters, who sing, dance and joke all night.

Some people, mostly young ones, go out for the night to restaurants and clubs, or walk outside and launch fireworks. Fireworks are a relatively new trend which makes the noise unbearable and sleeping impossible. In Moscow, lots of people gather in Red Square to see the New Year in.

On the 1st of January, most of the adult population of the country wakes up very late with a hangover. Streets are empty, everything is closed. Some slight signs of life return on the 2nd, with most shops opening and more people waking up.

The period from the 1st till the 10th of January is the official New Year time off. It’s marked, apart from the traditional Christmas/New Year decorations, by the presence of Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz), the Russian Santa Claus, and his assistant the Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) in the streets and at numerous children’s New Year performances. Grandfather Frost is a tall old man with a huge white beard, dressed in a satin coat trimmed with fur, with a magic walking stick that can turn anyone into a block of ice. His assistant (PA!) Snegurochka is his granddaughter, a pretty blond girl who was originally made of snow and became alive with the help of the same magic stick. The two of them go around delivering presents to children and lighting Christmas trees. There are, as you can imagine, numerous jokes about the pair and the fact that they sometimes become confused after having a few drinks.

Russian Christmas comes on the 7th of January because of the difference between the Gregorian (new style) and Julian (old style) calendars. Russia used to follow the old Julian calendar until 1918, being two weeks behind Europe! When the calendar was changed, the Russian Orthodox Church wouldn’t accept it, and all religious celebrations follow the old calendar to this day. Christmas is a religious occasion, and although it’s a public holiday, it is observed mostly by believers, and it is not as commercialised as in the West.

The most curious occasion of this holiday marathon is the “Old New Year”, the 13th of January. It’s the date of the New Year celebration before the calendar was changed in 1918, and it’s not a significant date but usually a day to remember old friends and see one’s family. This day is the last chance to celebrate the New Year, also welcomed by religious people who observe a Christmas fast. Also, there is a tradition of divination on the old New Year Eve, in order to try and see what the New Year will be like. Dreams on that night are deemed to be significant.

Men’s Day – the 23rd of February

This day was introduced as a celebration of the Red Army and Navy in 1918 and was, for many years, strictly the Army Day. But because there is compulsory military service for all men in Russia, this day gradually became associated with all men, regardless of whether they have served in the army or not. It wasn’t a day off until recently, but now it’s a public holiday. All men receive little gifts, cards and congratulations. This occasion is the male counterpart of Women’s day, one of Russia’s favourite public holidays, celebrated on the 8th of March. Women’s day has always been a public holiday, so men felt that they deserved one too! At present the 23rd of February is officially called the Day of the Country’s Defender, so the Army connection is still there but it has become more vague.

If you are in Russia around the 23rd of February, you’ll see men getting cards and gifts from their wives, girlfriends, daughters and colleagues. And if you are foreign and have absolutely nothing to do with the Russian army, women will still wish you a Happy Men’s Day!

Women’s Day – the 8th of March

This day was originally introduced as a feminist and communist celebration. It was celebrated for the first time in 1911 in four countries: Austria, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland, on different days, to celebrate the struggle for equal rights for women. It came to Russia in 1913 but was forgotten at the time of the 1st World War. 1914 was the only year when it was celebrated in several European countries on the same day, the 8th of March. After the revolution of 1918 the Soviet government introduced this day as a public holiday, to celebrate women’s equal rights and their contribution to the communist cause. Also, it was a day to distract the Soviet people from religious holidays of the Spring, such as Easter.

In 1975, at the request of the Soviet delegation at the UN congress, the 8th of March was officially pronounced International Women’s Day.

The 8th of March has become one of everyone’s favourite national holidays. Just as with Army day, it has lost connection with its ideological roots. It’s a day when all women, regardless of age or status, get flowers, gifts and a lot of compliments (not only from men, but from other women as well) and the whole country has a day off. This day is associated with the beginning of Spring, and its first flowers, mimosas, daffodils and tulips. Being a teacher, I used to receive a lot of flowers from my students on this day, so I do miss this particular holiday living in England!

To be continued.

Learning more about the Russian Language: the scope of change

By Vlada 28 September 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons (although you should if your Russian teacher follows the latest news related to the Russian language!)

A modern language is much like a living organism. Languages can emerge, change, develop and die. Russian is not an exception: it has changed hugely in the last century, and even in the last decade. Most of this change is prompted by the changing realities of life, others are due to the fact that there is no censorship any more and there are more opportunities for people to publish materials written in real colloquial language that is not controlled or regulated by anyone. After all, it is almost impossible to find a human being who speaks any language perfectly correctly.

So here are a few things that happened to our language in the last hundred years (starting with the oldest one!)

• Those of you who are learning Russian already know that Russian spelling is based on the phonetic principle: one letter=one sound, to make reading and writing as easy as possible. But as the language developed and some pronunciations changed, this principle was weakened. After the 1917 revolution a major reform of the alphabet was carried out: 4 letters were scrapped because they were deemed unnecessary (they were either silent, or read in the same way as other letters) and some spelling changes were introduced, to simplify the spelling. Those changes, although implemented by the new Bolshevik government, had been prepared and proposed by Russian scholars long before the revolution. So spelling became easier, all books were reprinted using the new, revised and abridged alphabet, and it is said that “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy became 80 pages shorter! In libraries you may still see old books published before the revolution, with the old characters – still easy to read but looking a bit unusual.

• The letter E has lost its dots on top in the last 20 years, in my memory. I think it happened together with computerisation and switching from writing by hand to typing on computers. The thing is that when you are writing by hand, it’s easy to put on the two dots above your Es, but when you are typing (and trying to do it fast), you need to reach the very far corner of the keyboard to type the E with the dots. So most people don’t bother to do it, because it’s clear anyway to any native speaker where the dots should be. So the poor dots survived only in textbooks for foreign students of Russian and for children. You won’t see the dots in any documents or the press any more. In some books, the dots are sometimes used in the words “vse” (everybody) and “vsyo” (everything), to differentiate between the two, but not in any other words. And with its love for official regulations, the Russian authorities issued a decree a few years ago legalising the missing dots even in people’s passports and documents, which lead to mispronunciations of some less common surnames. There have been public complaints about it, but it looks like there is no way back now. People have already got out of use of putting the dots on the E! I usually mention it to my students in one of their first Russian lessons. Needless to say, they hate this development, and I apologise on behalf of the Russian people for inflicting it on you!

• Changes in grammar are less obvious and slower than the ones in vocabulary or spelling but they happen as well. We lost the vocative case at some point in the 19th century (we used to have 7 cases, and now there are 6), but that’s already ancient history in comparison with some modern changes. In modern Russian, for example, the plural masculine form ending in -Y (stol-stoly) is rather aggressively being replaced by the plural ending -A – which at the present moment is an exception but is becoming more and more common. So the traditional “professory” and “directory” is now almost completely replaced by the previously incorrect “professora” and “directora”, and these forms are now considered to be the norm. Another thing is that some previously undeclinable foreign words (such as “bigudi” – “hair curlers”, one of the many French words used in Russian) are becoming declinable, which is more natural for the Russian language.

• As far as the vocabulary is concerned, the most obvious change is of course the recent introduction of English words related to new technologies and the Internet culture. Unlike the French, we are not trying to counteract this trend, because it’s clearly futile – I don’t think you can regulate a living human language by law. So the word “e-mail” is used by almost everyone instead of the Russian equivalent “electronnaya pochta” – and you can see why!

• Russian slang, just like slang in any other language, changes all the time. So I always advise students of Russian to be careful with it. The words and expressions that were trendy when I was a student, now sound ridiculous and outdated. Teenage slang is a whole world in itself, and I don’t even want to go there. They use some words the meaning of which grown-ups don’t understand or find very strange. Among the numerous latest slang/colloquialisms that have taken off big time and are used by everyone, are “tarakany” (“cockroaches”) meaning problems or hang-ups, and “vynosit’ mozg” (“to take out someone’s brain”), meaning to load someone with your own problems, to give them unnecessary or boring information. I quite like both expressions: they are very juicy and create a good picture of what’s going on.

• The latest example of an official amendment to the Russian language is a regulation published on the 1st of September this year, the official beginning of the school year. Certain “doubtful” usages of words that people are usually not sure about have been made “legal”. So the word “coffee” is now officially both masculine and neuter: you can use it as you wish, although logically it should be neuter, and according to the rule it is masculine. That makes life a bit easier for people learning Russian!

• The greatest problem in Russian for native speakers is of course word stress. My students learning Russian always complain that it is impossible to stress Russian words correctly because stress is so unpredictable. It’s true, but the good news for learners is that Russians themselves get the stress wrong all the time! One of the most common examples is the verb “zvonit’” – “to telephone”. When people conjugate it, the majority tend to stress it incorrectly, on the 1st syllable instead of the last one. The question is – if 90% of the population prefers this variant, shouldn’t it be the norm? After all, it’s the native speakers who create and use the language, and not a small group of scholars in the Academy of Science or officials in the ministry of education. So the stress rules do change all the time as well.

The question is – can language norms be established by official directives from the relevant ministry? Of course not! As a teacher, I would love everyone to use the beautiful correct forms all the time, but after all, using this or that form is just a reflection of somebody’s education and background. The norms change, and what seemed to be incorrect and unspeakable 50 years ago is the norm now!

The Russian capital in recession – 10 observations from a Russian teacher

By Vlada 12 September 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons.

In Russian lessons in the last few months, my students have often asked me – is there a recession in Moscow as well? And if there is, what is it like? Well, the world is becoming smaller and smaller and we are connected more and more closely – so yes, we have recession too, and it’s worse than in the West (apparently), according to economists. And then you arrive in Moscow and can’t help wondering – where is this widely advertised recession and what are the signs of it? The prices are increasing as fast as ever, shopping centres and restaurants are packed with people, the glitz and the glamour are still there…

Here, for example, is an extract from a menu of a sea food restaurant in the centre of Moscow: “Bouillabaisse Imperial – for 4 persons – 24600 roubles (500 pounds); Lobster Florentine per 100 grams (!) – 890 roubles (20 pounds); Langoustine (flown in from France) per 100 grams – 1790 roubles (36 pounds)”, etc… And it was not empty when one of my friends was there recently!

At first sight, Moscow is as prosperous as it was a year ago. You need to look a bit deeper to see the problems. So I’ve just looked, and here are my 10 observations:

1. There are fewer people on the underground. Great news if you are a visitor! A year ago the public transport system was so overloaded that it was impossible to travel on some tube lines in the rush hour, and even at night the underground trains were full. With the coming of recession some people who lost their jobs in Moscow have gone back to their home towns.

2. The city generally feels a bit roomier and emptier, although the famous traffic jams are still horrendous, unbeaten by the crisis.

3. The construction and property industry is affected most of all. There is less building going on, and a lot of migrants working in construction have lost their jobs and are trying to find jobs elsewhere.

4. Property prices have dropped a bit (but not much), and there are more properties available. The cost of renting has gone down, and there are a lot of articles in the press about how to rent a flat cheaper in the recession.

5. Generally, prices are growing which doesn’t make much sense to me because in theory there should be sales in the shops, but I haven’t seen any. The price of food and most consumer goods is at the same level as in London; the price of clothes is higher. However, transport fares and utility bills are still much lower than in Europe (and especially the UK!)

6. It is said that a lot of office workers have lost their jobs or had to agree to pay cuts.

7. In Russian, recession is often called “crizis” (crisis). All shops and traders are actively using the theme of recession in advertising. Here are a couple of slogans I saw and heard in supermarkets: “Recession to the bourgeoisie, food to the people!” “Come and check out our crisis-busting prices!” “Anti-crisis sale is on!” All the discounts are called “anti-crisis prices”.

8. The consumption of beer and (I would imagine) vodka is soaring. Just like in the West, people are drowning their sorrows in alcohol, and it wouldn’t be Russia if they didn’t…

9. On TV, the “crisis” is constantly mentioned, but often in a cheerful manner, especially in TV ads. In newspapers, it is much talked about in various contexts: useful tips about what to do when you lose your job, how to survive in recession, how to save money etc are published along with serious analytical articles about the reasons and the outcomes of recession on a global scale.

10. The most remarkable thing though, is that most Russians, especially the older generation, are not really scared by the “crisis”: for people who have lived through the collapse of their country and its whole economy, seen the disintegration of the country’s ideology and way of life, a little thing like a recession is just a bit of a nuisance, really. I know how they feel – I am one of them!

Learning Russian Literature: – it’s a woman’s world? Part 3

By Vlada 5 September 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons.

My students doing advanced Russian lessons often ask me about modern Russian literature: What is it like? Who are the most best-selling authors and which of them are “readable” from the point of view of foreign learners of Russian? In the previous blog article I talked about 2 of the most popular modern Russian writers – Dina Rubina and Ludmilla Ulitskaya.

Today I would like to continue the same blog and talk about two more leading ladies of modern Russian literature – Victoria Tokareva and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

Victoria Tokareva is famous for her short stories. She was born in Leningrad; she is a musician and a script-writer by education. She published her first short story called “A Day without lying” in 1964 and has written a lot of best-selling books since. In 1995-96 she was among the 10 most published authors in Russia. She is the script writer of some very popular Soviet films which are still loved and watched in Russia, such as “Mimino” and “Gentlemen of Fortune” (“Dzhentlmeny Udachy”).

Tokareva’s stories are easy to read (I often recommend them to students doing advanced courses of Russian for home reading), they depict human types which are totally recognisable and exist in real life around us. Her stories are often called “female prose” because they concentrate around lives of women in modern Russia, their problems and destinies. Needless to say, the majority of Tokareva’s readership are women. This prompted some foreign commentators to label her prose ‘feminist’ – which is absolutely not the case if they mean feminism as it is known in the West. The books are just clever and often ironic descriptions of ordinary women’s lives in ordinary circumstances.

The majority of her characters seem dull and incapable of strong feelings, sad and unable to escape from the monotonous grinding routine of their lives. And when they try to break free from the routine, they become even unhappier. However, traditionally for Russian literature, love is the thing that changes everything and turns them into stronger and better people. “Because I was in love I touched immortality and became younger”, says one of her characters.

Reading Tokareva’s prose gives you a good warm feeling – and that’s probably the secret of their popularity. Her stories have open endings, without any conclusions or moralising, and the readers can make (or not) their own judgements.

One of the foreign critics of her works wrote: “Tokareva’s stories are as identical, prosaic and monotonous as life itself, if you see life as a routine; and as exciting as life if you want to look deeper into its underlying mechanism.”

Her most well-known collections of stories are:
Den’ bez vranya (A Day Without Lying)
Zvezda v Tumane (A Star in the Fog)
Mezhdu Nebom i Zemley (Between Heaven and Earth)
Kazino (Casino)
Etot luchshiy iz Mirov (The Best of Worlds)
Strelets (Saggitarius)
Odna iz mnogikh (One of Many)
Samyi schastlivyi Den’ (The Happiest Day)
Salto Mortale (Sommersault)
O lubvi (About Love)
Ptitsa Schastya (The Bird of Happiness)
A iz nashego Okna (From our Window)

Tokareva’s stories have been translated into several foreign languages, but I would strongly recommend reading them in the original for those students of Russian who are interested in modern Russian life and its characters.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was born in Moscow; she is a journalist by training who published her first short story in 1970s. She has written a lot of short stories and plays, as well as “fairy tales” – little allegorical sketches about the people and their way of life. Her works were not published much in Soviet times because they were regarded as too gloomy, describing the “shadow” side of life, as well as too experimental and untraditional, so she became known only at the end of the 80s, after Perestroika.

Her short stories, as with Victoria Tokareva, are mostly about women of different ages in different circumstances, a feature that attracts female readers to her books. However, unlike Tokareva’s stories, they do not leave you with an easy and warm feeling; they feel rather heavy and can be depressing.

There is no doubt that Petrushevskaya is a talented author and a significant figure in modern Russian literature. However, I should say that she is not one of my personal favourites. Most of her stories are written in a very colloquial “spoken” style, perhaps too spoken and informal for my liking. When you read her prose, you feel like you are talking to a real person, perhaps a neighbour or a friend (and not a very sophisticated one, at that) rather than reading a book. I can see how some people may like it but I personally find it a bit irritating. Also, readers accuse her books of being too dark and gloomy and call her prose “chernukha” (black stuff), and I am afraid it is true of some of her stories. Petrushevskaya herself says that only people who do not understand her work may call it black, and if so, I am one of those… On a more positive note, her fairy tales, especially the ones about animals with human names and features, are very funny and are written in a sparkling, amusing and inventive idiom (but full of slang and made up words, so not really suitable for students of Russian!)

Her most well known collections of stories are:

Vremya Noch’ (The Time is Night)
Zhizn’ eto Teatr (Life is a Theatre)
Svoy Krug (Your Own Circle)
Boginya Parka (Parca the Goddess)
Malen’kaya Devochka iz Metropolya (A Little Girl from the Metropol)
Most Waterloo (Waterloo Bridge)
Tayna Doma (A Mistery of a House)

Some of her books (not mentioned here) are experimental and hard to read, so despite my great respect for the author I couldn’t recommend using her works for reading in Russian lessons!

Learning Russian Literature: – it’s a woman’s world? Part 2

By Vlada 5 July 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons.

My students doing advanced Russian lessons often ask me about modern Russian literature: what is it like? Who are the most famous best-selling authors and which of them are “readable” from the point of view of foreign learners of Russian? In the previous blog article I talked about 2 of the most popular modern Russian writers – Boris Akunin and Tatiana Tolstaya.

Today I would like to continue the same blog and talk about two more leading ladies of modern Russian literature – Dina Rubina and Ludmila Ulitskaya.

Dina Rubina started publishing her short stories in the 80-s in literary magazines. I was not aware of her work at that time but my friends tell me that she was popular even then. Her books are a pleasure to read: her writing style leaves you in no doubt that she’s a good old-fashioned professional author. Her Russian is flawless; she knows how to grip the attention of the audience and keep it throughout the book, she creates characters who seem real, living next door to us. I am sure some of them are, and lots of her books are based on the lives of people she knew.

Interestingly, Dina Rubina moved to Israel quite a while ago but writes in Russian only and is a best-selling author in all Russian speaking countries. She has recently published a couple of books of sketches about the life of Russian emigrants in Israel: they are funny, ironic and reveal a whole world of cross-cultural differences that Russian “repatriants” have to deal with in their daily lives. A lot of her stories and novels are about creative, “bohemian” people: artists, writers, performers. She herself has a musical education.

Her main books are:
“Na Solnechnoj Storone Ulitsy” – “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, a novel about an artist who grew up in post war Tashkent and went through life living in different countries ever grateful for the sunshine and the wonderful people who surrounded her in those years.
“Na Verkhney Maslovke” – “In Verkhnya Maslovka” (it’s a street name), a rather depressing story about a troubled love-hate relationship between a very old renowned sculptor and her much younger disciple. There is a screen version of this novel which, according to reports, is even more depressing than the novel… but at least the book is very well written.
“Dvoynaya Familiya” – “A Double-barred Surname”, a rather complicated and sad story of a family.

Dina Rubina wrote a lot of short stories. A couple of recent collections include: “Neskolko Toroplivyh Slov Lubvi” – “A few Quick Words of Love”; “Tsyganka” – “A Gypsy” and others.

Her last novel “Pocherk Leonardo” – Leonardo’s Handwriting” was advertised by some newspapers as an answer to Dan Brown’s “Da Vinchi Code” – but it’s not. It’s a mystical story about a girl with supernatural abilities and her journey through life as a circus artist. I don’t think it’s Dina Rubina’s best novel: I found it a bit fragmented, so it’s difficult to follow the plot, but nevertheless fascinating.

Ludmilla Ulitskaya is a heavyweight of modern Russian literature. She has been awarded various prestigious prizes, and her novels have been turned into films and TV shows. She writes in slow, slightly heavy but beautifully constructed long sentences, which make you want to take the book and sit with it in a quiet place, taking a break from the hustle and bustle of the world, thinking about what you are reading. It’s good holiday read, because you need time to think about the text. It’s deep and complicated and yet not boring. It requires thinking but doesn’t make your brain tired, which is a rare quality and a sign of a talented author.

Her most well – known novels are:

“Kasus Kukotskogo” – “The Case of Kukotsky” – the story of a brilliant doctor and his career in Soviet-era medicine, a novel which is sometimes compared to “Doctor Zhivago” not without reason. I found it fascinating, both because of the medical details and the story line. Ulitskaya is a biologist by education, and I am sure she must have had a medical consultant or done a lot of research when she wrote this book, as to me it seems very believable, and yet it has some mystical moments that make it very interesting.
“Veselye Pokhorony” – “A Jolly Funeral” – a story about Russians living in America. “Medea i yeyo Deti” – “Medea and her Children” – the life story of a woman from a big Greek-Russian family living in the south of Russia.
“Iskrenne Vash, Shurik” – “Sincerely Yours, Shurik” – yet another life story.
“Ludi Nashego Tsarya” – “Our Tsar’s People” – a depressing collection of stories, all doom and gloom, in the best traditions of the Russian psyche.

Ulitskaya’s collections of short stories include:
“Devochki” – “Girls”; “Skvoznaya Liniya” – “A Line Running Through”; “Bednye Rodstvenniki” – “Poor Relatives”.

One thing that I noticed about Ulitskaya’s books is that she is rather anti-men, intentionally or not. In all her novels men come out as either pathetic and misguided or unpleasant characters, whose mistakes and misdeeds are left for the women around them to pay for.

Her last novel, “Daniel Stein, Perevodchik” – “Daniel Stein the Translator” is said to be less good. I was warned against reading it by a friend whose tastes I trust. She took this book to read on a sea cruise holiday, anticipating the pleasure, but after struggling with it for a while and getting more and more bored and disappointed, she got so frustrated that she threw it into the ocean from the boat… So it must have been pretty painful reading. But as we know, tastes differ.

To be continued!

Learning Russian Literature: it’s a woman’s world? Part 1

By Vlada 28 May 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in a Russian course.

My students doing advanced Russian lessons often ask me about modern Russian literature: what is it like? Who are the most famous best-selling authors and which of them are “readable” from the point of view of foreign learners of Russian? So here are some facts and comments about contemporary Russian authors and their works.

Present day Russian literature is dominated by women, and I don’t quite know why. Are modern women more creative or just more active in the world of publishing fiction? The best known modern Russian writers are: Tatiana Tolstaya, Ludmilla Ulitskaya, Lundmila Petrushevskaya, Dina Rubina, Victoria Tokareva. There is one major exception from this female company, though: Boris Akunin, a hugely successful and charismatic writer who has managed to produce a large number of best-selling novels written in really good Russian. So I am going to ignore the polite “ladies first” principle and talk about him first.

Boris Akunin (real name – Grigory Chkhartishvili) appeared on the Russian literary scene about 8-10 years ago and conquered the reading public instantly. A specialist in Oriental studies (Japanese language and culture; apparently his penname means “villain” in Japanese), he is a master of brilliant plots with a refined writing style. He combines real historical facts with fictional plots so skilfully that it’s sometimes hard to tell the fact from the fiction. His novels are a winning combination of interesting facts, fascinating (mostly detective) plots and impeccable Russian. His first novels were about a super-detective Erast Petrovich Fandorin, a late 19th-early 20th century sophisticated Russian gentleman working as a very successful private investigator: dashing, lucky, hard working, loved by women and envied by men, with a mysterious past (obviously a must for this type of character), with a loyal Japanese servant called Masa who happens to be a former Ninja. In a whole series of novels, Erast Fandorin, and later his descendants living in present day Russia, as well as his ancestors living 300 years ago, go through turbulent times in the history of Russia, solve mysteries, fall in love, win and lose and keep the reader glued to the page. Needless to say, some of the adventures take place in Japan where an exotic world of Japanese culture is revealed to us by the author.

I must say, although I can cynically dissect a work of fiction to see how it is put together, and I don’t like detective stories, I became one of Akunin’s faithful readers. Not only can he write beautifully in his own idiom, he can also imitate the styles of famous writers, both Russian and foreign. Thus, in one of his novels entitled “FM” he created mock parts of “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky, which, according to the plot, were accidentally found in an unknown manuscript – and it looked remarkably like Dostoevsky. In another project, a collection of stories called “Nefritovye Chetki” – “Nephritis Worry Beads” he recreated the styles of famous world writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and others without naming them, thus offering the reader a chance to guess whom he’s imitating.

In one of his newspaper interviews Akunin said he had managed to realise the eternal Russian national dream: have a lot of fun and make money out of it! It looks like he succeeded, although it took him about 10 years to have his first book published.
His most popular novels are: “Azazel”, “Statsky Sovetnik”, Smert Achillesa”, “Osobye Poruchenija”, “Leviafan”, “Koronatsiya”, “Lubovnik Smerti”, “Lubovnitsa Smerti”, “Almaznaya Kolesnitsa”.

My personal favourite is a collection of short stories called “Tales from Graveyards” (“Kladbishenskiye Istorii”) where he gives interesting facts about the most famous cemeteries in the world, and tells a fictional tale related to each of them.

A couple of Akunin’s books are translated into English, and I even saw people on the tube in London reading them, but I don’t know if the translation is as good as the original.

As a downside I should mention that some of his novels, especially the later ones, are so full of miracles and crazy plot lines that they made me wonder whether it’s some kind of self-parody, not intended to be taken seriously. His latest novel “Quest” written in the form of a computer game, I didn’t like at all (but then, I hate computer games!)

My friend Julia who introduced the first book by Akunin to me, said “Don’t take any notice of the fact that it looks like a common detective story – just start reading, and you won’t be able to leave this book till you read it from cover to cover!” And she was right! So I would recommend Akunin to anyone who wants to read something interesting in Russian, whether a student learning Russian, or a native speaker.

Now, back to the ladies:

Tatiana Tolstaya is an accomplished intellectual related through her family to writers, academics and translators of foreign classical literature. She is a philologist by education and speaks several foreign languages. She is witty, sarcastic, clever and ruthless. She wrote several collections of short stories about lives of ordinary people in modern-day Russia, as well as some journalistic essays about modern Russian and Western life, covering topics such as the peculiarities of usage of the Russian language, political correctness in the West, and the Russian national character. She also published one novel with a rather strange title “Kys’ – an invented word which does not exist in real Russian – an apocalyptic but at the same time funny story about a post-nuclear war society on the territory of a city which used to be called Moscow before the catastrophe. It’s satirical, scary and gripping. The way she plays with language in this novel is the most admirable thing about it: she creates a whole new lingo for survivors who return to a primitive state of existence but have the same ambitions and personal problems as their more advanced ancestors. Some of the words created by the author are so juicy that you want to start using them. The word “gribyshi” instead of “griby” (“mushrooms”), for example, is especially good. But, as a result of these linguistic experiments, as you can imagine, this novel would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to read for a non-native Russian speaker, even a very advanced student of Russian. Generally, her style of writing is very “grown-up” and sophisticated – a real pleasure to read, but not an easy kind of reading.
Her most well known collections of stories are: “Day” (“Den’), “Night” (“Noch”), “Raisins” (“Isum”), “Reka Okkervil” (“The Okkervil River”), plus the novel “Kys’” which is my personal favourite. I may be abnormal but this book cheered me up for some reason, instead of being depressing – perhaps because it is so brilliantly written. I sometimes read her essays with my advanced students, especially the ones about the Russian language, but all her books are difficult to read for foreign learners of Russian.
It looks like she is not writing much at the moment, because she has become a TV celebrity, participating in a TV talent show as a judge and co-hosting an intellectual talk show on one of the TV channels (unfortunately it is shown at 1 am!) called “The School of Scandal” (“Shkola Zlosloviya”). Her co-host is another writer called Dunya Smirnova; they invite famous people to the programme and ask them difficult questions about life, politics, philosophy, taking every opportunity to kill them with sarcasm.

Well, modern Russian literature is a huge subject which deserves to be spoken about, so this blog is to be continued…

Video: Welcome to Just Russian London

By Vlada 8 May 09

Learning about Russian food

By Vlada 12 April 09

Notes from a student of Russian in London, or things you may be interested to know but may not learn in your Russian lessons. By one of Vlada’s students

Russian cuisine has a dodgy reputation in the West. Mention that you’re going to Russia and folks who’ve never been there will issue dark warnings about thin gruel, boiled cabbage and offal stew. I heard these myself from well-meaning relatives who’d actually visited in Soviet times:
“Everything’s tinned or tasteless. Often both.”
Well, I don’t know if that was ever true – but I do know it’s not now. Russian food is tasty, hearty and filling. And don’t be panicked by the food vocabulary you’ve learned in your Russian lessons; cabbage pies (‘pirogi’) may sound pretty appalling, but in fact they’re delicious.
If you’re lucky enough to be invited to dinner by Russians, you’ll get the full gamut of traditional ‘formal’ dishes. There will almost certainly be Russian salad (known to Russians as ‘salad Olivier’ after the eponymous Frenchman who, legend tells, remembered he had dinner guests minutes before their arrival and simply chucked his leftovers together in a bowl with mayonnaise). This is a glutinous, creamy pleasure that’s particularly delicious with a glass of ice cold vodka. Ironically, Russian salad is probably most widely enjoyed not in its homeland, but in Spain, where it’s a popular tapas dish. One of the supreme delights known to man is a cold Russian salad eaten on a hot Spanish evening, washed down with a glass of aromatic Rioja.
Don’t tell the Russians.
Your hosts will probably serve other salads, too. Two big-time favourites are ‘Vinaigrette’ and ‘Beetroot salad’. The former has nothing to do with its French namesake. As usual with Russian words lifted from French, the meaning has become comically corrupted. ‘Vinaigrette’ is a cold salad of diced, cooked root vegetables (beetroot, carrot, potato, peas), plus finely chopped raw onion and picked gherkins. To a Western palate, it’s a peculiar-sounding combo. But trust me: it’s delicious.
Beetroot salad is simply finely grated cooked beetroot and hard cheese mixed with mayonnaise and grated garlic. A dietician’s worst nightmare, for sure, but all the nicer for that.
Actually, a lot of Russian food isn’t very diet-friendly. This is high octane stuff for a harsh climate, so be prepared. When you’ve eaten, you’ll really know it. And if you’re smart, you’ll take the digestion pills Russians all seem to produce at the end of formal meals. Best not to ask what’s in them. Whatever it is, it beats Bisodol.
Also best not to be vegetarian. That’s if you can figure out how to say ‘vegetarian’ in the first place. It’s not a word that crops up in your Russian lessons because, er, it probably doesn’t exist. Russians are committed carnivores, and will assume you’re sick if you ask for something without meat. If you’re lucky, they’ll produce a potato. There’s no real way to sugar this: vegetarians have a tough time in Russia (and don’t be fooled by Russian salad: it’s got boiled chicken in it).
But not, thank God, meat-eaters. Russian hot food means big, full-on stews like beef Stroganoff and hot soups like Shee and Borsch. Both consist of strong meat stock with various vegetables floating in them. With Borsch, of course, the principal ingredient is the peripatetic beetroot, but don’t be put off if you’re not a fan: although it contains LOTS of beetroot, Borsch has its own unique flavour that is oddly un-beetroot-like. Made well, it’s one of the most delicious soups in creation.
There’s plenty of other great Russian foods (marinated, barbecued ‘Shashlik’, pork roasted with garlic, salted gherkins), but you can discover them yourself. I’ll leave you with just three important Russian food-related factoids:
• Russians love garlic. They really love garlic.
• If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise: Bear steak. Honest.
• Hope you like dill. That’s all I’m saying.

Russian Television

By Vlada 14 March 09

More info from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may want to know but will not learn in a Russian course

In Soviet times, TV was boring beyond belief. The choice was usually between Brezhnev (or another ancient leader) painfully reading some party report, a concert of classical music (not that I don’t like classical music but you can have too much of a good thing, believe me!), a documentary about a Soviet farm with lots of statistics and happy farmers reading reports written for them, and a chess lesson. All news was good news: we lived in a country of blissfully happy people, where there were plenty of good guys as role models. When a popular movie was shown, it was a big event and the streets of cities became empty. Cartoons for children were an enormous treat and missing them was a big disappointment. Performances of foreign pop stars were shown twice a year: at about 3 am on New Year’s night (a good incentive for staying awake) and on Easter night, to stop young people from going to church!

So why do so many Russian people remember old time telly with nostalgia? Partly, of course, because everything always seems better in the good old days. But partly for good, practical reasons.

I did watch a lot of Russian telly recently (I was stuck in Moscow ill) and the picture is not really very inspiring. If you come to Russia without knowing much about it and watch telly all day, you’ll get the idea that the whole country is populated by complete bastards. Here is what happens through the day to an average screen character: in the morning TV series he nicks somebody’s money or cheats on his wife, or even worse, kills somebody. At lunchtime his offence will be discussed in detail in a TV trial (or several trials!), with witnesses, in the presence of a jury and judge (all actors, pretending to be real people) and he will be sentenced to a couple of years in prison or a large fine. Towards evening, our character will find himself in a talk show revealing his dark side, falling out with friends and family, confessing to seducing stepdaughters, mothers-in-law, poisoning the neighbour’s dogs, stealing and cheating. In between those programmes, on the news, the character (this time somebody real, unfortunately) will be shown covering his face to hide from journalists who are trying to find out more about his crimes and who are eagerly reporting to the public what awful things he has done. And finally, at night – an official horror movie, just to finish you off and guarantee nightmares. TV is dominated by crime stories, police and hospital dramas, TV trials and scandalous talk shows.

As a result, TV of course has become more interesting, but at the expense of being human… It’s probably normal for commercial TV because no one would watch a boring story about the life of a normal family! But people miss the “gentleness” of the old Soviet TV where it was prohibited to kill anyone in children’s cartoons or make the bad guys the main characters of films. They also miss the impeccable Russian language which was insisted upon for television, as well as the ban on swearing, sex and violence.

I, of course, miss the language most! You could learn perfect Russian from any TV programme and be sure that the presenters would always get even the most complicated language points right. TV was the model to follow. You could get your advanced Russian lessons from it (although you would be bored to death by the content!) In my memory, there was only one scandal with swearing when during a crucial football match a well known sports commentator used a four letter word in the heat of excitement, live on air. The whole country talked about it the next day. Naturally the episode wasn’t commented on officially and was censored. The presenter was severely reprimanded.

Now I switch on the telly and (being a Russian teacher) I want to correct mistakes all the time, give everyone bad marks and send them home to do their Russian homework properly! But maybe it’s good that people on the telly now speak any way they like – it’s more realistic, although no longer a decent role model.

Another thing is that TV has become very globalised. You can find exactly the same shows on Russian TV now as you see in the UK: “Dancing with the Stars”, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, “Changing Rooms”, “What not to Wear”, etc. The only difference is the language and of course some cultural peculiarities. In the “Millionaire”, for example, people gamble without even thinking for a second about it, and hardly ever win anything. “Dancing on Ice” went mad and every channel seems to have its own version running throughout the year: Russians love skating.

All this said, there are of course good quality programmes too: interesting journalistic investigations and documentaries, funny shows, some interesting series. But according to a recent poll, most people prefer to watch old Soviet movies. Perhaps we are just a nostalgic nation…

Learning Russian style of communication:

By Vlada 14 February 09

10 notes from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may be interested to know but may not learn in a Russian course.

This winter, for various reasons, I was plunged straight back into Russian life and settled in Moscow for a few weeks socialising with a lot of professional people and strangers every day. I’ve lived in the UK for 10 years and although no one in Russia ever suspects me of being foreign, I feel it a bit. I couldn’t help observing and making mental notes all the time about how people interact. So here are some of my observations and recommendations for students who are learning Russian and will be dealing with Russians on a daily basis in business or social situations:

1.First Impressions. When you first meet people, they look very serious and often gloomy. This is not a reflection of their state of mind and doesn’t mean that they are clinically depressed. Simply, in the Russian culture, smiling and joking with strangers is not a done thing. The concept of smiling as a matter of politeness is still foreign to us, and people only smile if they are genuinely amused or really like you. If you manage to charm them they soon relax and start being smiley and jokey in their turn. They just need to know that you will take them seriously and treat them with respect even if you giggle together!

2.Small Talk. People often get down straight to business, without any niceties such as doing small talk for a few minutes first. So they may come across as rude to an Anglo-Saxon person. In fact, it only shows you that the situation is formal and professional and they don’t know you well enough to talk about anything other than business. Which takes us to the next point:

3.It’s personal. Every relationship is personal. Even a professional one. The saying “nothing personal, just business” would not work in Russia at all. You have to get to know your business or professional partners on a personal level and acknowledge them as a human being rather than just someone to do business with. If you want to succeed in dealing with Russian partners, you’ve got to treat them as a friend.

4.Addressing people. If you are Russian, it’s important to remember people’s names and patronymics and use them all the time. It can be really difficult if you are dealing with a lot of new people in professional situations. I sometimes have to write them down not to get them wrong! However, if you are foreign, you can be exempt from that custom and allowed to use first names only.

5.Compliments. Paying compliments is an important part of social interaction. Politically correct concerns do not exist, so women get compliments on their appearance from men all the time. If you want to befriend a Russian, start with a few compliments and don’t be afraid to be too personal. We love it!

6.Greetings. Shaking hands when meeting is the usual thing to do for men but not for women. Some women shake hands, some prefer not to. I think the rule is that a woman should offer her hand for a handshake first. Shaking hands between two women would be very unusual. Some more old-fashioned men like to kiss a woman’s hand. It’s a sign of respect, and nothing more suggestive or personal. Contrary to popular opinion, Russians do not greet each other by kissing or touching, unless they are very close friends or family. The western European tradition of kissing strangers when greeting them and saying good-bye would be viewed as very strange.

7.Being grateful. When someone does you a favour, it’s important to be grateful and show it. Russians do not write thank you cards and do not like communicating in writing at all, but they do like giving and receiving gifts, flowers (for women), bottles of posh booze (for men), chocolates and other tokens of gratitude. Flattery and compliments are very common.

8.It’s good to talk! If you need to get hold of someone, give them a call. As I said in the previous section, Russians do not like writing letters, cards, e-mails and even text messages. People ignore texts and can’t be bothered to reply because they find it fiddly and time consuming. They would rather call and talk. Again, it makes communication more personal. So make sure you cover telephone vocabulary in your Russian lessons!

9.We are all big softies… When you have managed to make friends, you will discover that under their harsh appearance most Russians (especially men) are very soft, fragile and often romantic. I think Russians are the only nation left in the world that really appreciates (and creates) poetry.

10.Personal space. And last but not least: Russian culture is “communal” (it must be something to do with the cold climate!) and people are unaware of the concept of personal space. On public transport you might be squashed very closely against total strangers (not a pleasant experience most of the time!) and people will come very close to you while queuing and sometimes talking. So it’s quite likely that your personal space will be invaded in crowded places – it’s not personal, we just like to flock together!

Learning Russian: Old-fashioned ways are best?

By Vlada 31 December 08

Languages and us: how do you learn to speak perfect Russian? A few comments from a Russian teacher about the methods and different approaches to language learning and teaching.

The real shock came when I started teaching Russian to groups in Kingston University, fresh after Moscow University, the Faculty of Law. I said the word “adjective” in front of my Russian class, and someone asked “what is an adjective?” Oh my God… My Moscow response would have been: “And what do you think you are doing at University if you don’t know what an adjective is?!” but I was on foreign territory so I tried to explain what it was. Which brought on another problem – how do you explain what an adjective is to someone who is not familiar with any language learning vocabulary? So I said: “It’s a word that describes another word, called a noun, and it tells you what kind of thing it is – white, or blue, or big or small…” And then I thought “How on earth am I going to explain the system of cases?” and almost decided to become a seamstress, rather than a Russian teacher and never go back to my Russian group class again… But it was a professional challenge, and I’ve been tackling it ever since.

The Russian and Eastern European system of education is still very old-fashioned, structured and academic. Pupils still sit in neat rows, two at each desk, listening to the teacher and keeping silent until asked. Languages are (or are supposed to be, with a qualified teacher) presented as a system, the components of which must be learned, drilled and taken for granted. Also, of course, in Slavic languages the grammar is so complex that it is simply impossible NOT to teach it. So in Russian lessons, children would have to learn all the cases, the genders, and the numerous endings and how they are formed. In English, on the contrary, native speakers can do without any grammar knowledge – the complicated verb system can be picked up because it’s intuitive and there are no cases or conjugations. The only “killer” point of English for its native speakers is spelling (it’s not intuitive, it’s ancient and often unpredictable) but it is not important for speaking the language. In Russian and other Slavic languages, it’s the other way round. Spelling is relatively easy but the grammar needs attention. So we all grow up learning and teaching the Russian language through grammar.

My first contact, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say clash, with the English system of language teaching took place in 1997 when we tried to write a book (a reader/textbook for advanced students of English, about the system of English education, ironically) with a British co-author from a British university. He came to Moscow, and we went to England, we got on well and had some fun times together but completely failed our task. He hated almost everything we contributed, and the other way round. Our meetings sometimes ended in heated arguments and door slamming … all because we could not agree on methods of presenting the material. The English teacher wanted everything to be vague and creative, while the Russian teachers wanted it to be conventional, rigidly structured and predictable. I even remember (God forgive me, I was young and presumptuous!) attempting to explain to him some points of English grammar…

The Anglo-American system of teaching languages is very foreign to us, especially the new “playful” and communicative methods of teaching. Teachers tend not to explain language points but illustrate them and lead the student towards understanding and interpreting grammar themselves (I often thought – please forgive me, Ladies and Gentlemen British teachers, for thinking so – do they not explain things for some good reason, or is it because they simply cannot explain it clearly and comprehensively?)

Can this approach be applied to learning Russian? It probably can be, but I would still explain things first. One of the rules of our profession is that you cannot expect students to learn anything unless you’ve given it to them first. A teacher in Russian is called “prepodavatel”, from the verb “davat’” – “to give”, so we’ve got to give the knowledge and make sure it sinks in. And then you can play games, make creative stories, chase each other around the room and even sing. I am afraid I personally like to explain, time and again, in the students’ native language, everything that can be explained! Because if you understand the system, you can use it. If you don’t understand it, you’ll be lost every single time when you have to speak Russian. Call me old-fashioned!

Sometimes my students in Russian lessons ask: and what about children? They learn to speak Russian without any grammar explanation! Well, they do and they don’t. Their brains are free, quick and ready to suck in all the information around them. They are immersed in the language completely, their whole life is dedicated to learning the world around them, and they do have a lot of guidance from the adults on how to use this or that word or phrase, and often even why it should be like that. Kids who don’t get much attention and guidance end up speaking not terribly well… Just like adults who have never learned the rules of the language end up making the same mistakes again and again.

And finally, just to show that I don’t and can’t really make any general conclusions on this subject, I can tell you that in my 9 year experience as a full time Russian teacher, my slowest progressing student took about half a year to learn the alphabet, and the quickest spoke fluent Russian, from nothing, in just three months. Both are British!

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