Tag: Book review

The Story of Human Language

~ Sam Pinson ~ Leave a comment
The Story of Human Language

Looking for a good audiobook? If you’re a linguist, you will enjoy The Story of Human Language, a series of captivating lectures by Professor John McWhorter. I’m listening to them for what must the third time. This is durable educational material.

Learn about grammaticalization, language change, dialects, pidgins, creoles, language death, and much more. If you’ve listened to these lecture already, which one did you like the most? What was your favorite insight?

Russian idioms

Dictionary of Russian Idioms
~ Sam Pinson ~ Leave a comment

While living in Russia, I collected a small library of Russian language references, dictionaries, encyclopedias, cookbooks, and novels. One of my favorite books is the Школьный Фразеологический Словарь Русского Языка.

One of the treasures I collected in Russia. This book has seen a lot of use.

And some of my favorite idioms include:

  • За уши не оттянешь
  • Все идёт как по маслу
  • Без бумажки, ты букашка

What’s your favorite Russian idiom? How would you render it in English? What’s your favorite English idiom? How would you render it in Russian?