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GMAT, russian version

Every year millions of russian kids pass final exams (for school). Results of this exams could be counted in universities as prelimanary examination. This thing varies from school to school and I still don't understand 100% why this practice was implemented (in my time we used to have 2 different exams - one when you finish school, second when you apply to univercity). ЕГЭ (integrated state exam) is something that you know as GMAT, though with many specific things. Talking about GMAT -the most different thing for russians is the logic in task explanation. So most likely you will have similar problems with our ЕГЭ. I have 2 links for you to practice: http://ege.yandex.ru/ has mini-tests http://www1.ege.edu.ru/content/view/700/278/ has full demo-version of tests
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Russian greetings

You probably have heard that Russians are not friendly. Imagine you see your neighbor – you don’t know the name but you live close and you wanna be nice to him. Would you say “Hello” Or if you enter the elevator with some other person – would you greet him? For Russians the correct answer for both is “no”, and in elevator you would better pretend the other person just don’t exist. So why does it go like this. Don’t forget that Russia went through many wars and revolutions during last 100 years. There were times when good friendly manners could tell you belong to different social class – and provoke people into something… And there are situations in Russia – for example, in elevator, when saying “Hi” you will sound impertinent. Being very friendly in Europe and US and being ignorant for strangers in Russia we are passing the same message: “I’m no danger for you, see I’m nice” “I’m no danger for you, I don’t even see you” Here is a list of most frequent Russian greetings. First list is f...
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SMS russian: transliterated russian alphabet

I remember my first impression: american guy was totally shocked by very first sms he recieved from russian friend. It was with latin letters but just some abrakadabra. So, what is pecular about sms language? Text message in english could contain 180 signs, but in russian it has a limit of 70 signs per sms. This was a primary reason why russian use latin letters in sms quite often. Words are transliterated as it is but probably this matches will make it easier for you. Note: do not try to read letters in combinations, as long as in russian all letters are pronounced. For example kh would be кх, not x (as it sounds in english) 1) ж is zh , z and asterix 2) ч is ch and 4 3) ь is b or ' 4) ш is sh , w 5) е is equal to ё 6) щ is sh, sch 7) ц is c, sc, ts 8) з is z, 3 (digit) 9) я is ja, ya 10) ю is ju, yu 11) ы is bl, y, i 12) й - j, y,i 13) г is g and r (resembles russian letter) 14) д is d and g Here are several examples of such phrases: Privet, ya to4no n...
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