Why Black Friday is Stupid in Russia

Ok, it's stupid not only in Russia, but in Europe, Asia or anywhere else except the United States.

I'm really getting tired of seeing Black Friday sales here in Moscow. There has already been one at Mvideo, a popular electronics store, on Halloween, and now there's a Black Friday sale there again that has been extended till December 9. I've asked my students and other Russians I know what they think Black Friday means, and they tell me it's just another word for discounts and sales. Some of them know that the tradition comes from America, but few of them have ever even heard of Thanksgiving.

This post will be interesting to those of you who are studying English but don't live in the U.S. I'm going to clear up what it all means, and you will finally understand how stupid it is to have Black Friday sales abroad.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that falls between Halloween and Christmas. It's an important holiday in America. According to the story that we all learn in kindergarten, the Pilgrims were bullied because of their religious beliefs and decided to settle in America. Problem was, they didn't know how to grow food and were starving to death because they couldn't feed themselves. The Indians, or native Americans if you want to be politically correct, saved them by teaching them how to grow corn, hunt for wild turkeys, and how to make pumpkin pie. They were so happy that they had a big feast. This of course happened before we started killing them and stealing their land.

Nice feast, but the Indians probably weren't invited

This probably wasn't true, but that's the story. Supposedly, they did have a feast, but it is doubtful that the Indians were invited, even though they helped them.  Another interesting historical fact is that the first question that the Indians asked the Pilgrims was if they had any beer. The Indians knew about beer because some sailors who had come before the Pilgrims had traded them alcohol, which the Indians didn't have, for their jewelry and stuff.

Anyway, none of that is really important. What is important is that on Thanksgiving day Americans get together and pig out on turkey and pumpkin pie. It's a day for eating and stuffing yourself. It falls on the last Thursday of November.  Since it's always on Thursday,  the next day, Friday, is also a day off. Before I came to Russia, in 1997, I don't remember doing anything else on this day but recovering after eating too much turkey. However, somewhere in the mid 2000s Black Friday became super popular. You see, stores make all their money for the Christmas shopping season. It's called Black because before that the stores are "in the red" meaning they still haven't made any profit, and after the Friday following Thanksgiving they are finally "in the black". It doesn't really have any connection with the crowds, madness and deaths that sometimes happen, which is what many people think.

Why is it so crazy? Well, the thing is that the big stores like Walmart like to get as many people to come as they can. They know that on the Friday after Thanksgiving people aren't working and are bored because all they are doing is sitting at home eating leftover turkey. So what they do is take a popular expensive item like big screen TVs, which normally cost say $1000, and they sell them for something stupidly cheap like $300. They actually lose money on the item, but that's okay because there aren't that many of them for sale. It's first come first serve. So since supply is limited and people know about that because of all the hype, they camp out in front of the store and stand in a huge line all night long. When the doors open, they all stampede in, running like crazy. There have been a couple of cases where people have actually died because of getting stepped on by all the other people who only care about getting cheap big screen TVs.

If you want to see how crazy it is, check out this video. If you want to see more, use the key words "Black Friday" plus "fights, crowds, or madness".

Of course, in Europe and Russia, they see how much money these stores are making and they want to copy the U.S. They don't care about how crazy or violent these sales are, they just want to make money. I think it's greedy and stupid. You can't have Black Friday unless you have a holiday like Thanksgiving where the next day is a day off. It just doesn't work.  

20 words a day

This is a new challenge I've set for myself in the languages I'm currently studying, French and Dutch. I'm recommending it for my English students as well. One of the biggest obstacles to learning a language is vocabulary, not only at the beginning, but later as well. If you only study what you learn at school and from textbooks, you will never learn real English. For speaking, it's possible to get by with only knowing about 3000 or so words. You can even get by just using 1000 if you're creative. However, you won't be able to make any progress in reading unless you know from 8000 - 10,000 words. Of course you will be able to get the general idea with fewer words, but it's still better to work on increasing our vocabulary and make it part of our daily practice.

Most students don't actively seek out and try to find new words, however. Why? Probably, just laziness and procrastination. Most students just do what the teacher gives them as homework. Others watch YouTube videos and read random articles, but don't look any words up. Of course, if you read and watch videos a lot, you will learn and pick up words from context. There is a whole methodology around this, which is known as extensive reading. It works, but you need to read and watch a lot for it to work. Actively looking for new words and trying to learn them sometimes is the most effective way to increase your vocabulary.

Why 20 words? It's a reasonable number of words to learn in a day. It usually takes less than 30 minutes to do. If you do it every day, you will know more than 7000 words at the end of the year.

What I do is find an article that I'm interested in. That's important. Don't try to make yourself read something you don't like. I prefer articles about popular psychology and motivation. These include a lot of everyday vocabulary that is useful to learn. Another interesting place to find words are on lists. You can google things like "100 things to do when  you are bored" or look up bucket lists. Lists are fun because they also include useful words and expressions and they aren't difficult to read.

When I find something I don't understand, I first look it up by using google translate and then I find the dictionary in a monolingual dictionary. Wiktionary is good for this. If you are trying to find out what a word means in English you can also find the definition by typing "definition: word" in Google.

Keep in mind that sometimes it's not just a word that you don't understand, but the phrase as a whole that operates as one unit. For example, the expression "every now and then" means "sometimes". Many students get confused because they understand each word on its own, but can't understand what the expression means because they are translating each word one by one into their own language and it doesn't make sense. This is one of the reasons why it is bad to translate in your head. However, even if you aren't doing this, these kinds of expressions can still be confusing. Google Translate, however, is getting better and better at translating these kinds of idiomatic phrases correctly.

 One I find the words, I write them down as a numbered list in Evernote. I sometimes also use Trello. You can use whatever note program you want, or keep a separate journal if you like writing things down by hand. I usually just write the word and sometimes a sentence or phrase using the word. I don't write the translation because the next day, I will review the list I wrote from the previous day. If I have forgotten some of the words, I will look them up again. It helps me to train my memory and figure out what words are giving me problems. If I still can't remember I don't worry about it too much. At a later date I can always make flashcards.

The important thing is to keep at it and do it every day. I don't follow my own advice, but I'm trying to improve. The hardest thing is to remember to do it. One thing that helps is to make it into a routine. Do it while your drinking coffee in the morning for example or while relaxing in the evening before going to bed. Let me know how it goes!

Useful Resources for Learning English

Google Translate: probably the most useful site ever for learning new words and expressions when reading English material on the web. It's true that the translations are often bad, but it's getting better and better. Remember that if you can't understand an individual words, you might need to translate the whole phrase or sentence. For example, in the expression "every now and then" you may understand every word individually but together it means "from time to time". If you use chrome, there is a very useful extension that you can download that can automatically translate words or phrases that you highlight.

Reverso Context: http://context.reverso.net/translation/ It's really important for learning new words to understand how they work in sentences. Context is very important for both remembering the words and how to use them. If you just try to memorize a word and its translation, you are wasting your time. Before the Internet, it was really hard to find good contexts. You would learn a new words and hope that you would meet it later somewhere in a book or newspaper article. Now you can easily find the words used in context. In addition to using Reverso Context, you can also try googling the word or expression and also use google image and YouTube. Imagine you're on a wild safari and that the words and expressions are wild animals, and you're meeting them in their natural habitat. The important thing is to have fun and enjoy learning new words!

Forvo: https://forvo.com/ is a useful site for learning how to pronounce words in English, or any other language, properly. All the words are pronounced by real native speakers. If you register, you can also request somebody to pronounce something if you don't find it on the site.

Flashcards Deluxe: This is an app for either iOS or Android. It's not free, but it is the best one I have found. There are other free apps that do the same thing that you can try out if you don't want to spend money. You can also do it the old-fashioned way and make physical cards. Flashcards are the best way to learn lots of vocabulary fast. The best way is to write on one side the word, and under it the sentence using the word. You can use either the sentence from what you are reading, or a sentence from Reverso Context. The important thing is that it is a good sentence that lets you guess what the word means. On the back, you can write either the translation, or a definition in English. Don't forget to write a sentence down using the word, that is the most important thing. Learning words without context is a big waste of time!

LingQ: https://www.lingq.com This is a very useful site for learning languages. It has a huge library of texts in English. At first all the words are highlighted blue, meaning they are unknown. You click on the words that you know and they get turned into lingqs, which are what they call flashcards, that you can review later. In addition, all the texts have audio, so you can listen to them as well. The only bad thing about the site is that you only get to make 20 lingqs for the free account.

English Geek

I'm in the process of creating a new blog, English Geek, on top of an old blog, Fun English Moscow. As you can see, it's been a very long time since I've written anything at all. I could say it's because I've been very busy and haven't had any time, but that would be a lie. The real reason is that I'm a helpless procrastinator and have just been putting this project off. Now, however, there have been some real changes in my life. I've decided to quit teaching at school and put my energy into freelancing and group lessons. I also want to spend more time creating materials and sharing useful information with other language learners. That's the main reason for starting this blog again.

Tired vs Sleepy

Living and teaching in Moscow, Russia for the last 14 years, I often notice interesting differences between the languages. My children, ages 10 and 4, who speak both languages, sometimes make interesting mistakes that illustrate these differences.

One mistake they make is in the usage of the Russian word for tired 'устать' (which
is a verb in Russian) and the word sleepy 'сонный'.

In English, the adjective 'tired' usually means the same as exhausted (often
from some sort of physical activity) like in the following examples:
examples.

I've worked all day and now at the end of the day I'm really tired.

I felt really tired after I ran around the block.

However, it can often mean the same as the adjective 'sleepy':

I'm tired so I'm going to bed.

I still feel tired even after 8 hours of sleep.

It is this latter meaning that is often surprising for Russian speakers. This is because in Russian, one uses the word for tired only in the meaning of being exhausted, such as after tiring physical activity or a long and difficult day. It is not simply a possible synonym for 'sleepy' as is possible in English. Therefore, it sounds really funny to hear it used by somebody who has just woke up. My youngest daughter often suprises my Russian nanny by saying "Не хочу вставть. Я устала." (I don't want to get up. I'm tired.) which often provokes the responce "От чего же ты устала?!" (What are you tired from?!)

Of course, in English, there is a distinction as in Russian, between the two words; however, some cases, especially in colloquial English, this distinction is not always so clear.

Sizzling in Moscow

It's hot. Sizzling hot. Riding the bus, walking, taking the metro everywhere you see red faces and sweaty bodies fanning themselves from the heat. Muscovites aren't used to such scorching temeratures and melt when the temperature rises above 30 degrees celsius (86 farenheit).

I'm originally from Texas where the summer temperatures are normally over 100 degrees farenheit (38 degrees celsius) and are often even hotter than that so to be honest, Moscow doesn't seem that blazingly hot to me. Today the temperature was over 33 C and I even went jogging at noon. The park where I ran seemed empty, but it was an illusion because everyone was hiding under the trees and avoiding the hot sunny spots except for girls covering themselves in cooking oil and frying their skin to a crisp. I had always heard that this was a bad bad bad idea. In Texas, especially, where you can fry an egg on the pavement, you would be in for some very severe burns.

A lot of people think that Texas is a desert and so they imagine it being very hot and dry. However, I'm from East Texas which is a land of pine forests and lakes. The wind blows in from the Gulf of Mexico, however, and so it's also very humid. If you want to know what it feels like, it's very much like being in a Russian banya.

In the summer there are often heat waves where the temperature is higher than 38 C (100 F) even getting as high as 45 C. At such times, there are often droughts, periods where it doesn't rain for a long time and it's illegal to water your lawn at such times. You have to be careful not to spend too much times outdoors or you can have a heat stroke and end up in the hospital. Since it's so hot during the day, it doesn't cool down that much at night either. Fortunately, most people have air conditioning, and almost all businesses and stores have theirs running at full blast so it's like walking into a freezer. Many people only notice the heat during the walk from their air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned mall. As kids, though, we notice the heat more from playing outside all day and mowing the lawn in hundred degree weather.

All these memories make Moscow seem like a cool oasis in comparison were it not for the lack of air-conditioning. Yes, some lucky people have it, but for only one month or so of fairly hot weather it hardly seems worth it. Still, the nights these days are fairly hot and humid and I often wake up sweaty, sticky and uncomfortable. The only good thing is that we don't have hot water this month and cold showers and lots of cold beer help to keep cool.

vocabulary
----------------
scorching = burning
blazingly = blazing = bright and burning like a fire
sweaty = sweat = the liquid that comes out of you when it's hot.
humid = wet or moist. Used when talking about hot weather, especially
in the expression hot and humid
sizzling = the sound that food makes when you fry it on a hot pan.
heat wave = a period of very high temperatures
heat stroke = a condition when you can collapse or pass out from extreme heat
drought = a long period when there is no rain and it is very dry.

When a Cottage is a Mansion and Other Misunderstandings

When you are studying a foreign language you sometimes meet words that are the same or similar to words in your own language. Sometimes the meaning is the same such as in the case of (so-called) international words like television, computer, and democracy. Sometimes, however the meanings are completely different. In this case they are known as faux amis or false friends of the translator. A good example of this is the English word accurate and the Russian word аккуратный (akkuratny). In English, accurate means precise, exact, or correct (точный) e.g., We were drunk when we wrote the report, so the results of the final analysis were not very accurate.

Another example of this is the English confuse and the Russian конфуз (konfuz). If you say I'm confused in English, you mean that you are mixed up or you don't know what to do. However, in Russian У меня конфуз means that you are embarrassed. I made this mistake when I first moved to Moscow in 1997. At that time, there were no traditional self-serve supermarkets. If you wanted to buy some cheese, for example, you first had to ask the person to weigh it and he or she (usually the latter) would tell you how much it cost. You had to remember this price and then go to a cashier's booth to pay. It was difficult enough just to remember the price, but there were even more questions from the cashier such as какой отдел? (which section?) Which should have been clear since I told her it was for cheese, but I was forced to name the correct section anyway. In frustration I said "У меня конфуз" I wanted to say that I was confused and all mixed up, but what I actually said was that I was embarrassed, and from the look the cashier gave me (like I was from another planet) I immediately realized my mistake.

These are examples of when the meaning is completely different, but there are other cases when the basic meaning is the same, but the connotation is different. Connotation is a linguistic and stylistic term that means the coloring or feeling of a word. It's the picture in our head and the feeling we get when we hear a word. A good example of this is the word cottage, a word that has found its way into the Russian language as коттедж. This is the first image you get when you google image the word cottage:



In fact, most definitions on the Internet define a cottage as a small, modest single-story house. I personally picture small cottages with grass thatched roofs in English countryside.

However, in Russian the word коттедж has a much different connotation. Here is the first google image you get when you enter коттедж in Russian:

It's what I would call a mansion, worlds apart from the modest English cottage.
When I ask my Russian speaking students what they think of when they hear the word cottage in Russian, they all basically describe a big expensive house in the suburbs.

Linguistically, this is all very interesting. One important lesson that should be learned is to always pay attention to words and how they are used in a foreign language and never assume that they are the same as in your native tongue.

Dacha is a Word in English

It's summer now, so a lot of my students here in Moscow are relaxing and taking it easy at their dachas.

Dacha is an interesting word because it is one of relatively few loan words from the Russian language to make its way into English.

Actually, I'm lying--there are more such words than you might think, and you can find a long list
here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Russian_origin


Many of my students are surprised to hear that it is an official English word, and translate the Russian word dacha as summer house, country home or something similar. Yet here it is, listed in Websters if you don't believe me.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dacha

1. 
   
2. 
   

Main Entry: da·cha

Pronunciation: \ˈdä-chə also ˈda-\

Function: noun

Etymology: Russian, from Old Russian, land allotted by a prince; akin to Latin dos dowry — more at date

Date: 1896

: a Russian country cottage used especially in the summer

Because I'm lazy, I'm not going to write a detailed essay on the dacha; so much has been written already, for example, this entertaining and informative article

http://www.sras.org/russian_dacha

Please note the wonderful pun in the title "Dacha wanna be Russian"

If you say "Don't you want to be Russian" quickly, it comes out sounding like "Donchu wanna be
Russian" and hence the pun.

What I'm attempting here is simply to give my impressions and thoughts on a word that has become a part of the English language, and what that word means to me.

In the United States not many people have dachas, and I would guess that few know what this word means except those who have travelled to Russia, study Russian as a foreign language, or who live in communities where there are a lot of Russian immigrants. While growing up in Texas, however, it was common to buy or rent lake homes -- small vacation houses in the country next to a lake. My grandparents had one when I was growing up and I suppose you could call it a dacha, only it had indoor plumbing.

When I think of a Russian dacha, I think of a traditional small wooden house without indoor plumbing. One prominent feature of nearly every dacha I have visited is the outhouse. An outhouse is a small wooden structure that serves as an outdoor toilet.

Another important aspect of the dacha is the garden. Here, I should talk a bit about the word garden. In British English if you talk about the garden, it can often mean if not clarified, the grassy area in front of you house or behind it. In American English, this is called a yard -- front yard or backyard. For Americans, a garden if not specified usually is interepreted to mean a vegetable garden. Really, there are three common kinds of gardens: vegetable, flower or herb. Herbs are aromatic plants used for seasoning. In Russia the most popular herbs are dill and parsley. It's imporant to note that there is no such thing in English as a fruit tree garden. Fruit trees are found in an orchard.

I will be writing more about gardening in a future post, so stay tuned!

VOCABULARY
----------------
to take it easy = to relax
loan word = a word borrowed from another language
pun = a play on words.
lake home = a kind of vacation home (dacha) located near a lake
outhouse = an outdoor toilet
orchard = a "garden" of fruit trees
indoor plumbing = water, pipes, and toilet located indoors

Efficient or Effective?

One word that tends to cause a lot of difficulty for my Russian speaking students is the word 'efficient'. Part of the problem is that there is no direct translation of this word in Russian. The word 'effective', however, does exist in Russian as 'эфективный' (effektivny) which, as you can see, is practically the same. So, when my students see 'efficient' they often mistakenly think it means the same as 'effective'.

However, while many people are both efficient and effective, it is possible to be effective, yet not efficient. Confused? You shouldn't be, because the words stress two very different things.

'Effective' stresses the positive result of something. For example, an effective language course is one that brings the desired result -- an improved knowledge of the language.

'Efficient' on the other hand, stresses speed and a reduction or minimization of waste. An efficient worker is basically one that does the job quickly and doesn't fool around and waste time.

When I was a teenager, I worked at Waldenbooks -- a big bookstore chain in the United States. Working in a bookstore, you tend to spend most of your time shelving books. Generally, you load up the new books on a cart and leisurely walk about the store shelving the books in no particular order. This of course in not very efficient.

Then the company called in an efficiency expert who walked around with a stopwatch and clipboard watching our every move -- something that made us all a bit nervous. After that, we had to go to a special meeting where the efficiency expert explained in meticulous detail how we were to shelve the books in a particular way and order to improve our efficiency.

Needless to say, we all hated this and promptly ignored the advice, returning to our inefficient ways as long as we were out of site of the manager. I nevertheless considered myself an effective employee as I loved helping customers find the books they needed and helped sell a good number of books.

So to summarize:

efficient = fast + no waste

effective = positive results

Learning English through Songs

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how you can most effectively study foreign languages on your own, independently and without a teacher.

Of course, it's wonderful if you can study with a teacher, but even in such cases the time you spend with the teacher is very small compared to all the hours during the week when you are not in the classroom. I do have students that don't do anything independently during the time they are not studying English with me, but such students naturally fail to make any progress.

There are many things you can do on your own, from studying grammer to reading articles and watching movies. Each of these activities can be useful, but what I'd like to share is something I have found especially effective and productive, and that is learning songs by heart.

Yes, lots of my students listen to songs in English, but not many take the time to learn the lyrics and listen frequently enough to learn the song by heart. It may sound like something tedious and full of drudgery, but it really isn't - it's simple and it's fun.

Before the Internet, if you wanted to learn a song from one of your favorite groups, you had to listen repeatedly and try to write down the words or lyrics to the song. If your language skills were not very high, this was almost impossible - you would have to find somebody to do it for you unless you were lucky to find a CD with printed lyrics.

Next you would have to look up each unfamiliar word in a dictionary - also time-consuming and tedious.

With the Internet, however, it's super simple to look up the lyrics to any song. Moreover, you don't even have to open a dictionary if you use automatic translation services such as Google translate. If you use firefox, there is even a plug-in for Google translate that allows you to right click on any highlighted text and translate the text into the language of your choice. This is an automatic, or machine translation which is bad in most cases and will even make you laugh at how horrible it is, but at least you will see all unfamiliar words translated and get a basic idea of what the song is about. If something still doesn't make any sense, it is most likely an idiom which you can simply use your friend Google to find out what it means.

It's best to think of the song as a cipher or puzzle that you have to decode to find the answer. Time spent deciphering such texts is a useful skill because it is what you do naturally when you learn a languge.

The extra benefit here though is in hearing the natural rhythms of the language in the music and how not just sentences but entire phrases are pronounced.

Ideally, after you understand what the song means, you should listen several times to the song and read along. After that, try listening without reading and see if you can still understand everything. It's best to focus on a stanza at a time at first until you can comfortably understand the entire song without reading along.

After this try singing along with the singer. Afterwords, you can try singing the song on your own karaoke style. This is a very important step because we learn best when we recite or say something aloud. Many polyglots use variations on this method to effectively learn languages. We really learn when we say stuff aloud and train our own ears to hear the language and feel what it means on the oral level.

From time to time, I will be posting some song videos from youtube together with lyrics and some explanations of difficult words and expressions. I hope you will find this useful, helpful and most importantly fun. In addition, if you have any requests, please send me a line or post in the comments.

happy learning!!!

Forvo: All the Words in the World. Pronounced!

Ok there are times when you want to know how a particular word or phrase is prounounced.
Sure there are many dictionaries out there on the web which offer audio pronounciation, but the problem is that you can't find it for all forms and there are always words such as proper names or expressions that don't have audio available. If it isn't there, you're out of luck.

A great site that avoids this problem is Forvo, a site I've recently discovered and find very useful for language learners.

The great thing about this site is that all audio content is user created. Once you register, you're free to record words in your native language. Click on any language (there are many to choose from) and you will see a list of recently added words that you can click the arrow on the left to listen to. On the right, there are words that haven't been recorded yet that you can add pronounciations for if you want to. The interesting thing is that these words are created by user requests. If you search for a word and it isn't there, you can send a request that it be added by another user. Using French as an example, there were several words that I searched for that weren't there. I requested them to be added and the next day they were there ready to listen to.

So to get the most use out of Forvo, it's best to register. That way you can request new words if you don't find what you're looking far. In addition, if you find the site useful, you should do a good deed and add some words in your own native language to help out other users and get that nice warm fuzzy feeling from helping others.

I'd be interested to know what you think and if you find it useful.

I'll be publishing some other mini-reviews of other useful sites for English and other language learners in the near future.

http://www.forvo.com/

vocabulary
---------------
to be out of luck - to be unlucky in that there is nothing else you can do. To have no other
choice.

a good deed - doing something that helps other people like helping old ladies to cross the
road.

to get the most out of something - to be able to use something or experience something in
the fullest possible way.

a warm and fuzzy feeling - a feeling you get when you do something to help other people
or do something that is a good deed or the right thing to do.