Пирожки да слойки

[slovami.livejournal.com]

The book I'm reading now uses a lot of very colloquial/village-like speech. (I can't categorize it perfectly, but that's what it sounds like to me. The book is Кысь/The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya.) One thing that comes up again and again is the use of да as a conjunction instead of и.

Как была румяной да черноволосой, такой ей и глаза закрыли.
When they laid her to rest, she was just as rosy-cheeked and black-haired as she had always been.

Хотя другой раз и засвербят пустолетные мысли: вот бы и мне сани, да шубу, да...
Although sometimes you begin to think pointless thoughts: it'd sure be nice if I had a sleigh, and a fur coat, and...
(I don't know what засвербят пустолетные мысли literally means, but that's how I understood the sentence.)

My question: besides lending speech a folksy, simple, or maybe fairy-tale tone, is да at all different from и? Does it actually affect the semantics of a sentence? Are there instances when you can't use да but you can use и? How would someone who uses both да and и in everyday speech choose which one to use?

My sense is that да is a bit more emphatic. Maybe like saying in English,
"She was rosy-cheeked, and black-haired, too." (румяная да черноволосая)
"She was rosy-cheeked and black-haired."  (румяная и черноволосая)

But again, as a non-native speaker, I'm hesitant to trust any of my false "intuitions." :)

Thanks for any comments you have. I know this is a kind of obscure point.

(no subject)

[bellezzarubata.livejournal.com]

Anyone know how to set a secondary language for a Mac? And if it's possible to easily toggle between English and Russian. I've done this on a PC but I've recently switched to Apple.

(no subject)

[biatchyhoney.livejournal.com]

Hello!

I am hoping for some help from you all. I speak (broken) Russian. I left Belarus when I was four and we didn't really speak Russian at home, so my language is weak. However, I LOVE to entertain my Russian friends and family by singing "My Humps" in my Russian translation.

Here's a video for reference. (Warning, I'm a ham)

Anyways I'm hoping for some help in translating more lyrics so that is kind of rhymes/flows. Or maybe you have better suggestins for my current lyrics. Also, I'm not really digging my translation of 'humps'. Anyone have any better ones?