Nastya’s Nasty Errors
Trudi, you must send my compliments to your Nan. Are you sure you are not getting anything confused and she really is 85?
Now back on to St. Michael’s Cathedral, we really booked it a few months in advance, but we needn’t have done it well in advance (I was just being paranoid that somebody might book it for the same day as my wedding’s) as there aren’t many people willing to get married in a church – the majority of couples get married at a registry office. I think it is a result of the many years during which the church was not favoured by the soviet governments. There are not pews in Russian churches and St. Michael’s Cathedral is not an exception. The interior of the cathedral is spacious, it is gilded and decorated with the pictures of different saints.
There will be about 50 people present at both the church ceremony and the reception. We still haven’t chosen a venue so we don’t even know where to invite guests yet!
Trudi, I find “minor and infrequent” errors aggravating and they are difficult to get rid of too. I am a bit of a perfectionist so the knowledge that there are (and probably will always be) some sneaky little errors in my writing is somewhat upsetting.
Abida, I read in some book that there are so many phrasal verbs that it is not worth your while trying to learn them all as you might never even come across some of them in your lifetime. Good English-English dictionaries will give you clear definitions and examples of the usage of phrasal verbs. I think that student books with exercises that ask you to replace highlighted verbs with offered phrasal verbs are very useful and in student books they make you learn phrasal verbs that are frequently used in contemporary English. Hope this helps.
Kirsti, yes, there are the Nenetse people living on Yamal too. I suspect they look very similar to the Hanty. Did that actress go there in a summer period? How interesting… I didn’t know that the Yamal peninsula is so famous :)
Leila, you told us worrying news. Hope your husband and you are OK.
Nestor, welcome and nice to meet you. I agree with you that it is a very interesting part of the BBC LE web site. I wonder if every month people bet on what country next blogger will be from :)
Antonio, with teeth! Did the grooms look at least a little upset during the process?
Kuldeep, unfortunately I can’t tell you more about the Hanty and their traditions as I didn’t live among them. Maybe that French actress Kirsty mentioned in the comments shared her experiences somewhere on the Internet? 
Ernesto, as you rightly noticed, a few statues of soviet leaders still remain in Russia. I don’t think it would be the right thing to remove them all as they are part of our history, good or bad. It’s a photo of a statue of Lenin, it stands in front of the Udmurt National library where I spent so many hours as a student.
Ecaterina, congratulations! I have never seen archery competitions but I have deep respect for sportsmen of nearly every kind of sport. Here in Izhevsk we have a very good sporting club and our sportsmen took prize places in European championships. Good luck to you!
Talk to you soon,
Have a good weekend,
Anastasia
Comments
Dear Anastasia! Sorry for the silence over the week. I have been following up your really interesting entries. Unlike Leila, nothing bad has happened to me, fortunately! I have just been busy with everyday sort of things. Let me tell Leila that I do hope she is doing well. So, Nastya, I like your picture of your family very much. I like the ribbons that your cousins are wearing in their hair. Your photos brought back happy memories for me. I used to learn Russian in my childhood. What is more, I took final exams in Russian at high school. Your cousins with the ribbons reminded me of the girls I used to see in the Russian textbooks. I would not have thought that this was still common in Russia. Do not get me wrong, I like that Russians do not break with tradition. It was not unusual for me to hear that married couples wear their wedding rings on their right hand while engaged couples wear them on their left hand. It is the same in Slovakia. But rain on the wedding day is a bad omen here. It means that the bride will be weepy. The tradition at the wedding reception in this part of Slovakia where I live is that the bride and the groom usually eat soup from one plate. What is more they spoon-feed each other! As for your question about middle names, Hungarians usually do not use middle names. There is a wide range of selection of a married name. The most common is when the woman takes her husband's family name and keeps her given name. I was born Anita Szabóova and after the marriage I took my husband's name plus the ending -ova. Since 1st January 2004 there is another possibility: now men can take their wives' surname too, since the law which gave this opportunity to women only was declared sexist and thus unconstitutional. Both the bride and the bridegroom have to declare before the wedding which name they will use. They also have to declare which surname their children will get (this declaration can however be changed until the birth of their first child). Children can get either parent's surname if that parent kept her or his surname in the marriage, but children born in the same marriage must have the same surname. How does this work in Russia? Will you also take Alex's surname? Well, this is getting long so I should end here. I am looking forward to reading your next entry. Have a nice weekend! Take care,
Hi, Anastasia. No, the actress Charlotte de Turckheim went there in winter and got the same kind of clothes as the Nenetse women: over knee-high boots and a beautifully decorated long coat of reindeer fur. The actress was very impressed by the fact that there were babies and women living in a place where life is so hard. She also said that the nenetses seemd very happy to live.
Hello again, especially Kuldeep. When I google for "Charlotte de Turckheim"+video+Siberie (with an e, as Siberia is written in French) I get a little video about the actress with the Nenetses. If you know French you can listen to what the star said. There's also some Russian, I think. The video describes at first how a quarter of an hour is needed to get dressed when going out for two minutes (for weeing). The Nenetses were afraid their guests would suffer and offered food six times a day and hot tea by liters. - Not on the video but as I remember from the programme the Nenetse children aged 7-17 go to boarding schools. Some young come back to their tribe after having finished school. - A the end of the video there's a derrick for oil or gas. The Nenetse are worried. They say that one derrick occupies an area where one herd of reindeer can no longer eat. Once the derrick is no longer used there will be a heap of metal waste and the man who spoke thought that the place around a derrick was lost for reindeer definitely . The Nenetse are nomads and there are so little wood for them for heating and cooking and so little lichens to eat for the reindeer that they seldom stay on one place for even a week. The reindeer and the Nenetses move 1000 miles a year.
Hello Anastasia, Thanks for your helping me out. I am also trying to read as much as i can as to make my expression better and refined. In fact, i found lots of phrasal verbs with the meanings i never heard before. That make me to consult and read dictionary all the time. The most interesting thing is i found a very good dictionary of phrasal verbs with the name of Dictionary of phrasal verbs published by oxford printing press. It is for all those who really interested to learn English. I hope it would be a useful recommendation. thanks
Hello Anastasia, the weather is so nice, sunshine and 14 degrees. Tomorrow the weather report predict 18 degrees, it's unbelievable. Should it be the beginning of spring? May be!So I will enjoy now the sunshine and wish you a nice and comfortable weekend. So long...
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