The Word's Worth

A magical word that seems to acquire new meanings wherever it goes.

Another in my series of Mastering Russian Prepositions, this one is all about being near.

Maybe seems like such an easy concept. Может быть I'm wrong? Or is that быть может?

What do courts and approaches and truth have to do with no one, nothing and no?

How many ways can you say "no" in Russian? You have no idea...

All you need are four verbs to satisfy all your cleaning, washing, polishing and murderous needs.

In her column The Word's Worth, Moscow Times Arts Editor Michele Berdy covers the intricacies of the Russian language — from the fascinating to the frustrating and everything in between.

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How to talk about human monsters in Russian - or how to avoid hearing about them.

Prepositions. I know, I know. They're miserable. I try to make them a little bit more palatable.

Russians have so many delightful ways to dawdle, dilly-dally and delay, you may never work again.

Why are there are more names in Russian for nasty old women than for nasty old men?

There are lots of Russian words, nice and not, to describe the older gentlemen in our lives.

Lots of things glitter and glimmer with sparkles of gold and silver in Russian. For example - air.

An exhibition at the Gulag History Museum and a new dictionary reveal the other reality of the USSR.

Lock or castle, cotton or clapping - it's all a matter of where the stress falls. Russian is very stressful.

Rebellions can be good or bad. Depends on who's rebelling and who or what they are rebelling against.

A special column for a special day.

This is the Year That Was in words and phrases.

Which Russian verb do you use to work badly? How do you ride into heaven? It's all in a day's work.

Borshch - is it Russian, Ukrainian, or Polish? Will language tell us? I dive back in time to find out.

Would you want to be урод? In 1254 you would have been happy to be урод. Now - not so much.

You know how you sometimes wish your language had a foreign word in it? I want выборщик.

What do стоить and стоять have in common? Not much - oh, except for one very important thing.

Is it worth reading? How much does it cost? It's nothing. All this for the price of one word: стоить.

Getting Russian prepositions and cases right is my life's goal. Judging by "c" I've got a long way to go.

Russians not only like to go fast, they like to talk about going fast.

Whoever names fruit cultivars in Russia should get a lifetime achievement award.

Watch День Радио, learn Russian, and laugh your head off. Win-win-win.

Russians didn't invent griping, but they have terrific words to describe it.

Take a deep dive into months, calendars, years and other joys of Russian autumn.

Is hurting someone's feelings illegal? Well, sort of. But maybe it shouldn't be. Read on...

For Russians, a heart is way more than a pump in your chest.

The weather might be cool, but people are hot to protest. Here's how to talk about it.

You can never have too much money or shashlyk.

People were voting by rules set in the Constitution they were voting on. How's that again?

Being tired is just so exhausting I feel like a squeezed out lemon. Really.

Тут is such a simple, sweet-sounding word... and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Russian paronyms - летучий, летящий, летательный, летающий and лётный - are horrible.

Answering a question in my mailbag sent me down the rabbit hole of Russian abbreviations - great fun!