22
Russian has no special letter for the Latin letter H, in different words it is rendered differently, you have to consult a dictionary every time a proper name has H. The main ways it can be written are:
Г: Гималаи "the Himalayas", Генри "Henry";
Х: хинди, хиндустани "Hindi, Hindustani (languages)", Хайдарабад "Hyderabad";
no letter at all: Индостан "...
19
Подарок means 'gift' in the sense of 'present'. It's usually a physical object indeed, but can be used in a sense of 'gift' in other cases as well - for example, something like "that back-pass was a gift for the striker, what an amateur mistake in defence" would translate directly into Russian, using 'подарок'. It's quite often used ironically, ...
16
I would say it is understandable in general, especially when spoken not too fast. Majority of words are very similar and get inflected similarly although there are some notable exceptions (like коханка in Ukrainian is quite different from Russian любовница or бачить does not look like видеть at all).
Written text is understandable in context.
Many Slavic ...
16
Let's broaden your set of dark and depressive feelings.
Грусть ≈ sadness. The shortest and the lightest. May be caused by bad weather or a sad film/song/book.
Мне грустно от этой книги.
Серое осеннее небо навеяло на него грусть.
Тоска ≈ melancholy, depression. May be caused by a separation with someone or something.
Я тоскую по любимой.
Его съедала тоска ...
16
As a rule you just can not ask question like "why some words has changed their meaning". Well, you can but quite often we just can not say why. Just like phonetic changes, semantical shifts happen all the time.
In some cases though we do have answer. Why in English the N-word become a racial slur - well, for two reasons. First, it had some racial ...
15
"Her" isn't implied, there's just no need for it. Она хочет ему нравиться literally translates to "She wants to be liked by him". Hyper-literally, something like "she wants to disposition herself to him".
With "them", the only way to word it is Они хотят, чтобы она ему нравилась, literally "they want that she be liked by him".
13
Do all Russian patronymics have such forms? No. For example, Ilyich and Petrovna are never reduced.
Is there a simple rule to form them? What you took for short forms are merely phonetic reductions. Therefore, they are formed by some kind of a natural process. When unstressed, elaborate suffixes such as -yevich, -ovich, -yevna, -ovna are reduced, the ...
13
No reason; it's a possible verb that never acquired a meaning to become an actual verb. It's just how you don't say "think down" or "open off" in English — it's not that there's something inherently wrong with the combinations, they just don't mean anything. In the case of *упалось, that's not surprising considering упасть is intransitive. A verb that doesn'...
13
This is a phenomenon called vowel reduction.
A good starting point would be the Wikipedia article on Russian phonology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#Vowel_mergers
In a nutshell, most Russian dialects distinguish о and а and pronounce them more or less the way it says on the tin when they are stressed, and merge them (pronounce a neutral ...
11
The classic works on the topic are Rosenthal's books, namely Справочник по правописанию и стилистике.
It covers orthography, punctuation, word usage and sentence composition.
It's available online here: http://rosental-book.ru/
11
But just today, I notice that the locative case isn't used once it is
modified by an adjective?
Not quite, it's totally correct to say
На белом/рыхломadj. снегУ
На крутомadj. валУ
В горячемadj. боЮ
В дремучемadj. лесУ
На нашемposs. pron. векУ
В новомadj. портУ
В дальнемadj. краЮ
В цветущемadj. садУ
В липкомadj. потУ
На своёмposs. pron....
11
Подарок has got a figurative meaning in Russian, when we mention something causing great pleasure.
Ваш приход - большой подарок для меня.
Такая хорошая погода — просто подарок!
Его приезд — настоящий подарок. Подарок судьбы.
We can also use не подарок in the negative sense, describing people , who are not quite pleasant to communicate or to deal with.
Он не ...
10
This form is ok when there are no conflicting governments:
Около 1804 года в Смоленской губернии, верстах в двадцати от города Ельни, проживал в собственном своем имении, селе Новоспасском, отставной капитан Иван Николаевич Глинка.
However, in case of government conflict (when adding the preposition около would change the noun's case), Rosenthal suggests ...
10
Cyrillic:
Да в целом мире не отыщете вы подобного наслажденья! Здесь, именно здесь подражает Богу человек. Бог предоставил себе дело творенья, как высшее всех наслажденье, и требует от человека также, чтобы он был подобным творцом благоденствия вокруг себя. И это называют скучным делом!
Paste it here: http://translit.net/ for transliteration in any ...
10
No, it can not be used to symbolize sleep. Instead of it, we sometimes use "Хррр" to denote sleep.
10
Так и есть means "that's right," "that's true." It's used to agree with someone:
Жизнь не проста. - Так и есть (= действительно, и правда, верно, согласен/согласна).
In English it's not always necessary to use a phrase like "that's right." See the example below:
Ужасно? - Да, так и есть. (Awful? - Yes, it is.)
Так и есть can be used for a different ...
9
both
Вася учит физику - Vasya learns/studies physics
Вася учит студентов - Vasya teaches students.
IIRC, there were questions about this word already.
Google Translate gave me not one but four translations: teach, learn, instruct, train.
9
Yes, it's slang. Качать means pump. This word (by my opinion) came from bodybuilders, who pump theirs muscles. Today this word got wide meaning as improve something. Прокачать игрового персонажа в Wow. - pump my hero in WoW. Phrase in question mead "I really want to improve my English skills".
9
My suggestions:
(web)site layout - макет сайта, оформление сайта
(web)page layout - макет страницы, разметка страницы
graphic design layout - макет, графический макет, макет изображения.
9
In the following explanation, translations are not at all word by word translations, and each translation relies on the context of the discussion used in the answer.
"Значит" translates to "means".
It is used however in some cases as a start of a told explanation, like this:
Значит так: я пойду за детьми а ты жди мастера
which would ...
9
You are right. It's a metonymy. Here's an extract from the dictionary
МЕТОНИМИЯ (переименование) (троп)– перенос названия с одного предмета на другой на основании их смежности. Переименование может быть связано с заменой названия произведения именем автора:
Читал охотно Апулея, а Цицерона не читал (А. Пушкин)
This kind of metonymy is called logical.
...
8
My personal understanding of written languages:
Belarusian: 75%
Ukrainian: 60%
Bulgarian: 40%
Macedonian: 40%
Serbian: 35%
Chech: 30%
Polish: 20%
8
What you are searching for is translit:
Translit is a method of encoding Cyrillic letters with Latin ones. [...]
The translit system arose when Russian speakers first needed to write their language on computers that did not support the Cyrillic script.
Basically what it means is that you will write russian words using the latin keyboard. There are ...
8
This ппц is an abbreviated way to write the word пипéц (pee-PETS) which is in its turn a euphemism for the word пиздéц (peez-DETS), an obscene way to say "God damn!" or "Fucking shit!" It's an exclamation and it has a wide range of meanings, a whole spectrum of them, begining with the expression of admiration and finishing with complete dislike, rejection, ...
8
Э́то is the subject in this case, it does not need to agree with пра́вда.
Э́то ма́льчик. It's / that's / this is a boy.
Э́то де́вочка. It's / that's / this is a girl.
Э́то молоко́. It's / that's / this is milk.
Э́то гру́ши. These / Those are pears.
When used attributively, the pronoun needs to agree with the attributed noun:
Э́тот ма́льчик ве́жливый. ...
8
The difference is mainly in word origin. Царь comes from Caesar and король comes from the name Карл, and its derivatives are used in Eastern Europe (however, it's цар in Bulgaria). The word king coming from German root is usually translated into Russian as король while Russian царь is used as tzar/tsar in English.
7
Usually it's said
они заключили брак/брачный союз/связали себя узами брака
This is the way used by News Sites, Agencies and so on.
Your last two variants sound strange and therefore are not used.
7
In the majority of cases it's actually not wrong to omit word "есть" and your particular example it is indeed completely acceptable to say just "У папы всегда вопросы".
In Russian whenever you can use "есть" (in sense to have) / "имеется" + noun you can omit this verb for affirmation. Examples:
У меня есть билет на концерт / у меня билет на концерт
Там ...
7
Выставка фотографов — это выставка, на которой представлены фотографии определенных фотографов. Это выражение используется с каким-нибудь определением (например "выставка молодых фотографов" или "выставка английских фотографов"). Так же как говорят "выставка художников" (опять же, обычно с определением). Имеется в виду, что фотографии на выставке выбраны ...
7
Well, "is it possible" heavily depends on what you actually want to achieve. If you intention is to have some sort of summary data, something like report, then you can go with:
Лиман — Казымяк, расстояние N км
If report-like approach is not an option, to sound natural you still need to know and use cases.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
