Learn Russian

В тесноте, да не в обиде.
No matter how it is crowded, the important thing is that no one has been left out

Работа не волк – в лес не убежит.
Don't worry your head about this work, it will go nowhere (meaning you can procrastinate a little and nothing bad will happen to either you or the work)

Жизнь прожить – нE поле перейти.
To live a life is a much more difficult thing than to cross a field.

Где один грибок, там и весь кузовок.
Never heard that one; possibly something in the lines of "Birds of a feather flock together"?

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soidisantfille.livejournal.com

Thanks.

Sorry, that 'на' was a typo. It's late :)

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I haven't heard the last one, either; to me it sounds like "objects of a similar nature usually stick together/follow each other" -- though its literal meaning is "where one mushroom is, there is [soon] the whole bucket [of mushrooms]." - Russian learners wouldn't believe, but Russians actually gather mushrooms in the forest and then eat them :)))

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Just occurred to me that it could mean a different thing, something like "It never rains but it pours" (compare to Russian Не было гроша, да вдруг алтын).

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Hmmm. In fact, yes it could. I wouldn't say there's too much of a contradiction here, though. There's also "коготок увяз - всей птичке пропасть" (if just one small claw got stuck, the whole bird would die,) which somehow goes in the same direction: one small thing can lead to much bigger (good or bad) things.

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vyacheslav.livejournal.com

I would believe it because mushroom hunting is very popular in Michigan. I've never been but I wouldn't mind going because mushrooms are very good.

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How does it work in Michigan? Public forests? Controlled hunt? Licenses? :)

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vyacheslav.livejournal.com

As far as I know, people usually go to public forests(though some probably go to private property) there is no controlled hunt and no license required.

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I thought the second one, "work isn't a wolf- it won't run into the forest," meant, you can't ignore it, it won't just run away... but then again it may have cultural interpretations I'm missing!

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An online friend of mine told me a funny story once. She is married to an American (she is Russian); once in the early days of their marriage she was sick in bed and her husband said something about dusting the furniture, something like "this dust will not go anywhere", meaning that it is not that important and can wait. His wife, however, interpreted this as "you should do it because it will not go away on its own", and was very angry with her husband that he makes her do household chores when she is sick.

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Ohh, poor thing! As soon as you wrote your version, I realized that yeah, that makes sense too.

I like your interpretation better than my russian professor's :)

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Er, is your professor ethnically Russian or just a teacher of Russian?

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I had to think who I first heard this from! The first professor was American, but my professor last year was a native Russian. She's sadistic though so I understand her interpretation ;)

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Let me clarify: she's incredibly, incredibly demanding. Sometimes it feels sadistic :) but my russian is so much better as a result.

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That's right, our sadistic professors are the best teachers sometimes. I hated my first German teacher, because man, he WAS demandig, but as a result of his "sadism," I was able to somehow communicate with the people and perfectly understand all written German that I've seen when I went to Germany a couple of years ago - that is, twenty-two years after the day that guy ceased to work at our school!

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Yes, I hated my English school teacher, too :-)

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I don't think that this is a good idea of a joke.

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soidisantfille: the "proverb" in question is in fact not a proverb, but some bizarre word combination referring, among other things, to a cat's balls. I have a premonition that your teacher will not appreciate it.

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Dear friend, I am very grateful to you for coming here and trying to help the people. I would very much appreciate if you try to post an explanation of exactly why this proverb of yours is funny. This will really be very educational for the language learners, I am sure. Then I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your comment was not a provocation but rather caused by a misplaced sense of humour. Please note that this community was created for assistance to the language-learners and not for any native speakers' amusement. And I am here to ensure that it is going to stay that way.

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