Here’s a list of my newest Russian vocab (and a few words I’m still trying to figure out)…
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Words my students taught me
☐ круг (shape) vs шар (has volume: the Earth, a bowling ball, etc).
☐ выбросы = “Bad air quality incident” aka a common topic of conversation in Chelyabinsk.
☐ безопасность жизнедеятельности = Civil defense, a class everyone takes in school from 6th grade on.
☐ Не понижать градус. = Beer first, then hard alcohol. (This is totally the opposite of what we say in the US: “Liquor before beer, in the clear. Beer before liquor, never been sicker.”)
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Words life taught me
☐ тефтели = meatball
☐ “Просто атас!” = “Watch out, run away, danger!” A Russian friend returned from China with a strong answer on whether Chinese food stalls were sanitary. (Multitran has several more meanings for this word.)
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Words I don’t understand yet
Can you explain any of these to me?
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Corrections and explanations welcome! Have you come across any interesting / memorable / unusual new words recently? 🙂
6 Responses
J.T.
“мило сердце” is actually милосердие, which translates to something like charity or grace.
Katherine
Ah, that makes sense, I see the И now! Спасибо, J.T.! 😀 I’d never encountered милосердие before.
David Emerling
“мило сердце” seems like it would mean “sweet heart” or “kind heart”.
Katherine
Hi David! That’s what I was thinking too… until some eagle-eyed readers pointed out it wasn’t сердце at all but -сердие. Russian cursive still gets me sometimes. 😹
Teango
I imagine “заводной шоколад” means something like “lively chocolate”, which kind of fits if they’re marketing it as a pseudo-healthy muesli/trail mix/energy/pep-you-up type of choccie bar. My wife tells me that “заводной”, when referring to a person, can also mean someone who has bags of energy and can get other people up and moving and excited too. A quick search on Google images also revealed some ice-cream bars bearing the same brand logo, this time marketed for people into extreme sport *lol*. Now after all this talk of snacks and fitness, I’m off to the couch to engage in tonight’s extreme sport of eating Häagen-Dazs and watching Netflix. 🙂
Katherine
Privet Teango! It’s great to see you here again 😀
Thank you for your research into заводной! You lead me into a Google image search- did you know that “A Clockwork Orange” is translated as «Заводной апельсин»? I found the заводной ice cream too 🙂 Hope you enjoyed your Häagen-Dazs!