детективы

[dreadnought.livejournal.com]

Hello all!

If you don't remember me, I'm a third-year kid at university trying to talk coherently about a variety of different subjects.

This time, I'm trying to talk about my relationship with детективы throughout the years. I'm pretty sure the major problems with what I've written are an overuse of verbal adverbs, perhaps sometimes in places where Russians wouldn't use them, and questionable sentence structure (I write in a complex fashion in English, and I'm not sure if the complexity is translating well). I'm particularly concerned about the sentence near the end which starts "Perhaps their charm can be traced..."

Anyway. As always, any and all suggestions are welcomed. If it looks really odd, it's probably a typo, but I still would appreciate my attention being drawn to it. Otherwise, any pointers on making what I'm saying sound more Russian are much appreciated. :)

( История любительницы детективов )

( History of a Mystery-Lover )

Oh, and P.S., the Absalom and Jael part is from the Bible. Just clarifying.

Thank you all very much!

EDIT: It seems that the consensus is that my Russian is very poor, that I must have been using online translators, and that I should stick to simple ideas and structures. I have not been using online translators; every word here is my own, whether I already knew it or whether I looked it up in my dictionary. I already know basic grammar, vocabulary, and concepts actually quite well, even if it apparently doesn't look like it; I came to this community looking for help in how to express more complex ideas and sentences. If I don't write like a Russian yet, it's because I'm not - but I'd like to learn. That was the whole point of this post.

To address a specific complaint, that it's not possible to translate straight from English to Russian - I know. I do know. I'm not trying to find a direct equivalent to the English; the English text is included as a rough guide to what I was trying to say, in case what I'm saying in Russian is entirely unclear. "Но я ловилась для первой копчёной селёдки," which was pointed to as the worst offender of English-speak, does not seem to work in Russian, but "копчёная селёдка" was in a dictionary as being the equivalent of "red herring". I did not know that this term was not widely used in Russia, so thank you for pointing that out.

I guess in general, thank you for your comments, and I suppose I won't bother you again. Thank you for your help in the past.

English Influence on Russian

[zombie-laika.livejournal.com]

I'm working a project for my Russian language class about the influence of English on Russian in the post-soviet era. Does anyone know of some good articles about this? I'm looking for sources in Russian, but English is OK, too. I remember seeing a link in this community a long time ago to a Michelle Berdy article from the Moscow Times about this topic, but I can't find it. I'm specifically interested in new words from business and the internet and very interested in any changes in grammar or syntax.

Russian grammar textbook

[guzelle.livejournal.com]

Hi,

A friend of mine is trying to start studying the Russian language and is looking for a good textbook with Russian grammar. Is there any good textbooks that might be helpful for a beginner?

Thank you in advance!

(no subject)

[clownshoes.livejournal.com]

For an assignment for my Russian class, my teachers asks that we replace the verb ходить by the verb быть (and visa-versa), and to change the case of the nouns following the verb. The example she gives is "Он был на вечере. --> Он ходил на вечер."

This confused me a little bit, but now I think I understand what she wants. So... am I doing it right?

1. На прошлой неделе он ходил в Эрмитаж. ---> На прошлой неделе он был в Эрмитаже.
2. Где ты был вчера вечером? Я был на Арбате. ---> Где ты ходил вчера вечером? Я ходил на Арбат.