Michele A. Berdy

What a wonderful book for students and teachers of Russian. It is a compilation of Michele Berdy's articles on the Russian language. She has lived in Russia since the late 70's and worked in various jobs, most notably as a translator and interpreter. These are her musings on some of the sometimes baffling idiosyncracies of the Russian language (as well as Russian life) and suggestions for translating into English. It's not exactly a dictionary, but can be used as a reference of sorts. You may think this is going to be dry, grammatical reading, but in fact, it is a real pleasure to read. When Ms Berdy becomes interested in a word or phrase, she does her research -- but she never gets bogged down in scholarly minutiae and comes across as an enthusiastic and smart graduate student who always finds the amusing side to every situation. Her personality comes through in her writing, and makes you want to be her best buddy. By the way, while reading this book I became intrigued with how old Ms Berdy actually is. I mean, she has lived in the USSR/Russia since the late 70s, which means she had to be at least 18 to move there by herself? But she sounds so hip! so contemporary! so like a BFF!
Anyway, this book is recommended to anyone who has seriously studied Russian language and still feels like they are beginners.… (mehr)