tiny-loudness

[tiny-loudness]

Non-Russian natives, ignore this please, it's just me looking for students for private tutoring ✨

Я — репетитор по английскому, Минск/онлайн

занимаюсь со взрослыми и детьми

от нулевого уровня до B2 (выше среднего), подготовка к ЦТ

и с теми, кто английский учил-учил, но ни до чего не доучил — помогу навести порядок в знаниях и добавить новых :)

обучаю без зубрежки правил, использую качественные зарубежные материалы и делаю занятия интересными

занятия онлайн, у меня (Серебрянка) или ученика

опыт преподавания более 5 лет

Час занятия — $10, первое занятие бесплатно. Пишите в лс 👋

[tiny-loudness]

Good morning to everyone except whoever wrote this f-ing sentence

[tiny-loudness]

Нерукопожатный

adj. Literally "un-shake-hands-with-able”, someone mean and backstabbing (whose hand a self-respecting person won’t shake)

[tiny-loudness]

hello! I just wanted to stop by and say that I love your content. It's so cool to see any perspectives on the Belarusian language situation especially written in English, where we're sorely lacking in information and resources. Thank you!

Thank you so much!! And sorry for not replying for so long, i kinda kept meaning to, but never did 😬 But i’m glad you like my content

[tiny-loudness]

Happy New Year folks

Everyone who guesses the movie gets +50 in luck in 2019

[tiny-loudness]

useless Russian fact #18

In English the obvious joke about pansexuality is that it is attraction towards pans. In Russian пансексуальность is jokingly interpreted as attraction towards Polish men, because пан/pan is a form of address to a man that is common in the Polish language

[tiny-loudness]

useless Russian fact #17

The Russian writer Nabokov once mentioned an anecdote about a misprint in a newspaper article on the coronation of Russian tzar: instead of “корона” [crown], they wrote “ворона” [crow]. On the next day they apologised for the misprint, correcting it to “корова” [cow]. 

But the interesting thing is that against all odds the word play works in English as well as in Russian:

корона → ворона → корова

crown → crow → cow

[tiny-loudness]

I wrote governmen't by mistake when I wanted to write government's and it's so funny cause

Small brain: anarchy

Giant brain: governmen't

[tiny-loudness]

Злободневный

adj., meaning pressing or topical, used mainly to describe a problem, an issue; from the word combination “злоба дня” (”the anger of the day”)

[tiny-loudness]

Russian vocabulary: fruit

Why it is important to eat fruit

Ви́шня, cherry. Cherry calms down the nervous system

Виногра́д, grapes. Grapes tone up your blood vessels

Пе́рсик, peach. Peach protects you from evil spells

Я́блоко, apple. Apples scream when you eat them

Арбу́з, watermelon. There are many spiders in watermelon

Апельси́н, orange. Orange makes you fireproof

Клубни́ка, strawberry. Strawberries generate black holes

Бана́н, banana. Banana likes it

Анана́с, pineapple. P̯̜̽̃i̴̤̬̥᷄n̻̏᷈̚e̹̺̽ǎ̝᷈̚̚p̴̹̄̚p̼̺̽̚l̏e̟̹̬̥̚ s̙̯̀ö̟̺w̯̩̝̘̋̌̚ŝ̥̤̰᷅ c̴̟̯̽̃h̤̹̥̀᷅̚a̝̩̯᷈̚ó̺̥̚ŝ̩̟̬̼̌

Черни́ка, blueberry. Blueberry is nature's sorrow

Яйцо́, egg. Egg is not a fruit

Ма́нго, mango. Mango shuts your mouth SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP THIS IS UNBEARABLE JUST SHUT UP

p.s. happy halloween 🎃

[tiny-loudness]

useless Russian fact #16

If you are asked a negative question like Ты не придешь сегодня домой? (Aren't you coming home tonight?), a yes and a no will mean just the same thing: Нет, не приду/Да, не приду (No, I'm not coming/Yes, [you are right,] I'm not coming). To give a negative answer you will need to repeat the verb: [Я] приду (I am coming). That makes Russians learning English confused when it comes to similar questions in English and you can hear them saying something like No, I am/Yes, I’m not

[tiny-loudness]

Update: I was wearing it outside today when my eye became watering and burning terribly, apparently because a bit of mascara got into it. Fortunately, I had a bottle of water and was able to wash my eye out quickly

Who would have thought that a mascara containing soap would turn out to be not so great 😂

I’ve bought Ye Olde Mascara that is still produced by a Saint-Petersburg company since like 1960s. A useless but great purchase

Mascara for eyebrows and lashes

Ingredients: soap, stearin, beeswax, ceresin, liquid paraffin, soot, perfume

A small plastic brush and a bar of mascara 

Wet before use (I used a toner I had on hand, but usually it would just be your saliva)

[tiny-loudness]

I’ve bought Ye Olde Mascara that is still produced by a Saint-Petersburg company since like 1960s. A useless but great purchase

Mascara for eyebrows and lashes

Ingredients: soap, stearin, beeswax, ceresin, liquid paraffin, soot, perfume

A small plastic brush and a bar of mascara 

Wet before use (I used a toner I had on hand, but usually it would just be your saliva)

[tiny-loudness]

Why are there two Wikipedias in Belarusian? The two Belarusian orthographies and why this is a question of policy

You may have noticed that there can be two Wikipedias for (sort of) one and the same language: Norsk and Nunorsk for the two Norwegian written standards, a few Chinese Wikipedias. You can choose between Cyrillic and Latin scripts to read the edition of the site in Serbian. The same thing is with Belarusian – you see Беларуская and Беларуская (тарашкевіца) in the list of languages. Should you assume that each of the two orthographies is used by a half of the population or at least by a significant number of people?

The short answer is no – Belarusian is written (and spoken – there are some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between the two norms, though very few) by almost everyone in the official orthography (Беларуская). The classical written standard (Беларуская (тарашкевіца)) is used by a few mass media (I managed to find four of them) and by a small number of Belarusian intelligentsia.

❓ Why is that so and why are there these two written norms in the first place?

❗ And now, my fellow nerds, it’s Belarusian language history time!

1. The establishment of the two orthographies

The first official orthography and the set of grammar rules in the newly independent Belarus were set in 1918 by a linguist Branislaw Tarashkyevich. It was called Taraškievica (after its author), or (later) the classic orthography. Between Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, both having been used before for writing Belarusian, Cyrillic script was chosen.  

In 1933 a reform on Belarusian orthography was introduced. It was carried out by a commission in which no linguists were included; the reasons for the reform were almost exclusively political: the first orthography brought Belarusian closer to Polish, and the politics of Russification was being pursued in the USSR and similar reforms took place in other USSR minority languages to assimilate them into Russian culture and language. Unlike Taraškievica, the new official orthography (or “Narkamauka”, as it is informally known, after народны камісарыят, People’s Comissariat) didn’t represent phonetic peculiarities of the Belarusian language as well as the previous orthography did, bringing some of the language norms closer to the Russian ones.

2. Post-USSR time

In 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union some mass media began using Taraškievica again. But in early 2000s many of them went back to the official written norm; I can’t positively say what the real reasons for that were.

From one point of view, the reasons were quite simple: Belarusian language teachers wanted to use books, newspapers and TV programmes to teach children Belarusian, so it was better to use one variant of orthography to avoid confusion. An editor of a newspaper in Belarusian explained it as a measure to attract new readers, that had had problems reading the paper in the classical orthography. People of different political views adhere to this point of view.

Another point of view claims that those were political reasons. The fact is that writing in old Taraškievica, as well as speaking Belarusian, using the old white-red-white flag and the “Pahonia” coat of arms are all aimed at alienation from the Soviet past, when people were discouriged from using their native languages instead of Russian. On the contrary, the state policy now doesn’t tend to alienate from it: for example, the state symbols are the reformed Soviet ones, and the Russian language is mostly used officially. The opinion of those people is that the reason for the change was pressure from the authorities. 

Aaaand here come political quarrels and fights, let’s leave the topic.

I think that the people who write and edit Wikipedia pretty much fall under the description of intelligentsia (regardless of political views) – that is, those who are interested in language, culture, and science, who care about what happens around them and are ready to do things voluntarily and create something.That’s why there you have it – an entire edition of Wikipedia in the written norm that very few people in the country know anything about – by the way, the edition that was founded before the one in the official orthography.

3. So if the changes were unnatural and imposed, should we go back to the classical norm?

Alright, let’s get back to linguistics. That’s a difficult question. Some reasons why we should:

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[tiny-loudness]

In Russian we don’t say “you’re too full of yourself, doing this unpleasant thing won’t hurt your dignity”, we say “корона с головы не упадёт”, which translates to “your crown won’t fall off your head”, and I think that’s pretty neat

[tiny-loudness]

Russian-speaking folks, here is a test “Which Minsk Landmark Are You?” 

I got Lee Harvey Oswald’s former residence 👀

[tiny-loudness]

useless Russian fact #15

The Russian words for 'bee' and 'bull' -- пчела and бык -- sound very different, but actually come from the same root. Пчела used to be spelt бъчела and the word comes from the obsolete verb бучать meaning 'to buzz, to bellow'