{"id":6764,"date":"2019-09-04T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6764"},"modified":"2019-09-17T13:49:13","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T13:49:13","slug":"un-bear-lievable-how-bears-have-invaded-the-russian-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/un-bear-lievable-how-bears-have-invaded-the-russian-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Un-bear-lievable: How Bears Have Invaded the Russian Language"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Russian people have a long and complicated history with their ursine neighbours. In today\u2019s blog post, learn some bear-y useful phrases to impress your Russian-speaking friends.<\/em>
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There\u2019s a reason The Revenant <\/em>performed so well at the box office, and not all of that was down to Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s Oscar-winning performance: people love a good survival tale. So when a news report came out of Russia saying that a man had been found, alive, in a bear den, newsrooms across the globe were quick to jump on the story. Supposedly, he had been attacked by a bear and dragged back to its den, had survived there for a month, and had been rescued when hunting dogs found him.
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Supposedly.
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As much as people enjoyed the story\u2014a video showing the alleged bear-attack victim went viral\u2014no one was that surprised when it turned out to be fake. Of course, that suspension of disbelief wouldn\u2019t have lasted a minute in a country like the UK, where bears went extinct around 1,500 years ago. 
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However, there are almost 70,000 bears living across the area that used to be the Soviet Union<\/strong><\/a> and with the Russian Bear having been a widespread symbol of the country since the sixteenth century, it would seem as though Russians have a closer relationship with the animal than most parts of the rest of the world.
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This is also reflected in the Russian language. Any language has idioms and sayings, and these can even go deeper than that\u2014an idiom is an extension of culture, too, which is why you might hear an American say they have to get something done in a New York minute, or that they\u2019re batting a thousand, but you\u2019re unlikely to ever hear these phrases from a British or Australian English-speaker.
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Since these idioms relate to common ideas and experiences, it makes sense that Russian has plenty of them referring to\u2014you guessed it\u2014bears. Here are six common ones and make sure you check out our social media <\/a>for one more, which also contains a wolf!
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\u0421\u0438\u0301\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u043a\u0430\u043a \u043c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0301\u0434\u044c<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Literally translated, this means \u2018as strong as a bear\u2019. So, in English, we might say \u2018as strong as a horse\u2019 or \u2018as strong as an ox\u2019 instead, because these were much more commonly-seen animals when these idioms first formed.
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\u041c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0436\u044c\u044f \u0443\u0441\u043b\u0443\u0433\u0430<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This expression\u2014which means \u2018a bear\u2019s favour\u2019\u2014comes from a fable that has been retold various times over the centuries. In Russia, the most well-known version was written by Ivan Krylov, entitled The Hermit and the Bear<\/em>. In the story, a hermit makes friends with a bear and one day, they go for a walk in the forest. When the hermit gets tired, the bear tells him to rest and says that he will protect him from any harm. A fly lands on the hermit\u2019s face and the first time, the bear fans it away\u2014but ultimately, the bear hits his friend hard in the head to get rid of the fly and kills him. A bear\u2019s favour, then, refers to doing something with good intentions, but that turns out to be a disservice.
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\u0414\u0432\u0430 \u043c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0301\u0434\u044f \u0432 \u043e\u0434\u043d\u043e\u0301\u0439 \u0431\u0435\u0440\u043b\u043e\u0301\u0433\u0435 \u043d\u0435 \u0436\u0438\u0432\u0443\u0301\u0442.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How many bears live in a den? Just one, as this Russian proverb points out. It translates as \u2018two bears don\u2019t live in one lair,\u2019 or, less literally, \u2018this house is too small for two of us.\u2019
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\u041fe\u0440\u0432\u044b\u0439 \u0431\u043b\u0438\u043d \u2014 \u043a\u043e\u043c\u043e\u043c<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you can read Russian already, you\u2019ll notice that it doesn\u2019t really have anything to do with bears. In fact, it says \u2018first pancake – lumpy.\u2019 However, the bear in this phrase existed way back when the word \u2018\u043a\u043e\u043c\u2019 meant \u2018bear,\u2019 in Old Slavic.
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Back then, Russians celebrated Komoeditsa, the predecessor to Maslenitsa, an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday. The celebrations happen around the spring equinox and Komoeditsa involved different rituals, dancing, riding sleighs, and, importantly, lots of food; in particular, lots of \u2018\u0431\u043b\u0438\u043d\u044b\u2019\u2014pancakes.
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Making pancakes was an important part of Komoeditsa and the first pancake especially so. This would be taken to a clearing and would act as a sacrifice to the Bear god, the master of the forest. So, the first pancake would go to the bear, the \u2018\u043a\u043e\u043c\u043e\u043c\u2019. However, as time has gone on and language has changed, so has the meaning of this word\u2014it now means \u2018lumpy\u2019, with the phrase developing to mean that your first attempt might be unsuccessful, but if you keep trying, eventually you\u2019ll get the results you\u2019re looking for.
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\u0414\u0435\u043b\u0438\u0301\u0442\u044c \u0448\u043a\u0443\u0301\u0440\u0443 \u043d\u0435\u0443\u0431\u0438\u0301\u0442\u043e\u0433\u043e \u043c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0301\u0434\u044f.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Any bears looking to get involved with proverbs will probably prefer the last one to this one\u2014it\u2019s a bit more unkind! If we literally translate this one, it means \u2018never divide the skin until the bear is dead.\u2019 In English, it\u2019s a little less harsh; you might hear someone say, \u2018don\u2019t count your chickens until they\u2019re hatched,\u2019 or \u2018don\u2019t put the cart before the horse.\u2019
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\u043c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0434\u044c \u0435\u043c\u0443 \u043d\u0430 \u0443\u0445\u043e \u043d\u0430\u0441\u0442\u0443\u043f\u0438\u043b<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our final phrase is one where the literal translation seems to be very far removed from how it would be said in English. Any Russian-speakers will be able to see that, literally, this means \u2018a bear stepped on his ear.\u2019 So, who might we say that about?
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Well, it means that someone has no musical talent\u2014they can\u2019t carry a tune, for example. 
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As for what it has to do with bears, who knows? Hopefully one of our readers can enlighten us!
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There are hundreds (if not thousands) of other idioms and proverbs in Russian of course, many to do with animals\u2014so if we\u2019ve managed to pique your interest, why not try learning some Russian<\/strong><\/a> so you can find more of them? Russian is one of the (currently) 143 languages we offer on our uTalk app<\/strong><\/a>; you\u2019ll learn the basics in more than sixty different topics, which should set you up nicely for learning more!
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\u0414\u043e \u0441\u0432\u0438\u0434\u0430\u043d\u0438\u044f! (Bye!)
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russian people have a long and complicated history with their ursine neighbours. In today\u2019s blog post, learn some bear-y useful phrases to impress your Russian-speaking friends. There\u2019s a reason The Revenant performed so well at the box office, and not all of that was down to Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s Oscar-winning performance: people love a good … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[312],"tags":[648,313,1693,1694,871,2,333,705,1147,65,1691,1689,1692],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}