Today was such a fun session! For this week’s meeting, my study partner Yevhen and I decided to ditch the classroom and head to H&M in the Ratina mall right in the city center of Tampere. Since we wanted to tackle clothing vocabulary, a clothing store was the perfect “living textbook.”
Walking through the aisles, Yevhen had me name different items like рубашка (shirt) and брюки (trousers). Just like last time at Lidl, I was surprised to find more loanwords like свитер (sweater) and джинсы (jeans), which made the learning curve feel a bit smoother.
Initially, we planned to cover formal wear and materials like wool or silk. However, we got so distracted by the winter collection that we spent most of our time on “survival” winter gear—essential for the Finnish climate! We ended up pivoting the lesson to focus on outerwear like куртка (jacket) and шапка (hat).
Yevhen also explained how Ukrainian terms for certain accessories differ from the Russian ones I knew. It was fascinating to compare them to the Polish I’ve picked up at my home university; the Slavic roots are so interconnected! We didn’t get through the full list of materials we intended to cover because we spent so much time discussing the cultural “dress codes” in Ukraine versus Finland, but the practical practice was worth the detour.
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