The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation.
The film Star Wars is well-known in Russia and if you look online, there are actually discussions of whether or not a Russian should ever name a daughter
. Most argue against it because of the fact that a Russian would actually be , which means “watering can/pot” in Russian.The Russian word
is related to the Russian verb .Perhaps even more striking is the appropriateness of Jabba’s name, given the fact that he looks so similar to a creature that, in Russian, has almost exactly the same name! See below.
When Star Wars was first released in the USSR, it was billed as a
. The below is an actual movie poster used in the USSR.
“
“ is sometimes also said as “ “. Both are taken from the English “space western” – which is an actual genre that places the traditional western in the far future and/or another planet. In English, the term has fallen out of favor, perhaps because so many of the resulting works came across as rediculous, with robotic horses and ray guns in holsters, but the Russian is still in use. For instance, the recent TV show Firefly was also billed as a “ “.