"Красная площадь"

Translation: Red Square

[lee_livingston]

My Russian Instructor at DLI was a history buff. He talked about how Russian words were created from a root/base, with one or more prefixes or suffixes added as needed to convey the meaning. (I owned a book on Russian roots, it helped a lot).

Anyways, Red/красный was considered the most beautiful/красивый color so it shares the same root.; but, (according to him), here is the interesting part:

When Красная Площадь was built, it was called that, but it meant Beautiful Square...

The meanings of the two words swapped over the years.

[john.newbe]

Old Russian houses have a red corner ( or beautiful corner) in the main room where the most important icon is housed.

[lepaslandas]

Inrerestingly, in China, red is also the auspicious color.

[holderwd93]

And from you I learned a new English word, auspicious.

[GastonFontenla]

Interesting story! Thank you for sharing!

[dr_Oa]

Do you remember the title of the book? It would be really nice to read about these. :)

[lee_livingston]

Roots of the Russian Language - An Elementary Guide to Wordbuilding

Link to the book on Amazon

When I came across a new word in the newspaper I'd look up the root and compare the difference in meaning when the prefix and/or suffix was changed. A simple example early in Duo's Russian course: писать, записать and написать

Off the top of my head there's also: списать, описать, прописать, подписать, выписать и расписать.

Once you become familiar with the more common prefixes and suffixes and start to see more roots, your ability to 'guess' from context goes way up.

[dr_Oa]

Thanks a lot!! :)
Yes, it definately will make the learning easier (not to mention reading).

[MasqueArt]

It is an advice to familiarise yourself with word roots even in app Elevate, for people learning english as second language.

And by my experience (while learning English), Oxford like dictionary with explanations in the same language, instead of translations work great while learning.

[kdammers]

I keep mixing up krasnyi and krasivyi. Does any-one have a good trick for keeping them straight?

[Adrian53542]

Maybe that 'красный' is the shorter word of the two, and its translation is 'red', which is shorter than 'beautiful'.

[Izmeina1]

Krasni sounds quite like Kransky
A sort of sausage. Imagine taking a giant bite and blood dripping everywhere making a big red mess

[vanilla_coke]

I will have to get used to this. Since "красная" sounds like "krásná", which is in my native language (Czech) "beautiful".

[2E3S]

FYI краса still means beauty (usually it sounds archaic though), красна девица=a beautiful girl (from folklore).

[Phil397188]

– Наш красный.
– Prosim tě. Co je na tom krásnýho!? Dyť je to červený jako trenky. Náš je krásnej!

[Elyakiwi]

Hehehehe I said 'a beautiful horse'

[TomTMG]

The difference in "red square" and "beautiful horse" is so hard to see here lmao.

[Jellei]

Why isn't the second word capitalized? Shouldn't it be, as this is a proper noun?

[ilya.z]

Only Красная is a proper name [I'm wrong here], площадь is just a square.
It is not capitalized in wiki as well: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%89%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8C

[2E3S]

No, "Красная площадь" is the proper name. In Russian mostly the first word is capitalized (unlike in English).

[ilya.z]

Well, you are right, it's a sort of a proper name as a whole - toponym.

[AleksandrK686775]

Why "the White House", but " Red Square"?

[CarlSailor]

Because articles are only for Capitalist Pigdogs!

ВПЕРЁД, ТОВАРИЩИ!!!

[kapos]

Because that's how we say place names in English. You don't say 'the Wall Street' and 'the Times Square' either, do you?