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Country / Culture skills test (Russia) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 9 of 14 18 May 2009 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Russianbear - shocking negligence by the test administrator judging from your verdict! :-) Partly it was a case of picking the least silly response! Your explanations were interesting!
I am of course no expert on Russia AT ALL and it's totally ludicrous that my score should have been higher than yours. To clarify the thing about Novgorod. Yeah, I happen to know about this particular thing: Like you said, it was NOT Nishny Novgorod, they are talking about a different city (much smaller), that is on a river. The Swedish Vikings wanted to sail in their ships to Constantinople (Istanbul). They realised that it was faster to sail on the rivers of Russia than sail all around western Europe. Some areas were hard to sail at times, due to ice etc - then they rolled the ships on logs of pine trees. The way I was taught it: The Vikings were popular in Russia and got on well with the local people that they met. They traded with them. (This is in contrast to everywhere else in Europe where people were scared by the Vikings and hated them - their good judgment in this speaks highly of Russians in my view!) Some Vikings liked it in Russia and stayed. That's why it's said that they founded some Russian cities. These places are along the rivers Dnjepr and Volga. One Viking called "Rurik" became a local king. All of this is known because the Vikings documented it on rune-stones which are still around. When I was a kid I learnt a song about a viking sailing his boat "up the Volga, on his way home". The tune of the song was the famous "Katyusha" melody! It was only recently that I realised that it's really a patriotic Russian song and not a song about vikings! Edited by cordelia0507 on 18 May 2009 at 11:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 14 19 May 2009 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Funny, I always considered Katyusha to be a wartime love song rather than something patriotic. It's a nice song all the same.
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 11 of 14 19 May 2009 at 12:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's ask the Chinese... :-)) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSf131a0e10 Edited by cordelia0507 on 19 May 2009 at 12:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5752 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 12 of 14 19 June 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Hello Russianbear, I think you're wrong. I'm not russian but still got 17 correct answers;-) Didn't know that your "mat" was brought to you by the mongols and I'd never heard of Zmei Gorinich. In one of my russian history books (in russian) the 1812 war is mentioned as "otechestvenaja voina 1812 godu". I've seen that denomination in russian many times, both in museums and newspapers. I'm not sure about the first world war, but I wouldn't be surprised if some similar term was coined back then for propaganda purposes (in France it was for example "la guerre du droit" - the war for justice). Of course, after the bolscheviks took power, it became "the imperialist war" and the term is probably forgotten. Edited by Grammaticus on 19 June 2009 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6774 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 14 19 June 2009 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||
Nah, YOU are wrong :) The 1812 war is indeed called "otechestvenaja voina", but where is the "great" part there? The "velikaya otechestvenaja voina", the "GREAT Patriotic War" only refers to the war on the Eastern Front during World War II, as can be easily seen if you just google "great patriotic war" and see the top two results. Edited by Russianbear on 19 June 2009 at 5:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5752 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 14 of 14 19 June 2009 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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[/QUOTE]
Nah, YOU are wrong :) The 1812 war is indeed called "otechestvenaja voina", but where is the "great" part there? The "velikaya otechestvenaja voina", the "GREAT Patriotic War" only refers to the war on the Eastern Front during World War II, as can be easily seen if you just google "great patriotic war" and see the top two results. [/QUOTE] OK Russianbear, you won;-) But who would deny that these wars were "great"? For sure, they were the greatest mankind had ever witnessed up to then. Until WW2 broke out, WW1 was quite simply called "the great war". IMO, the guys who made the questionnaire knew what we are both saying, they just wanted to ask us a trick question. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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