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.

New Year's Resolutions

Of course it's a little late to be discussing New Year's resolutions, but since I'm a hopeless procrastinator it's never too late.

Making New Year's resolutions is a common tradition in the United States, as well as breaking them. Almost nobody keeps their New Year's resolutions, although there is the occasional exception.

Below are some common New Year's resolutions.

You can say "My New Year's resolution is to ..."

quit smoking
lose weight
work out more
save more money
reduce stress
eat healthier
stop procrastinating
learn English
enjoy life more

Common verbs that can be used with New Year's resolution are:


Make

Keep

Break


Have you made any New Year's resolutions?

It's difficult for me to keep my New Year's resolutions.

I often break my New Year's resolutions.

This pattern can also be used with the verb promise. In fact, a New Year's resolution
is a kind of promise that you make to yourself for the coming year.

My New Year's resolutions this year are to get more sleep and produce more original
English materials for my students. A difficult task to combine!

Here's a useful video on the subject of New Year's resolutions by Jennifer Lebedev.