Moderational

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

This is to all members of learn_russian who value it as an educational community for those who study Russian:

Shall we from now on proclaim dating ads (pen pal requests, learning-through-personal-meeting-in-Moscow queries etc.) off-topic in this community, even if they are seemingly language-related ("I will correct your mistakes in Russian, and you mine in English, and then you will take me with you")?
UPDATE Question solved, measures taken, thanks everybody!

Let's Chat!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

This post is the permanent meeting point for all learners of Russian language who are looking for real-time communication in Russian (or for a pen pal), as well as for native Russian speakers who are willing to offer such communication, or are seeking for a Russian-English chat ("you correct my mistakes in English, I correct yours in Russian.") This means all sorts of conversational exchange: e-mail, AIM, ICQ (or any other instant messenger,) Skype (or any other voice chat,) in-person communication etc. We place the link to this post in the community rules section.
How does it work?( Read more... )

По

[jim-24601.livejournal.com]

In another post, somebody used по in a sense I'm not familiar with, as Кто Эдуард по профессии? meaning "What's Edward's job?" I think I got a bit confused with the prefix по- against the preposition по.

Ok, bear with me a moment here. This is what I get so far.

The по- construction (with hyphen) means "in the way of", or at least that's the most general way of expressing it in English. It also seems to do weird things to the following word, so we get по-русски not по-русскому (по русскому would mean "in the opinion of a Russian", right?) and по-мОему "my way" vs. по моемУ "according to my (something)". It's more like a prefix than a preposition.

По without the hyphen is a real preposition taking the dative case whether it's used literally, meaning "along", or figuratively, meaning "according to", or something like "in the sense of" ("Who are you according to your beliefs" would mean in English, to me at least "Who do you believe you are" and not "What are your beliefs".) But you might say "По моим убежениям, Бога нет" (if you were an atheist).

How about "по X" = "as far as X is concerned", as in:

Кто Эдуард по профессии? = "Who is Edward, as far as his job is concerned?"
По национальности я русский = "As far as nationality is concerned, I'm Russian."
По прогнозу синоптиков сегодня будет дождь = "As far as the weather forecast is concerned, it's going to rain today"

It sounds awkward, but then we don't use that construction in English, so any attempt to describe it is going to sound awkward.

(Edit to explain the background)