3+ BENEFITS OF KNOWING THAT “МЕНЯ ЗОВУТ” IS NOT “MY NAME”

Well, of course, it is. But not literally.

If you look up “name” and “my” in the dictionary, you’ll get “имя” and “мой”. So, you can translate “My name is Anastasia” as “Моё имя Анастасия”. It is technically right… except that we never use this phrase in spoken language.

We use “Меня зовут Анастасия”, which means something slightly different.

So, why care about the literal meaning of “меня зовут”? After all, you can just memorize this phrase and start using it! It’s enough to get by.

Of course, you can.

But if you know the pattern and can decode it, you get additional benefits over someone who just memorized the phrase from his CD. You’ll be at least 3 steps ahead.

Let’s see what you can get if you dig deeper!  Continue reading

IS RUSSIAN HARD?

You have a dream: an adventure, a discovery of the Russian speaking world, a deep connection with a local. They probably don’t even speak much English. So you’ll need to speak Russian at intermediate level at least.

Yet you keep hearing how hard Russian is. Maybe you’ve already experienced it firsthand and are wondering – how much harder can it get?

Ok, you’re always up for a challenge. But you don’t want to spend 10 years of your life learning a language.

So you are not sure if it’s all worth it. Is it doable at all?

Let’s sort it out.

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1 RUSSIAN LANGUAGE SECRET TO BETTER UNDERSTAND NATIVE SPEAKERS

Guess what it is.

Sometimes you don’t understand what a Russian speaker says. Even though you know all the words. Or you think you understand it but then you realize it was something totally different!

This is something you won’t learn from CDs or apps. And even textbooks don’t make an emphasis on it.

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