At the time of this post, I have been in Russia for a couple of weeks. I truly believe that St. Petersburg is the most beautiful city in the world. Everyday, I exit the metro station and I am greeted with the sight of the Kazan Cathedral to my right (see image above) and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood on my left. As the title suggests, this trip is the first time I have ever left the United States and I have to say that it has been a very unique and amazing experience, excluding a brief 48 hours of being overwhelmed with the language. From here I believe I have acclimated quite well to the environment and have been appearing to learn quite a bit in the realm of colloquialisms in Russia.
One really important word that I knew about before I visited was “Piter” and stood as a nickname for the city of St. Petersburg. I first learned of this nickname from a movie titled “Piter FM” and was seen in an affectionate sense. I had this sentiment confirmed by some natives that I have spoken to and have used it with me. However, I did not necessarily know about some other characteristics of the word. Most notably that beyond it being extremely informal, there have been instances where the name is used in a less than favorable light, specifically in the song “In Piter We Drink” by a band called Leningrad. In the song, there is continuous reference to the drinking culture within St. Petersburg. This means in some interpretations of the song, The city can be seen in less favorable light.
Another interesting word I did not know was used quite often comes for another word meaning “to eat.” Usually the word that comes to mind when discussing eating something is “есть” (pronounced yest’). However, another word that is used in Russia is кушать (pronounced kushat’). What is different about these two words comes from the fact that the second word has a meaning more akin to the idea of “eating up” rather than just directly meaning “to eat.” This usually means that the verb кушать will be used in conjunction with a previous verb that leads to the expressing of something similar to “Are you going to eat up?” or “Do you want to eat up?” As pointed out, it is rarely used by itself in a conjugated form as it will come across as a little odd to hear when spoken. This idea and word is not something I knew before visiting Russia and may or may not have ever learned if I did not come to study. These two examples really highlight the extended learning that I aimed to achieve when I started out as it highlights the necessity of learning outside the classroom, especially of a language like Russian.
I hope the rest of this trip is just as informative as these first few weeks and I look forward to visiting numerously different locations within this beautiful city.