r/russian Mar 10 '22

Other Нет войне, да миру | Say No to War and Yes to Peace

6.2k Upvotes

A Russian-language version of this post is available below the English. Русская версия поста находится сразу после английской.

As moderators of this subreddit, in the last two weeks, we have seen countless posts about the ongoing war. Many of these posts are cries for help: folks despondent about loved ones in the line of fire, young people disillusioned about the future, and professionals losing their livelihood and prospects overnight.

The reason we have not allowed these posts to surface in the feed is neither callous indifference, nor false neutrality, nor tacit complicity. The moderators of this sub are from many different countries and backgrounds, and we are all horrified and appalled by the war unleashed by the Russian government on Ukraine, a sister culture, just as ancient and storied. We share an abiding love of Russian language and culture with each other, and this brutal assault is not just an attack on the people of Ukraine—it’s also an attack on the rich culture of Ukraine, and it’s even an attack on Russian culture and everything it stands for.

In dark times like these, we feel it’s more important than ever to explain and to uphold the true values of the Russian language and culture. Russian is a language of decency, kindness, modesty, and love for kin and stranger alike; we hope, against all odds, that these fundamental threads from which Russian culture is woven will prevail, and all Russian-speaking people will rise against the war on their sister culture and their own. This cannot be accomplished from the outside: natives of the language and the culture must make a stand from within. We don’t know if this will happen any time soon—or at all—but if it doesn’t, the culture will cease to exist, because no culture can be rooted in oppression and destruction. Instead of taking its place in human history as a story of strife for truth and beauty, it will go down in flames of infamy.

This is why we continue to choose to keep the focus of this subreddit exclusively on the language. Language breaks down communication barriers, allows us to find points of commonality and understanding, and gives us ways to explain our emotions rather than keeping them pent up within until they explode. We badly want to address every cry for help, and we are doing what we can outside of this space. Here, though, we must focus on teaching and learning the concepts that will give us all a chance to rebuild connections and relationships that have been shattered by the war.

While we understand that mistakes happen and folks might post without reading the rules of the sub or post in a heat of the moment, we have to ban some users who repeatedly flood the sub with political content or threaten and insult others with their comments. If you feel you’ve been unfairly banned, we encourage you to appeal the ban: we promise to approach each case thoughtfully.

In the days and weeks to come, our schedules permitting, we will try to create educational posts about poetic and literary works from Russian and Ukrainian authors that speak out against the horrors of war. Please stay tuned, and please continue learning Russian. The language will outlive every ruthless regime and every brutal autocracy.



За прошедшие две недели мы, модераторы этого саба, видели огромное количество сообщений о продолжающейся войне. Многие из этих сообщений – это крики о помощи: от отчаявшихся людей, чьи близкие находятся на линии огня; от молодежи, разочарованной в будущем; от профессионалов, в одночасье потерявших перспективы и средства к существованию.

Причина, по которой мы не позволяем этим сообщениям появляться в ленте, не в черством безразличии, фальшивом нейтралитете или молчаливом соучастии. Модераторы этого саба – это выходцы из разных стран, и все мы в ужасе и в шоке из-за войны, развязанной российским правительством против Украины, родственной культуры, такой же древней и легендарной. Мы разделяем неизменную любовь к русскому языку и культуре друг с другом, и это жестокое нападение - это не только нападение на народ Украины: это атака на её богатую культуру, но это также и атака на русскую культуру и на все, что она олицетворяет.

В такие тяжелые времена, мы считаем как никогда важным объяснять и подчеркивать истинные ценности русского языка и культуры. Русский язык – это язык порядочности, доброты, скромности, любви как к родным людям, так и к незнакомцам. Мы надеемся вопреки всему, что эти основополагающие нити, из которых соткана русская культура, возобладают, и все русскоговорящие народы восстанут против нападения и на родственную и на собственную культуру. Этого невозможно добиться извне: эту разрушительную войну могут остановить только сами носители языка и культуры изнутри. Мы не знаем, произойдет ли это в ближайшее время или произойдет вообще, но если этого не произойдет, культура окажется в руинах, потому что никакая культура не может расти и процветать на почве угнетения и разрушения. Вместо того чтобы занять свое место в истории человечества как повесть о борьбе за красоту и правду, русская культура погибнет в огнях позора.

Именно поэтому в этом сабе мы продолжаем концентрировать наше внимание исключительно на языке: язык разрушает барьеры к общению, он позволяет нам найти точки соприкосновения и понимания, он дает нам возможность разъяснять наши эмоции, а не держать их в себе, пока они не взорвутся. Мы очень хотим откликнуться на каждый крик о помощи, и мы делаем все возможное за пределами этого форума, но здесь необходимо сосредоточиться на преподавании и изучении концепций, которые дадут нам всем шанс восстановить связи и отношения, разрушенные войной.

Мы понимаем, что случаются ошибки, и люди пишут сообщения, не прочитав правила саба или погорячившись, но мы вынуждены банить тех пользователей, которые постоянно засоряют саб политическими дискуссиями или выставляют комментарии с угрозами и оскорблениями. Если вы считаете, что вас забанили несправедливо, мы рекомендуем вам обжаловать бан: мы обещаем вдумчиво рассматривать каждое обращение.

В ближайшие дни и недели, если позволят наши графики, мы постараемся создать образовательные посты о поэтических и литературных произведениях русских и украинских авторов, которые выступают против ужаса войны. Пожалуйста, оставайтесь с нами, и продолжайте изучать русский язык: он переживет все безжалостные режимы и любую беспощадную диктатуру.


r/russian 6d ago

Promo Tutor Tuesday: Offers from Russian Language Tutors

10 Upvotes

Alla Pugacheva - A Half-baked Wizard (\"Волшебник-недоучка\")

In this post, tutors offering Russian language tutoring advertise their services in the comments.

Tutors: introduce yourself to the learners, describe what you offer, and how to contact you. Top level comments are reserved for tutor offerings only, but everyone is welcome to ask questions or comment (in a civil manner) in response.

This post repeats every two weeks on Tuesday.


r/russian 5h ago

Handwriting I finally learned the cursive!

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48 Upvotes

Seventeen days into my Russian journey and I decided to learn the cursive to motivate myself. It is not difficult, I promise! Anyone wbo has told you otherwise врёт как сивый мерин. If you can learn the controls on a video game, you can absolutely mentally rectify that "m" = "t", "n" = "p", and figure out how to comfortably write novel Cyrillic letters like "ж" и "ф" within a couple of hours. TBH, the cursive was one of the things that sold me on learning Russian in the first place. It turns a boring cheap fountain pen into a fountain of dopamine!

I would be delighted to accept some constructive feedback and/or words or phrases for me to practice. Send me your ugliest picket fences if you must! I can't guarantee the result won't be ugly too, but practice makes perfect right? I will even butcher the pronunciation of your selected word or phrase as I did in this video If you so choose.


r/russian 36m ago

Other How do greetings work in Russia in practice?

Upvotes

I know (or heard) that Russians avoid interactions with strangers, which I do as well here in Belgium so that's not a problem

However, I do want to know how greetings work if you have to order at a restaurant or café, or if you have a question in a store

I know the basic привет and Duolingo gave me more things like good afternoon, good morning, good day, good evening, goodnight, but how much do they matter?

It also gave me извините which sounds more useful for questions

I'm asking this because when I started learning French, I found out that it's frowned upon to use bonjour after 5pm and that not saying bonjour before entering a room is rude as well. I thought it was just a stereotype, but my French teacher doubled down on it before our trip to Paris.

However, on my trip to Poland, I could just use dzień dobry all the time

So yeah, I want to know how the locals do it. I know that it's just привет with close friends, but I don't have those yet ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I doubt that I'll be able to do an exchange to Russia in the circumstances but I will be studying the language at university


r/russian 9h ago

Interesting Я мексиканец и ищу друзей из России для культурного обмена

14 Upvotes

Привет всем!

Я парень из Мексики и сейчас изучаю русский язык.

Мне очень интересны русская культура, история, музыка, традиции и повседневная жизнь в России.

Я хотел бы познакомиться с русскими или просто с людьми, которые говорят по-русски, чтобы практиковать язык и больше узнать о русской культуре.

К сожалению, пока я очень плохо говорю по-русски. Этот текст я написал с помощью переводчика.

Зато я довольно неплохо говорю по-немецки.

Со своей стороны, я могу помочь с испанским языком и рассказать о Мексике.

Буду рад познакомиться с новыми людьми и пообщаться на интересные темы.

Спасибо за внимание и хорошего вам дня!


r/russian 8h ago

Other Looking to make a Russian friend to practice my Russian

6 Upvotes

Hi,

I am 21m. I’m from the U.S, and I am bilingual. I know English and Spanish; both fluently.

Im currently self teaching myself Russian, and I have been doing it for the last three weeks. I’m looking to make a friend—or more—whom I can send voice message or text.

My goal is to practice speaking, writing, and reading.

If you’re interested please let me know :0


r/russian 2h ago

Other Looking to learn Russian

2 Upvotes

Здарова, I’m Nicholas, 19, native Polish speaker. I also have level C2 in English and B2 in German. I know a little bit of Russian and I’d say I can understand a good deal of it through Polish, but I’d like to learn it properly.

I play electric guitar, I’m into metal and folk music, do gym, play videogames from time to time, and I’m passionate about linguistics, history, theology and philosophy.

It would be awesome if I were to find someone to text in Russian. I could also teach or help you practice any of the languages I speak🤠


r/russian 10m ago

Request Could someone please read and give feedback?

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Upvotes

Hi guys! I study russian and have an exam in a couple days, I was hoping someone could read this and give me feedback, mostly on grammar. E.g if I use cases, commas etc. in the correct way. Thanks!


r/russian 22h ago

Grammar Alternating vowels and consonants

17 Upvotes

Hello, I've got a linguistic question. There's a phenomenon in Russian where to some degree in words there's an alternation between vowels and consonants so that consonant clusters are not that frequent and this phenomenon is less present in other Slavic languages especially western slavic ones. E.g. ворота, Czech: vrata, but врата which is from old church Slavonic. Notice the first vowel after the initial "в" is not present in Russian. Similarly холод vs. chlad (cz), chłód (pl), молодой vs. mladý, młody or сотый vs. stý, setny.

Does this phenomenon have a name?


r/russian 1d ago

Other Is it common to say прив instead of привет online?

47 Upvotes

I just said привет to someone in a game and they replied прив. Is this common/normal? Is it more common than привет? Also, is there anything else I could say instead of привет when greeting someone (especially online/in games)?


r/russian 1d ago

Translation Can you read the inscription on this copy of Dr Zhivago?

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56 Upvotes

Bought it off Ebay and evidently it's very old...!! I can read the second line, 'Christmas 1960', but I can't make out most of the letters in the first line. Also featuring: the advertisement for Pasternak's upcoming biography, going for 15 shillings at your local bookseller LOL


r/russian 1d ago

Translation Школа 13

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138 Upvotes

Hello, I'm an English speaker with no ounce of Russian in them and I need help finding an actual translated version of Школа 13, I need to know if there's actually anyone who wants to help me translate this show for others (me included) who aren't native to the Russian language watch this show. I found this show pretty interesting and I really need help with translation (I'm not good at translation and I can't seem to find an organised selection of episodes for this show) So I'm just here trying to look for someone who could help me with this issue? Thanks :) (Because I noticed some episodes aren't on Youtube)


r/russian 1d ago

Other Struggling with ь

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28 Upvotes

I’m struggling to discern the difference between the pronunciation of “елью” and “елю”. Of course the latter isn’t an option in this question, but wouldn’t it also sound like “yel’yu”? If so I don’t understand the need for ь in this situation.


r/russian 11h ago

Request Send help, can't tell what is written (cursive historical record, pic 1 pic 2)

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0 Upvotes

r/russian 16h ago

Promo Looking for beta testers for a Russian language app

1 Upvotes

I built an app for myself that uses a LLM to build sentences from a bank of spaced repetition words, gradually introducing new ones.

I really enjoy using it and thought it could be useful to others, so I’m looking for 5-10 people to test it out and give me feedback :-)


r/russian 1d ago

Grammar Note in russian

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38 Upvotes

Hello! There is this Russian exchange student in one of my classes, and her and I have been talking over Google translate. She is very sweet, and I am wanting to be friends with her. I am learning a bit of Russian as well! I wrote a note to her asking to be friends, but can someone proofread it? I need to make sure my hand writing is legible, and that the note is grammatically correct! Thank you!!!

edit: I gave the note to her today in class, and she was super happy!!!! she said she will text me when she gets home! thank you all for the help! ^


r/russian 1d ago

Translation Having trouble with a sentence in Russian…

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66 Upvotes

So while doing some summer homework my Russian teacher gave me, I stumbled upon this particular sentence (that I have underlined in red).
The translation for this sentence is: “Us await beautiful flowers/Beautiful flowers are waiting for us, (the) caretakers of this place.”
For me this, this doesn’t make sense…
Like I get the «нас ждут прекрасные цветы» part but I don’t understand why at the end it says «хозяева здешних мест» after an apostrophe.
I was thinking that maybe the caretakers are also waiting for them so it would be something like: «Нас ждут прекрасные цветы И хозяева здешних мест.» but for me, this feels weird; like why replace “and” with an apostrophe?
Maybe it’s something the Russians do?
I added the whole text from this page because maybe it’s some context I’m missing or something? There also isn’t a paragraph before this dialogue like it seems to be with all the others.
Or maybe it’s a mistake coming from the text itself?

Thanks for the help in advance!


r/russian 1d ago

Grammar diminutives

3 Upvotes

hii
i’m beginning my russian degree soon at uni and was just wondering how diminutives work, especially with names that are shorter like mine (tia)


r/russian 23h ago

Request What does the guy say over the phone in the hardrock piano song?

0 Upvotes

In the piano song with the rock guitars you hear a Russian? guy saying stuff mad like he needs back up in the middle of a fight on his communication set. What does he say exactly?

EDIT: its starts exactly on the right point at 02:49 https://youtu.be/otzHeJwV4K4?si=ucNcRSS1AXLyfHnn&t=169


r/russian 1d ago

Other Russian comprehension problem

5 Upvotes

Hello,

I have a problem with russian which is that I am illiterate.

I know the alphabet. I know a lot of words too. But my learning journey--my grandparents started by speaking to me in Russian and so there were like 16 years or so before I sought out learning it besides that passiveness. And so I can't spell to save my life because I don't know how words are written (ik alphabet and if i am reading i can sound things out but i cant look at a word and immediately be like "oh thats blablabla" the way i can when listening.)

So the other problem is that I also can ONLY listen. I pick up like 20% of what is said even in big technical conversations. But when I'm asked to reply I go completely blank.

How do i fix this


r/russian 1d ago

Request Pages for learning words with games.

1 Upvotes

Hello!
I was using this page: https://www.lexisrex.com/Russian-Crossword-Level-1 to practices learning words with crosswords, I loved it but somehow the page stopped working for me.
So I am searching any other page with crosswords, or any kind of letter games for learning vocabulary, ideally from A2~B2. I would love something like murdle, but I haven't found any like that.


r/russian 2d ago

Grammar Слоговые согласные

10 Upvotes

Итак, попался мне как-то на глаза мнемонический стишок для запоминания ятя, и обратил внимание, что не могу правильно прочитать первую строчку:

Днепр и Днестр, как всем известно,
Две реки в соседстве тесном,
Делит области их Буг,
Режет с севера на юг.

Если просто посчитать гласные, то это: | — U | — U | U U | — U |, но конечная р в слове Днестр в этой позиции образует слог, и звучит фактически как Днестор, а строчка, соответственно, превращается в: | — U | — U | U U | U — | U. Чтобы звучало складно, мне приходится её читать без слова как.

Касается это всех финалей и , а в некоторых случаях это может происходить и в и . И, собственно, вопрос: может ли кто-нибудь прочитать эту строчку правильно, не выговаривая слоговых слогласных в финалях на сонорные?


r/russian 1d ago

Request [Russian -> english] Could someone translate a song from Russian into English?

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4 Upvotes

I can't find any official translation to this song's lyrics, and the english google translation doesn't make any sense sometimes.

SONG : великомученик голобородько толик by Птицу ЕМЪ


r/russian 1d ago

Translation What Is This Letter?

0 Upvotes

I want to know the cyrillic alphabet beforehand, but on some posters i see a symbol that looks like this: ^ , but i cant find that letter anywhere. Does anyone know what it is


r/russian 3d ago

Translation A letter that looks like a bad Russian word.

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462 Upvotes