June 6 is the birthday of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s “everything” – the person who captured Russian language in prose and poetry and gave life to the literature and national sense of self for centuries to come.
So June 6 is celebrated as Russian Language Day, too.
What better way to celebrate the language than with ten little films by Kirill Golovastikov, whose “Russian Language in 18 Minutes” should be shown on the first day of Russian class everywhere.
After he made his mini-history of the Russian language, he was approached by the Slovo (Word) Center at VDNKh, an education and exhibition pavillion dedicated to the history of the Russian language and Cyrillic. They asked him to make nine more films short films about Russian.
The animated films are truly very short – less than two minutes – but full of information about the development of Russian, from what people wrote on birchbark in Novgorod to how internet is changing the language.
You can see them all here.
You can find out more information on the Slovo site here.
And you can entertain and educate yourself for days on the Arzamas site here.
С Днём русского языка! (Happy Russian Language Day!)
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