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UCLA Russian Language Podcast

Years ago, I had the good fortune to spend an entire year in Russian language school, and the class instructor, Brianne Fortier (apologies if the name is misspelled), was the absolute best teacher I have had in my entire life. Anyway, since then I have often wished I had more opportunity to use what I had learned - taking a class here and there and looking for resources online to practice and refresh my meager skills.

I recently came across a link to the UCLA Business Russian Podcast and have been listening to it quite a bit. They are good-quality recordings with language that is somewhat advanced and covers a good range of business-related vocabulary.

When I initially learned Russian, we didn’t spend too much time on corporate language. Instead, it was more conversational vocabulary, and as the class advanced, directed more toward medical terminology and words you might expect to encounter while listening to the news or reading the paper, such as “bi-lateral negotiations” and “armored personnel carrier”.

This podcast series contains some useful examples of language used in professional, office-related activities.

Image courtesy of Panoramas on Flickr

NYT Nod to New Words

I should really start reading the NYT. There is a consistent two week lag between the time they publish an article and I discover it though my network. That seems a bit too much of a delay for me, so as one of my endeavors for the New Year I’ll make the NYT part of my daily reading. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, less than 24 hours after watching Erin McKean’s TED talk on redefining the dictionary (fantastic!), I stumbled across this article featuring words that have recently integrated into our language through popularization. Both entertaining and enlightening, the article has saved me from performing at least 5 Google searches I would have surely done had I encountered these words in the wild.