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  1. Носок

    For a Rainy Day

    This week, our featured word is the Russian word for sock, носок, amusingly pronounced no-sock. The weather has been inconsistent and, after several days of summery weather, I stashed away my warm wool socks only to go fetch them back a few days later.

    Most of …

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  2. Varken

    Down to Earth

    This week's featured word is varken, the Dutch word for pig. Similarly, the Dutch word for pork is varkensvlees (pigs-meat).

    Another dutch word is aarde, which means earth or soil. Planet Earth is de Aarde. And earth makes an appearance in aardappel, the Dutch word for potato …

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  3. Квітень

    April Flowers

    This week's featured word is квітень, because I was too impatient to wait until November. Квітень (pronounced kvee-teyn) is the Ukrainian name for the month of April. In Russian, the names of the months sound familiar: January is январь (yan-var), April is апрель (ap-ryel), and October is октябрь …

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  4. Тооел

    Stranger in a Not-So-Strange Land

    I was recently on a plane for the first time in a while. When clouds obscured the landscape below, I decided to engage with the screen in front of me. Prompted to choose a language I opted for one I don't know all that well …

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  5. Догадок

    Some Guesswork

    This week, we'll look at the Russian word догадок (transliteration dogadok), which, in the context we're interested in, means conjectures or guesswork. Our focus is really on the declension of догадок (genitive plural) rather than its meaning: any Russian noun would do, but I chose that one because …

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  6. Ворона

    This week, our featured word is ворона, or maybe it's собака, or maybe it's корова, or maybe it's all three. These are the Russian words for crow, dog, and cow, respectively.

    They figure in a short Soviet claymation film, Пластилиновая ворона (Plasticine Crow), based on Aesop's fable about the fox …

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