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Dear subscriber,

Today we are going to discuss some English to Russian translation peculiarities. We are going to talk about one of the ways to simplify your learning process and its pitfalls.

The idea behind this issue came to me while I was practising my English with an American guy who recently arrived in Russia from Alaska (remember: practice is everything when you are learning aforeign language).

So we were talking about international words that are actually spelled similar both in English and in Russian. There are a lot of those e.g. engineering, mechanical etc. I am sure that if you read Russian newspapers, books, or news-feeds in the Internet you come across those pretty often. And when you see a word like director you are pretty confident that it is actually директор in Russian. And that's the main mistake. The similarity of such words may be deceiving sometimes so their meanings may differ dramatically. So директор actually means a school principal or a CEO in Russian, and not the director in its original meaning.

Now I am going to list several words you've gotta learn by heard and never forget them.

Аккуратный - tidy, not accurate;
аллея - avenue, not alley;
амуниция - accouterments, not ammunition;
ангина - quinsy, not angina;
кабинет - private office, not cabinet;
картон - cardboard, not carton;
клозет - toilet, not closet;
колонна - column, not colon;
композитор - composer, not compositor;
декада - 10 days, not decade;
датчанин - Dane, not Dutchman;
экзамин - exam or test, not examine;
гениальный - genius, not genial;
интеллигентный - cultural, not intelligent;
инструменты - tools, not instruments;
лифт - elevator (am., can.), not lift;
магазин - shop, store, not magazine;
национальность - ethnicity, not nationality;
патетический - emotional, not pathetic;
патрон - cartridge, not patron;
фон - background, not phone;
реализовывать - implement, not realize;
секс - sex in its pairing meaning, not gender (пол);

These are just several words that may confuse you. There are actually much more of them. Maybe I will list them later on my website.

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Dear subscriber,

I am going to start this issue with a little conversation I want you to translate on the spot.

- Ты ей звонил?
- Да нет.

So what does that mean? Did he call her or not? Why is he using 'да' along with 'нет'? In this issue I am going to talk about the "да" word. This word seems to be easy, but there are several peculiarities you have to know about.

Meanings:

The first meaning of this word is 'yes'. I am sure you know this.

The second meaning is 'and'. Example:

- Что было на ужин?
- Суп да спагетти.

- What was for dinner?
- Soup and spaghetti.

The third meaning will help you to understand what that conversation was about. It means...nothing. People just use it to express their attitude to the matter. They may be irritated or absolutely neutral to something when they add 'da' in the beginning of the sentence. it all depends. You may simply neglect it in this case.

Examples:

- Ты пойдешь со мной к маме?
- Да нет!!!! (like he told her many times that he's not going but she's asking him again).

- Его отчислили!
- Да ладно! (C'mon! You've gotta be kidding me!)

- Пойдем в кино?
- Да можно (Yes. Why not? можно = Yes in this case).

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I am sorry for double sending the issue. The first one had problems with html tags.

Dear subscriber,

Today I am going to talk about conditional sentences in Russian. According to the Wikipedia, conditional sentences are are sentences discussing factual implications or hypothetical situations and their consequences. Both in English and in Russian conditional sentences can be divided into the two broad classes of factual/predictive and hypothetical (counterfactual).

Factual/predictive conditional sentences

Я задержу доставку, если вы предоставите мне хорошую для этого причину.
In English this sentence will look like this: I will postpone the delivery if you give me a good reason for that. As you can see both verbs 'задержу' and 'предоставите' in the Russian sentence are in the Future form unlike in English where the second verb is in the Present Indefinite form.

Hypothetical (counterfactual) sentences

Автор бы дописал книгу, если бы не был так занят. The author would have finished the book if he wasn't that busy. The 'бы' particle indicates the hypothetical of the sentence. You have to put it both in the first and the second parts of the sentence before or after the verb. Ex.: Автор дописал бы книгу, если не был бы так занят.

Traditionally, I am finishing this issue with a proverb:

Глаза боятся, а руки делают.

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Dear subscriber,

It has been a while since you last heard from us, or maybe this is your first time reading our newsletter if you subscribed recently. However, we hope that you haven't stopped learning Russian language and that you constantly practising it.

In this newsletter I am going to talk about shortenings in Russian. Most of the shortenings in Russian, of course, refer to slang. For example, the Russian word 'что' [shto] is often replaced with an easy to pronounce 'чо' [cho] (you might have noticed that although the first letter in the aforesaid words look the same they are pronounced in different ways. You must learn that [chto] is the wrong pronunciation of the 'что' word!). Another shortening is 'шо' [sho] which is used in the southern regions of Russia and in Ukraine.

Here are some of the other common shortenings you may happen to come across in Russian:

General words:

1) Здравствуйте - здрасьте;
2) Нет - не;
3) Тебе (тебя) - те (тя);
4) Может - мож;
5) Что ли - штоль (шоль);
6) Только - тока;

Handy words:

1) Интренет - инет;

Internet shortenings:

1) Спасибо - спс;
2) Хрен знает (heck if I know) - хз;
3) Пипец (see Russian slang dictionary at MyRussianorg) - ппц;
4) ИМХО - in my humble opinion;

As always, I am going to end this newsletter with a Russian saying:

На одном гвозде всего не повесишь.
(You can't hang everything on a single nail).

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