Posted by Josefina
Good question! Of course there’s more to Russia than the Red Kremlin of Moscow and the bridges of Saint Petersburg, though you sometimes tend to forget about the rest, especially if you haven’t been there (which I suppose most tourist haven’t, only in those cities located along the railroad going east from the capitol). Russians call “the rest” «провинция» and there’s a standard joke going around that foreigners call it “Siberia”. I think it is very unfair that most of Russia gets almost none of the attention, not only because these unknown parts of this country are more beautiful (though often they are) but because they ARE this country. How about the white Kremlin in Tobolsk? Or the San Francisco-esque hills of Krasnoyarsk? Or the wide and long prospects of Novosibirsk? Or the religious mixture of Muslim and Orthodox traditions in Kazan? Not to talk about the amazing view of the Don in Rostov-na-Donu! The list of big cities in Russia – with over or almost a million inhabitants – can be made much longer. And though Russia is still overly centralized, with Moscow as the old faithful bellybutton keeping the whole country together, things look like they are changing, at least if the article «Где в России можно жить» in №11 (March 27 2008) of «Русский репортёр» is anything to judge by.
«Стремление к разнообразию в жизни в горожанах неистребимо» = “The striving for diversity in life in city dwellers is indestructible”. Here’s some diversity among city dwellers in the form of a Saturday afternoon walk in Парк отдыха и культуры имени В. В. Маяковского [Park of rest and culture named in honor of V. V. Mayakovsky] in Yekaterinburg.
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Posted by Josefina
Today my plan was to comment on one of two news, either «Психолог для грешников» [http://www.izvestia.ru/lpage/article3114416/] or «Православная общественность намерена переименовать Свердловскую область» [http://www.e1.ru/news/spool/news_id286954.html] but during the day my mood changed, from being religiously aware (obviously, if judging by the headlines I chose in the morning) and thus aware of the ‘other’ world, to becoming more aware of the real world around me. All day I couldn’t get the word «иномарка» out of my head. I remembered how I once read in the paper about a car crash, and that it said: «две иномарки столкнулись на Малышева». The word was new to me then, but I didn’t have to look it up in the dictionary to understand what it meant. The sentence means that two foreign cars got into a car crash on Malyshev Street, and not a Волга or a Жигули or a Нива because those are called «наши машины». And when they crash into each other they’re not crashing as ‘Russian cars’ like foreign cars always tend to do, but just as plain cars. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how wonderful it is to study a foreign language, because you’re not just learning new words and new phrases and a different kind of grammar, but simultaneously getting to know a new and different way of looking at the world. Since I began working as a teacher of Swedish at a Russian university I’ve learned so much about my own language, and about Russian too, that I can’t complain about anything – not even the lack of a paycheck or the fact that I get no assistance whatsoever. I have learned how deep and entwined cultural differences really are and also that these differences are what makes us so much alike at the same time. For example, in Russian (as it seems to me) it is important to make clear what’s not yours, what is unfamiliar, as in Swedish the important thing to stress is the opposite – what’s yours, what is familiar. In Swedish you put the word ‘my, mine’ in front of everything that belongs to you. In Russian that’s not the norm, in fact such a use is foreign alltogether in this language. Instead it points out what’s not yours by putting the little adjective «иной» [other, another; else; some, certain], sometimes in a shortened form, in front of words.
Does «Звезда Сибири» [The Star of Siberia] only sell иномарки? Who knows? But this car is surely not Russian? (Feel free to correct me, I know nothing about cars…)
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Posted by Josefina
Already on the 28th of February 1866 a certain Mr. Fyodor Tyutchev [Фёдор Тютчев] realized what a mystery the Russian Soul is to us ‘non-Russians’ and that’s probably what he was thinking of when he wrote these classical lines: «Умом Россию не понять, Аршином общим не измерить, У ней особенная стать, В Россию можно только верить» I’m not even going to try and translate this poem as beautifully as it deserves to be translated, not only because that’s not what I planned to write about today (what I really want to talk about today is phraseology with the word душа) but also because I can’t. It’s not that I don’t speak Russian well enough; I don’t know good enough English to do it. The general meaning of the poem is as follows: it is impossible to understand Russia with one’s mind, she [Russia is a woman in Russian language] is special and can’t be measured in the same way as other countries; in Russia one can only believe. And what better way to believe but by using our soul? In Russian language the frequency of the word ‘soul’ in every day speech is so high that I don’t even know where to begin, but I know that I want to speak about this, no matter how difficult it will be for me (I am after all an alien, despite all these years in the Motherland) because it is such a central, such a vital piece of Russia. If you don’t try your best to understand the Russian Soul, you’ll never even get the slightest chance of understanding Russia. The Russian Soul has its own logic (it really does, though at first it might seem to be the absence of logic). The Russian Soul is proud but deep, it is devoted but transitory, it is playful but serious. The Russian Soul is kind, open, tolerant, affectionate and always ready invite a stranger into their kitchen and serve them a cup of tea.
Душа (acc. душу; pl. души, pl. gen. душ, pl. dat. душам) – soul.
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Posted by Josefina
Like any other town with a little bit of self-respect, my Russian hometown at the moment, Yekaterinburg, has its own website with all sorts of indispensable information about the city, enlightening both for locals and visitors. The portal’s address is www.e1.ru and the other day I came across a piece there which screamed out loud and clearly what every single citizen of this city is thinking these days – that it’s dirty here. Down right filthy. Incredibly muddy. As a foreigner you can get away with wearing the only foot wear capable of resistance – резиновые сапоги [rubber boots] – and thus still be able to move around streets that are soaked with a special kind of black or brown ‘chunky’ water. If you’re Russian you will of course not submit yourself to such a Western faupaux in public and rather spend about thirty minutes every night scrubbing your shoes clean. This is my fourth spring in Russia, the second in the Urals, and I thought my disgust at the rivers of mud outside was only a result of me getting more sensitive with age. Little did I know that I am actually getting more tolerant and that the streets here are actually gross enough for our city to be awarded the prize of “Russia’s Dirtiest City”. Anyone who has been to Russia in spring time can confirm that such a prize is saying a lot, and earning it is only possible through ‘the natural calamity known under the name of “spring in Russia’s third capitol”’.
Don’t let the ‘exterior of cleanness’ fool you into thinking this street is harmless – the menace of гололёд (or гололедица) [black ice] is lurking everywhere.
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Posted by Josefina
It is a well-known fact among students of any given language that it’s not when you understand what people say or even when you can answer them in a correct enough way for them to understand you that you have mastered the language. You can not say that you truly know a language until you not only know how to use phraseology, but also do in everyday speech. The phraseology for every language is highly specific, and in many cases sentences using the same imagery may not correspond to the same meaning as in another language. And, of course, vise versa. One of the best ways to start learning, or at least getting acquainted with, phraseology, is taking it bit by bit, step by step, not by meaning but by imagery. That’s why I have decided to divide this series of mine [I promise that I’m going to post at least one post on the subject a week, and also constantly be on the look-out for phraseology used in common speech in Russia, in books, movies, music and magazines] into different parts according to what part of the body is used in the expression. Because Russian, as most languages do, has a vast spectrum filled with remarkable idioms that involve different body parts.The first post, as you might have guessed already, will be about expressions using the word голова [head]. Вы готовы [are you ready]?
Found on a wall in Екатеринбург [Yekaterinburg]: ”In this world there is no lie or truth, no good or bad, there is only life and death”.
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Спасибо!"
