Happy end-of-September! 🙂
This month I worked on two consistent habits in the name of Russian studies.
The first: speaking Russian every day with my husband. Most days it’s a tiny interaction, but once we kept up a conversation while walking for about 45 minutes.
The second (and I know this is so silly): have you ever noticed how Russian speakers say up-chee when they sneeze? I have allergies, so I decided to switch my sneezes to Russian instead of the usual ah-choo. D laughs and laughs when I manage to do it. Still feels weird, though. Have you ever tried to чихать по-русски? (Don’t even get me started on Как чихают животные.)
To the сводка новостей! (That was one of my new words this month- it means news roundup. This is the seventeenth monthly Russian roundup and I only just learned the word, haha.)
Read these-
- This is from 2014, but even I learned some новые слова в английском языке from this article. Cyberchondriac and floordrobe are awesome :p
- From Proper Russian’s FB page: what to say in Russian when someone keeps asking you annoying questions.
- This travel blogger recently wrote about her trip to Moscow & St. Pete’s: Are Russians racist towards black people? My experience.
- Test yourself on Russian idioms. It’s quite tricky!
- Get some grammar in today: Хотите чай, чая, or чаю?
Watch these-
Funny:
Русский язык в американских фильмах. Whenever someone speaks Russian in a movie, my mom always asks me “Did s/he say it right?” In most of these movie clips- нет.
Interesting:
Philochko on Russian news. If you haven’t found Philochko on YouTube yet, he was an American English teacher living in / traveling through Russia who attracted a lot of attention for his videos. (He’s still in Russia but has since dropped teaching and calls himself a “phat ass white girl modal manager”.)
Educational:
Anastasia Semina has a collection of conversational Russian vlogs, including recent interviews with a travel blogger, Italian chef, and a podcaster.
Back to Basics:
When your brain is fried and needs a break, try a couple of these videos for babies. There are 53 videos in total, covering simple things like colors, dog breeds, and furniture.
Also, on a more personal note, this month I wrote about speaking Russian in Portland, Oregon and shared pics of my newest matryoshka gear. What’s been happening in your life and language studies this month?
Happy October! 😀
7 Responses
Valentina
Я не знала, что русские чихают по-другому. 🙂
Katherine
Странный факт, да? 😉
Jasilyn
I never noticed the thing about sneezing! I’m totally going to pay attention now! Anton always makes fun of the way I laugh though. He says I laugh with soft sounds.
Katherine
I never paid attention to the smallpox scar thing until you mentioned it…. and I looked and D has one too! How come I never noticed it all this time?! He was like, “Yeah, so what? Everyone has one.”
A soft sound like a ь? That’s kinda cool!
J.T.
Wow! I enjoyed reading that piece on Black travellers in Russia. It’s almost like you *magically* picked it out just for me, for it was only yesterday that I was asking the head of my RUS department about the very same subject. Какое совпадение!
Katherine
Funny indeed, wow! What did your department head say, J.T.?
J.T.
She remarked that in the 30+yrs our study abroad program has existed, there have been no serious instances of racism reported by black students who participated. However, she did add that outside of college-sanctioned abroad programs, information on racism toward black travellers in Russia was mixed: interracial couples walking on the streets of Krasnodar and Piter without problems in some cases, and discrimination against darker-skinned visitors in others. Experiences vary greatly.