Thread: Old-fashioned vocab

I have a dictionary of Russian vocab published in 1996 in England and a lot of words are very old-fashioned, especially words relating to anything to do with the state, officialdom, military and local affairs. I notice that if I look up the same words in my Collins English-Russian / Russian-English dictionary a lot of the words have different meanings or are not there at all. It's heavy going. I really want to have a genuine store of Russian vocab but is there any point learning these words?

Hi,

Can you write some words having meaning ? May be, i can help you.

Irisheyes, could you please give us some examples of what you call old fashioned words in Russian?

Well, here are a few examples of what I mean of the 1996 publication - versus my Oxford (oops sorry not Collins) dictionary. Had to transliterate these (my keyboard types the Russian characters but they come out jumbled on e-mail).

university - (old publication) vooz / (Oxford) ooneeverseetyet

agriculture - (old publication) zemledeleeye / Oxford) selskoye kozyaistvo

Numerous other words such as: 'member of the gentry', 'bast sandal', 'half-length sheepskin coat', seem out of date or something & I wonder if they are worth learning. At the other extreme a lot of words in the later dictionaries seem too 'westernised' & I find myself wondering if I am learning Ryskee or Zapadskee. Perhaps I am too fussy but has anyone come up against this?

Originally Posted by irisheyes

university - (old publication) vooz / (Oxford) ooneeverseetyet

agriculture - (old publication) zemledeleeye / Oxford) selskoye kozyaistvo

They are not old-fashioned. Just synonyms.

ВУЗ (Высшее учебное заведение) = Университет (or Институт - this last word seems old fashioned indeed)
Agriculture = земледелие = сельское хозяйство

They aren't old fashioned at all.
vooz is an abbriviation (BУЗ) - а ВУЗ is a высшее учебное заведение, which can be either институт or университет

земледелие and сельское хозяйство have a different register but neither are oldfashioned. Can you give us a example of some Russian words you fear are 'westernised'?

Thank you. After doing a few more comparisons I can see that a lot of words and phrases in the book are too formal and I'm not totally comfortable with it. Although published in '96 it's research may have been based on much older publications. Still, I think it will be useful to refer to from time to time as the core vocabulary will have changed little. In fact I am always happy to get my hands on anything here that is related to Russian.