By the time I’d been living there for three or four years, I’d seen enough people come and go again to consider myself a bit of Moscow veteran. For an expat, at least.
I had nothing on Michele Berdy, though. She’s been there since the late ‘70s, when the man in the Kremlin was Leonid Brezhnev. Since 2002 she’s been writing a weekly column called the Russian Word’s Worth for The Moscow Times, now the Russian capital’s only English-language print newspaper.
Being a language column, pretty much anything under the sun is fair game and Ms Berdy is extremely wide-ranging in her selection of material, covering everything from glasnost to granulated sugar. As a result, it’s brilliant if you’re looking to expand your Russian vocab. Besides that, as a very experienced translator and interpreter, she occasionally divulges some of the tricks of those two trades.
If, however, all you’re really after is to find out a bit more about Russia and what it’s like to live there (especially as a foreigner), then it’ll be a treasure trove for you as well.
A big part of why I’ve enjoyed the column so much over the years is the tone – it’s like having a particularly interesting friend update you on their latest adventures -linguistic or otherwise- over a warming (or cooling) beverage of your choice. Her writing radiates the mix of affection for the place and ongoing bewilderment at its ways that will be familiar to many Westerners who have spent any significant length of time there.
Also available in the UK and the US is a book of the same name (see photo) which weaves together selections from the first five years of the column. So if you’re in the market for a gift for another Russophile, or looking to treat yourself, this would be well worth considering.
