Russian Phrases For Dummies

by Andrew D. Kaufman, Nina Wieda, Serafima Gettys

Traveling in a foreign country such as Russia suddenly becomes a lot more exciting when you can engage in elegant small talk with the locals. Russian Phrases For Dummies is your handy guide to everyday words and phrases you can start using immediately to make your visit more rewarding and a whole lot easier. This user-friendly phrasebook will jump-start your comprehension and have you speaking basic Russian in no time. Its quick-and-easy approach gives you language fundamentals up front, the Words to Know section helps you find the right word fast, and the easy-to-use pronunciation key helps other people understand what you're trying to say. You'll learn how to: Don't have time to study the language before you get to Russia? No worries. Just flip through Russian Phrases For Dummies, find the section that fits your needs, and start talking!

Genres: Russia, Nonfiction

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

An innovative, award-winning teacher of Russian language, literature, and culture, Dr. Andrew D. Kaufman holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Stanford University and has spent the last twenty years bringing alive the Russian classics to Americans young and old. Dr. Kaufman, whose titles include Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times (Simon & Schuster, May 2014), Understanding Tolstoy and Russian for Dummies (coauthor), is a featured Tolstoy expert on Oprah.com, and he is frequently invited to discuss Russian literature and culture on national and international television and radio programs.

An internationally recognized Tolstoy scholar, Dr. Kaufman has lectured at the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at the Leo Tolstoy Museum and Estate at Yasnaya Polyana.

Dr. Kaufman also trained and worked as a professional actor for close to a decade. He helps people appreciate the rich tradition of Russian literature, and draws on his acting skills to create captivating and enlightening talks, as well as inspirational readings from the Russian classics.

Currently he is a Lecturer and Faculty Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he founded and teaches a community-based literature course, “Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership,” in which students lead discussions about Russian literature with incarcerated youth at juvenile correctional centers in Virginia.

Reviews

[Mel Vil]

Traveling in a foreign country such as Russia suddenly becomes a lot more exciting when you can engage in elegant small talk with the locals. Russian Phrases For Dummies is your handy guide to everyday words and phrases you can start using immediately to make your visit more rewarding and a whole lot easier.

This user-friendly phrasebook will jump-start your comprehension and have you speaking basic Russian in no time. Its quick-and-easy approach gives you language fundamentals up front, the Words to Know section helps you find the right word fast, and the easy-to-use pronunciation key helps other people understand what you're trying to say. You'll learn how to:

Get directions, shop, and eat out Talk numbers, dates, and time Chat about family and work Discuss sports and the weather Deal with problems and emergencies Pronounce familiar English words and phrases in Russian and English Beware of words that sound to English but don't mean the same...

Book Last Read: 2017-02-11 09:56:55
Percentage Read: 28%
Chapter 16: Chapter 3: Numerical Gumbo: Counting of All Kinds
Highlight
Chapter Progress: 25.0%
Highlight: poldyen’ (pohl-d’ehn’; literally: half-day). When you want to say “midnight,” you say polnoch’ (pohl-nuhch; literally: half night).
Chapter 16: Chapter 3: Numerical Gumbo: Counting of All Kinds
Highlight
Chapter Progress: 25.0%
Highlight: polovina literally means “half of,” not “half past.”
Chapter 16: Chapter 3: Numerical Gumbo: Counting of All Kinds
Highlight
Chapter Progress: 26.0%
Highlight: put the numeral after the word byez into the genitive case.
Chapter 16: Chapter 3: Numerical Gumbo: Counting of All Kinds
Highlight
Chapter Progress: 26.0%
Highlight: utro, dyen’, vyechyer, and noch’ in instrumental case.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure it and its companion book "Russian for Dummies" may be fine and accurate, and this is probably just about me, but I feel like I've advanced enough in reading Cyrillic lettering that the total lack of it in these books, + having to rely on someone's transliteration (accurate though it may be) is actually a step backward.