Category: Russian (Русский)

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

Is Russian losing ground?

By Simon

Since the break up of the Soveit Union, Russian has been losing ground in many of the former Soviet Republics, according to an article I found the other day. The “Year of the Russian Language”, which was officially opened in Paris in August, is an effort to address this trend by promoting the Russian language and culture outside Russia.

Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are the only former Soviet Republics where Russian is still has official status, alongside their own languages. Even in these countries Russian remains a contentious issue and there have been calls to make Belarusian to sole official language in Belarus. In Turkmenistan many Russian schools have been closed, and in Uzbekistan the number of Russian speakers has decreased significantly.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, English has replaced Russian as the most widely taught foreign language. The same is possibly true in other countries in Eastern Europe, though it has gained ground in Poland recently.

Learning Russian and Manx

By Simon

I’ve been learning Russian with Rosetta Stone for just over six months now and don’t feel like I’m making much progress. The Rosetta Stone Russian course is a fairly effective way of learning vocabulary and some sentence patterns, but not particularly useful if you want to learn how to converse in Russian. So I’m considering trying a different course. Any suggestions? As far as I can tell, the Teach Yourself Russian courses seem to be pretty good.

Why am I learning Russian? Well, a knowledge of that language would be quite useful to me when editing websites in Russian, and I am quite interested in Russian literature. I’ve read and enjoyed some Russian novels and short stories in English and French translation, and would quite like to be able to read them and others in the original – it will be quite a while before I can do that though, I think.

Ec y traa cheddin, ta mee gynsaghey Gaelg myrgeddin. Shegin dou jannoo ymmyd mennick jeh fockleyr, agh ta fys ennagh aym er y Ghaelg nish. Ta mee goaill gynsaghey çhengaghyn, ny çhengaghyn Celtiagh er lheh, as ta treisht orrym bee Gaelg flaaoil aym dy leah.

At the same time, I’ve also been learning Manx, and can now understand, speak, read and write it, at least to some extent, with frequent reference to a dictionary. The Manx courses I’ve been using are more focused on everyday language, and I’m more motivated to learn Manx.

Word of the day – плотник

By Simon

плотник (plotnik), noun = carpenter

After a break of a few weeks, I started studying Russian again today. This week’s lesson is about occupations. It provides the Russian words for various jobs, but unfortunately doesn’t tell you how to say “I am a …” or “I work as a …”. Such sentences will hopefully appear later in the course.

Other words for occupations include:

секретарь (sekretar’) = secretary
доктор (doktor) = doctor
медсестра (medsestra) = nurse
зубной врач (zubnoj vrač) = dentist
учитель (učitel’) = teacher
пекарь (pekar’) = baker
механик (mexanik) = mechanic
студент (student) = student

Word of the day – туфля

By Simon

туфля (tuflja), noun = shoe

This week’s Russian lesson is about clothes and this word just appeals to me. It sounds a bit like “tooth fly” – my way of remembering it is to imagine my shoes being full of flies with big teeth. This is quite a strange image, but that helps it to stick in my memory.

I also like the Welsh word for shoe – esgid – it sounds like skid, so to remember it, I think of people skidding around in their shoes. The word for a horseshoe is pedol, which conjures up images of horses pedalling bicycles.

Anois tá mé ag dul níos mó Gaeilge a fhoghlaim (Time to learn some more Irish now).

Word of the day – подбородок

By Simon

подбородок (podborodok), noun = chin

For the past three months I’ve been learning Russian with Rosetta Stone. I study one lesson a week and spend about half an hour to an hour a day on it. This week’s lesson is about parts of the body and I really like the sound of the word for chin in Russian.

Rosetta Stone courses come a CD-ROM and are designed to teach you entirely through the medium of the language you’re studying. As far as I can tell, all Rosetta Stone courses have the same format – you start learning individual words, such man, woman, boy girl, dog, elephant, etc. Then you learn how to combine them to together in increasingly complex phrases and sentences. The idea is that you’re supposed to pick up the pronunciation and grammar as you go along. In the case of the Russian course, it doesn’t teach you the Cyrillic alphabet, so it’s a good thing I already knew it before starting the course.

Each lesson consists of a series of exercises that drill you in listening, reading, speaking and writing. You can go through the lessons at your own pace, let the program take you through them, or test yourself.

Level 1 of these courses includes 92 lessons, Level 2 has 118. I have Levels 1 & 2 of the Russian course, so if I continue studying at the rate of one lesson a week it will take me over four years to complete the course. By 2010 I should be fluent in Russian then!

One frustating thing I’m finding with this course is that it has yet to teach me any useful everyday phrase – things like “hello”, “how are you?”, “good bye”, etc. It is giving me a thorough grounding in the basic vocabulary though.

Has anybody managed to complete a Rosetta Stone course? Are you now fluent in the language you used it to study? What did you think of the course?

You can find more information about Rosetta Stone courses at: www.rosettastone.com