In English, I don't have much occasion to use the verb "to seat." In fact, I think the last time I used it was a year or so ago: "Even though we made a reservation, the maitre d' didn't seat us right away."

Remember how I drove you all nuts with the innate propensity of Russian creatures and inanimate objects to stand, sit or lie? And how relieved you were when I moved on to other topics?
Well, I'm back.

What is национальность?
Dictionaries tell you that it's ethnicity: принадлежность человека к этнической общности, отличающейся особенностями языка, культуры, психологии, традиций, обычаев, образа жизни (a person's identification with an ethnic group that is distinguished by a distinctive language, culture, psychology, traditions, customs and way of life).

David Remnick says he has been lucky — "preposterously lucky" — twice in his professional life: once when he was posted to Moscow in 1988 as a correspondent for The Washington Post and once when he was made editor of The New Yorker magazine.

I know I sound like a dog trainer on drugs, but bear with me just a little bit longer. You'll thank me some day.

Lying on my couch with my dog sitting by my side, time seems to stand still as I continue to contemplate Russian stance verbs — стоять (to stand), сидеть (to sit) and лежать (to lie).

Whew. The annual winter 10-day Russian eat-and-drinkathon is finally over. Isn't it amazing how tight a pair of jeans can get in just a little over a week?

Our language columnist offers up her selection of Russian words that defined the year. For starters, there are the words полиция (police), рокировка (castling, job swap at the top) and альфа-самец (alpha male).

'Twas the night before Christmas, and our language columnist had visions dancing in her head. But these were no ordinary holiday scenes. Instead, they were special wishes for the Russian people.

Thanks for tuning in to WTMT radio! It's the top of the hour here in Moscow, and we'll return to our nonstop coverage of political events right after this brief commercial message.

On most days, author Michael Cunningham sits in his studio in lower Manhattan and writes.

A non-Russian friend happened to visit an acquaintance in the city center during one of the demonstrations this week. He realized two things. First, it's really scary to walk out of an apartment building smack into a division of cops in full riot gear.

As we head into the holiday season, the frozen mud and bare trees, pitch-black mornings — remind me again why staying in daylight time was such a good idea — and nonstop traffic jams might be making you a wee bit crabby. If you're so grumpy that you're working up to a full-blown Scrooge impersonation, here is a short guide to grumbling in Russian.

The political buzz this week in Moscow was: Did they or didn't they? Boo Vladimir Putin at the boxing match, that is. 

This week I have a lot to worry about. First on my list: Avoid being hit by that asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Yes, I know scientists say we shouldn't worry, but they said climate change was nothing to worry about, too.

The main buzz on the street these days is about the upcoming holiday — as in: Напомни мне, пожалуйста, что это за праздник? (Remind me, what's this holiday?)

Let's see what the digital mailman has just delivered in my weekly mailbag of reader's questions. Misha in Ukhta asks: "Is it true that Americans don't speak English?" It's definitely true in Brooklyn.

When Joseph P. Mazza graduated from George Washington University in international politics in 1984, he had no intention of becoming a translator. He did, however, love languages, so he accepted a job as a clerk translator at the Navy, translating from Russian.

What with all the stability and absence of pre-election excitement, I find myself somewhat linguistically bored. So I've drifted back to old language obsessions, like nailing down those little words like вот (here) and вон (there), which have a range of meaning that is nothing less than astonishing.  

There is a lovely concept in linguistics called the Frequency Illusion, which I personally experience very frequently. In nonspecialist language, it means that once you've noticed a phenomenon, it seems to happen a lot. In my case, once I identified the chess metaphor in рокировка (castling), now all I see are chess allusions.

Ever since the Great Russian Political Announcement two weeks ago, I've been unhappy. Well, yeah, about that, but also about how to best translate the most commonly used Russian word to describe what was happening: рокировка.

Lately, I've been indulging in my favorite procrastination pastime — reading Russian blogs. When the posters are young and snarky — and the posters are almost always young and snarky — this is a humbling experience.

This year, бабье лето (what Americans call Indian summer) seems to have lasted a total of just one day, but all the same dacha life continues to have its pleasures. The damp and relative warmth are still creating paradise for the modern hunter-gatherer.

What's the best thing about a week of pretty much nonstop rain in September? Well, if you've held out at the dacha, when the rain lets up, you can go mushroom hunting (ходить по грибы) and score a huge, perfect cepe (белый гриб) right in your own backyard.

If you read Russian newspapers or blogs, you'll see the word политкорректность (political correctness) constantly. But the more you read, the less you understand what it means in Russian.

Close to the top of my list of Russian words I wish we had in English is молчать, which conveys so succinctly in two little syllables what we need a dozen for in English: to not say anything, to be silent. I don't begrudge adopting sputnik or perestroika, but why can't we borrow молчать as well?

In an old Soviet joke, a hare runs for his life in the forest. A bear asks him why he's running, and the hare says that camels are being caught and shoed. The bear points out that the hare isn't a camel. The hare replies: Поймают, подкуют, а потом доказывай, что ты не верблюд (They'll catch you and put shoes on you, and then go and try to prove that you're not a camel).

One of the problems of being a translator is that your work load is pretty much feast or famine. Half the time you get a job offer every time you pick up the phone, and the other half you're playing computer solitaire and wondering if everyone has abandoned cross-cultural communication. In Russian, this parade of feast and famine is described with the phrase: то густо, то пусто (literally, "now thick, now empty").

As the world watched the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations, Standard & Poor's rating downgrade and the stomach-flipping volatile market, it seems like everyone and his brother (кому не лень) had something nasty and accusatory to say about the U.S. economy and political system. Can't say I blame them.

Now that Awful August has begun, you're likely to see a lot of people surreptitiously spitting over their left shoulder or knocking on wood to ward off the evil that tends to befall Russia this month. Being a good wood-knocker myself, I got interested in the word стучать (knock, pound, bang). With a few prefixes, you can give someone a good and varied pounding.