Russian Word of the Day

The Russian word for New Year is Новый год. New Year's is a time when friends and family come together to mark the beginning of a new and exciting year. Because many Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7th, there is no need to buy a Christmas tree earlier in the month of December декабрь. So, many people buy and decorate the Christmas tree on New Year's Eve. Many Russian families enjoy gathering with large crowds on New Year's Eve to enjoy special food and drinks. For most Russians, singing around the dinner table and dancing are two important components of a New Year's Eve party.

Last year my family decided to make a New Year's party at my house. We live in a quiet neighborhood, and I had to ask all of our neighbors for permission to play loud music late into the night. My parents invited a few of our Russian friends and they all arrived with tasty dishes and fine wines. As my friend arrived, she said «С Новым годом, Оля! Ты выглядишь очень красиво» “Happy New year Olga! You look very pretty.” Me and my friend were both very excited because one of my parent’s friends had a very handsome son and we both wanted to dance with him that night. As he came inside, I whispered to my friend «Саша такой симпатичный! Я первая буду с ним танцевать!» “Sasha is so cute! I will dance with him first!”. Everyone had a good time that night including me and my girlfriend because we both had a chance to dance with Sasha.

«Я хочу поздравить всех с Новым годом!» “I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!”

Don's additional comment: notice that in Russian only the first word of Новый год is capitalized, not the second.

One way to say that it is a quarter past the hour is to use the word for quarter which is четверть. Since the hour between 12:00 and 1:00 is considered the first hour, 12:15 is четверть первого. You will notice that первого is in the genitive case. That's because there is an implied часа after it. That is, you are implying that the time is “a quarter of the first hour.” 1:15 is «четверть второго» “a quarter of the second (hour)”. Here is a complete listing of times on the quarter hour as expressed with четверть.

Other entries dealing with time are soon to come. Look for them under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."

One way to say that it is half past the hour is to use the word for half which is половина. Since the hour between 12:00 and 1:00 is considered the first hour, 12:30 is половина первого. You will notice that первого is in the genitve case. That's because there is an implied часа after it. That is, you are implying that the time is “half of the first hour.” 1:30 is «половина второго» “half of the second (hour)”. Here is a complete listing of times on the half hour as expressed with половина.

There is also an abbreviated way of saying the same thing where «пол» a morpheme meaning “half,” combines with the genitive ordinal number to make a single word that indicates half past the hour. That's right: Russian has a single word that means “one thirty,” and another one that means “two thirty,” etc. Here's a complete listing.

Other entries dealing with time are soon to come. Look for them under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."

If you want to answer the question «Который час?» or «Сколько времени?» when the time is right on the hour, the phrases are:

You can use those phrases for times both a.m. and p.m. Civilian Russians are much more comfortable with military time (24-hour clock time) than civilian Americans, so it's also possible to hear these hours with the number zero and with numbers thirteen and above:

Although it is perfectly fine (though rather officious) to say «Сейчас ноль часов», it is more common to say «Сейчас двенадцать ночи» “It is now twelve of the night” or «Сейчас полночь» “It is now midnight.”

Other entries dealing with time are soon to come. Look for them under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."

There are many ways to answer the questions «Который час?» and «Сколько времени?» The easiest way is also the strangest way to the American way of thinking, using an ordinal number followed by the word час hour:

The hour from twelve to one is considered the first hour of the twelve-hour clock, so if someone in response to «Который час?» answers «Первый час», then that means it's somewhere from 12:00 to 12:59. If the answer is «Двенадцатый час», that means it's between eleven and twelve. Sometimes it's okay to fudge a bit in translating them into English:

That probably seems like a weird way to tell time, but I bet it harkens back to the days of sundials. Sundials aren't like digital watches that easily display minutes and seconds. You glance at the sundial and you can most quickly tell what the hour is, and you see what number the shadow is moving toward, so just naming the hour was probably a fairly practical thing for people to do.

Other entries dealing with time are soon to come. Look for them under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."

The Russian word for Christmas is Рождество, which comes from the verb родить “to give birth.” Here we have the text of the angels' announcement of Christ's birth to the shepherds. The text on the left is in pre-revolutionary spelling which is still used by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russian word пророчество means prophecy. Below you will find one of the most famous prophecies from the Old Testament. The text on the left is from a Russian Bible written in pre-revolutionary orthography.

You'll notice the verse numbers in this particular Russian translation and the English King James version don't match. That's no error. Verse numbers were not part of the ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible. They are a reference convenience added years later, and from edition to edition they don't always match perfectly.

Translation is a complex art. You might want a translation to:

• clearly indicate the words and grammatical structures of the original. This kind of translation is useful for people who have some skill in the original language and are trying to fine-tune their language skills.
• clearly indicate the informational content of the original without overly worrying about mimicking the grammatical structure of the original. This kind of translation is suitable for technical documents and newspaper and magazine articles.
• reinterpret the original for a specific target audience in such a way as to catch its emotional content, which is the approach you want to use for poetic translations.

This topic came to mind recently when I ran across a blog entry from the Director of the Vladimir Bakanov School of Translation, in which he cited a poem by Агния Барто, a Russian author of children's poetry whom I had never read before. Judging from this first example, she was talented. I decided to try to produce a translation of the poem for American children. Before I show that translation, I'll adduce the poem along with a fairly close word-for-word translation. And then I'll give you a more poetic interpretation.

When you reinterpret a poem, you hope to first of all produce the overall meaning of the original. That's a minimum. Then you attempt to reproduce the emotion of the original, which is tricky because conflicting cultural values may mean that what's emotionally important in the source culture is not as important (or worse yet, emotionally important in a different way) in the target culture. If you can do those two things, then you have a good a translation. And if you can throw in some relatively non-essential aspects like rhyme scheme or rhythm in addition to those other two, then you have a very good translation.

My translation below has one important modification: I have replaced the New Year imagery with Christmas imagery since the latter is the more important winter holiday for most Americans. The poem also reproduces the rhyme scheme of the original, though not the rhythmic structure. Feel free to comment on the translation's inadequacies.

Months long before the springtime thaw
A pine stood 'neath the winter's gray.
Nearby within a snowy draw
The hungry wolves would prowl for prey.

One winter's night when all was calm,
When no one would expect it least,
Ten bunnies and their bunny mom
Perchanced across one hungry beast.

In the month of Santa Claus
No hare would ever care to be
Consumed by such ferocious jaws,
So they jumped into that lone pine tree.

Those bunnies who had no defense
Just hung like Christmas ornaments.

Ten bunnies hung without a word
Where only snowflakes could be heard.
They tricked the wolf so thoroughly,
Quite long before the springtime thaw,
The only thing he thought he saw
Was a decorated Christmas tree.

(Translation © 2008 Donald E. Livingston, Jr.)

There are two ways to say “What time is it?” in Russian, and they are «Который час?» and «Сколько времени?» «Который час?» is the traditional way of asking the question, and you will find some Russians still who insist that it is the only way you can say it. But truth to tell, «Сколько времени?» or «Сколько сейчас времени?» are perfectly normal and perfectly educated ways to ask the question as well nowadays. If someone is inclined to be contentious about this point, please refer to this entry (mirror) from the Dictionary of Difficulties at gramota.ru.

In conversational Russian you will also hear people say «Сколько время?» but that is conversational and low style. No one will ever use it in writing or in an educated context, so foreigners should avoid it.

Asking what time it is is a piece of cake in Russian. Answering that question is more like a piece of gristle... actually a whole mouthful of nasty ol' gristle. It turns out that you have different rules for saying what time it is depending on whether the time is:

• right on the hour, or
• a quarter after the hour, or
• a quarter to the hour, or
• half past the hour, or
• at a particular minute during the first half of the hour, or
• at a particular mintue during the second half of the hour, or
• generically somewhere between one hour or another.

That's right. You have to figure out how to say each of those things separately. Over the next couple of weeks we will review the different ways to say what time it is in thorough detial. Are you starting to wish you had studied Arabic?

Other entries dealing with time are soon to come. Look for them under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."

As mentioned in previous entries, the most common word for arm/hand in Russian is рука. What if you want to be more specific?

First off, the actual hand is called кисть, which is a feminine noun. It includes запястье the wrist, пястье (the area from the wrist to the first knuckle of each finger, which is also called пясть... heck, do we even have a word for that in English?), and пальцы “the digits.” I say “digits” here because the word палец can mean either finger or toe. If you want to specify fingers, then you say пальцы рук, and if you want to specify the toes, you say пальцы ног.

Next we have the forearm предплечье, in which the major bones are the radius лучевая кость (literally “the ray bone”), which is the bone on the same side of the arm as the thumb, and the ulna локтевая кость (literally “the elbow bone”). I think the average American doesn't know the words radius and ulna. The Russian phrases are a bit more descriptive than the Latinate English equivalents. I wonder if the average Russian knows the names of those bones in Russian? Maybe we'll be fortunate and a native will add a comment about that to this post.

Moving on up we have the elbow локоть, a masculine word, whose second о is a fleeting vowel, thus genitive локтя.

Moving farther up we have плечо, which can mean either the shoulder itself, or it can mean collectively both the shoulder and the upper arm. The bone in the upper arm is плечевая кость, literally “the shoulder bone.” That sounds funny to us Americans. Although the proper name of the bone is “the humerus,” there is a song called “Dry Bones” that contains a line “the arm bone's connected to the shoulder bone;” it sounds amusingly folksy. Even humorous… pun intended.

Last but not least, the English word palm means the front side of what the Russians call пястье. Isn't that curious? We have a word in English that describes the area from the wrist to the first knuckles of the fingers as understood from the front side of the hand, but we don't have a word that describes it from the back side. The Russian word for palm is ладонь, which is a feminine noun. Isn't that curious? Both languages have a word for that part of the hand as considered from the front side. Russian has two words (пястье & пясть) for that part of the hand as considered from either side, but English has no such word. And both languages (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) do not have a single word describing that part of the hand as considered solely from the back side.

Finally, Russian has a conversational term they use sometimes, пятерня, which means “the palm and the fingers,” i.e. what we English speakers usually call the hand, but пятерня is used much, much less often than рука.

As mentioned before, рука can be translated 'hand' and 'arm.' Sometimes that distinction will be reflected in the choice of за and под: use with за usually indicates 'hand,' and под 'arm.' For instance:

Hand in hand, arm in arm… Russians are not nearly as freaked out about physical contact as we Gringos are. Male friends can walk arm in arm without any connotation of romantic involvement. Female friends often walk hand in hand without anyone thinking twice about it.

I remember the first time I was in Russia, 1986, I was interested in the fate of the баптисты. Баптист at the time was the closest equivalent to "Evangelical Christian." At church one Sunday I passed a Bible off to a Russian guy. (They were still not all that easily available then.) We ended up talking; I was invited to his home. After dinner he escorted me back to the subway station, and then eventually all the way back to the university. As we sat in the subway car, he threaded his arm through my arm; that by itself was odd for me as an American man. But when he got to a sensitive part of the conversation, he leaned over to whisper; as he whispered I could feel his lips moving inside my ear. Fortunately I had been taught that Russians have very different perceptions of personal space and contact, so I didn't overreact. I should say that this was not typical. None of my other Russian acquaintances have ever been quite that touchy-feely. The important thing is to give people the benefit of the doubt when you first experience a new culture first hand.

There are other entries about the word рука in this blog. Click on the 'ruka' category to find them.

Since рука means both 'arm' and 'hand,' the Russians use other means to distinguish which part of the arm/hand is involved, and often this involves a distinction between the prepositions в and на. If the preposition в is involved, it usually correlates to 'hand' in English; if на, then 'arm.' For instance:

You'll notice that those sentences used the prepositional case; that's because they expressed the location of the thing being held. Russian usually distinguishes motion phrases and location phrases. So if you want to take things into your hands/arms, you end up using the accusative case:

More importantly, if you want to take someone in your arms, the best way to say it is with the verb обнимать/обнять 'to embrace, hug' which you can use without even mentioning руки: «Я её обнял» “I hugged/embraced her.”

For other entries about the word рука, click on the 'ruka' category.

Why does it seem like all the simplest Russian words are complicated? The Russian word рука is usually used in the contexts when English speakers would use the word hand, but it doesn't really mean hand. It means both the hand and the lower and the upper arm. Some other languages do that as well, Ancient Greek, for instance. When Doubting Thomas said

Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

he used the word χείρ for hand which also means both hand and lower arm. Christ's nail wounds might well have been in the forearms or wrists, not the hands.

The stress shifts quite a bit in the forms of this word, depending on case:

Very often when рука combines with a short preposition, the stress shifts to the preposition itself: за руку , на руку, рука об руку, под руку.

Since the word means more than "hand," English equivalents of Russian sentences may have either "hand" or "arm" in their translations. Join me again over the next few days for more detail about рука in phrases.

Other entries about the word рука will be forthcoming. Click on the 'ruka' category to find them as they appear.

The Russian word for cookie is печенье. Making cookies from scratch is a lot of fun for me because I can experiment with different ingredients. Every year, I make a variety of different types of cookies for Christmas to give away to friends and family. I especially enjoy dusting the tops of my cookies with red красный and green зелёный colored sugar to give them a Christmas like appearance. I like sugar cookies because I can cut them out in different shapes such as bells колакола, stars звёзды, Christmas trees ёлки, and snow men снеговики.

Last Christmas, my friend was coming to visit me from California. I wanted to make him a few of my favorite Christmas cookies and wrap them up in a beautiful Christmas box. When he arrived, I presented him with my box of Christmas cookies and asked him to try a few. I was pleased when he said «Как вкусно! Я люблю, когда ты делаешь рождественские печенья!» “How tasty! I love when you make Christmas cookies!” He finished all my cookies within the hour which gave me concrete evidence that he truly liked my cookies.

Don's additional comments: the word печенье is grammatically neuter and singular. It is often used as a mass noun, so Olga's friend could also have said «Я люблю, когда ты делаешь рождественское печенье!» where «рождественское печенье» is singular. The sentence would have meant the same thing. That's right: the English plural word “cookies” is most often translated by the singular Russian word печенье.

The Russian word for apple is яблоко. When I was a child, my aunt planted three apple trees in her back yard. She adored baking and intended to use the apples to make homemade apple pies. A few years went by and the trees began producing an unbelievably large amount of apples. I remember helping my aunt pick the apples off the trees and by the time we were done with one tree, we probably had enough apples to make pies for the whole city. The apples were large and when I took a bite, the flavor was so sweet and the apple so juicy that I immediately fell in love with the taste of my aunt’s apples. I said «Тётенька, твои яблочные деревья производят самые сладкие и сочные яблоки!» “Aunty, your apple trees produce the sweetest and juiciest apples!”. My aunt smiled at me and said «Я думаю, что мои яблочные пироги будут очень вкусные» “I think that my apple pies will be very tasty.”

Because my aunt had more apples than we could use, she often sold them at the market. She said «Ты хочешь пойти со мной на рынок, чтобы продать яблоки?» “Do you want to go to the market with me to sell the apples?” I became very excited every time I went to the market with my aunt because I enjoyed talking to the big crowd of people who came to buy my aunt’s apples.

Don's additional notes: яблоко has an irregular nominative/accusative plural яблоки. The genitive plural is яблок.

The Russian word for beer is пиво. In Russia beer is a very common drink among construction workers, and many beer brewers sell their beer around these locations because of the good business. On a hot summer day many Russians find that cold beer is one of the most satisfying beverages. My grandfather spent most of his life working as a construction worker and found it very rewarding to enjoy a cold beer after work with his friends. He would say «Друзья! Давайте купим пиво сегодня после работы» “Friends! Let’s buy beer today after work”. On weekends I often saw that my grandfather invited his friends for some beer and television.

Beer also can be used as a hair rinse because it promotes hair shine and strength. A few years ago my mother invited a friend to our house while I was getting ready for a night out with friends. I wanted to take a shower and use beer as my hair rinse so without thinking twice, I went to the kitchen and poured some beer into a plastic cup. As I walked past my mother and her friend, I said «Я пойду принять душ» “I am going to take a shower,” and I continued walking with my cup of beer. My mother’s friend stopped me and asked «Почему ты берёшь кружку пива с собой в душ?» “Why are you taking a cup of beer with you to the shower?” I realized how awkward the situation was and began laughing because I knew that I looked funny standing with a robe халат, towel полотенце, and a cup of beer in my hands. I explained this remedy to my mother’s friend, and since then she too has been using this remedy.

Don's additional comments: There are quite a few songs about beer in Russian, among them Ода пиву “Ode to beer” by Тимур Шаов, Пора по пиву “Time for a beer” by А.Ивашенко and Г.Васильев, the rhythm-and-bluesy Холодное пиво by Аквариум, Гимн пиву “A hymn to beer,” and the rock-and-rollsy Пиво “Beer” by Группа Чайф. But the song that makes me laugh the hardest is the frenetic dance tune «Пей пиво» by Дискотека Авария. Click this link to see the video, lyrics, and translation.

The Russian word for grapefruit is грейпфрут. Grapefruits are a delicious fruit and commonly used to treat obesity, respiratory problems, and flu symptoms. In my backyard, grow two grapefruit trees and I make very good use of them. Once a year, when the grapefruits are at their ripest point, I pick all the fruit off the tree and use it to make grapefruit juice грепфрутовый сок. Everyone in my family loves this healthy drink especially in the mornings. Because our grapefruit trees are very large, they produce many grapefruits each year and we always invite our neighbors over to help pick the grapefruits off the trees. We always end up giving a few dozen grapefruits away to our neighbors each year.

I remember when my mother first started introducing my little sister to grapefruits. Victoria was approximately one year old when my mother handed her a slice of grapefruit. We expected that she would make a funny face so my parents stood around taking pictures when she put the grapefruit in her mouth and squinted. Laughing, my parents said «Mоя дорогая! Ты выглядишь так смешно, когда ты кушаешь этот грейпфрут!» “Мy dear! You look so funny when you eat this grapefruit!”

How do Russians name languages? How do we discuss in Russian the fact that we speak or read or write a particular language? It probably seems like a simple question for a beginning Russian student because the first language names we learn are for the European languages with which Russian has been in contact for some time, and all those language names are pretty well the same; that is, they are referred to by an adjective followed by the word язык which means both language and tongue. Thus we get:

Now the first curious thing is this: you can't use those types of adjective-noun phrases to say “I speak Russian” or “I read Russian” or “I write Russian.” To express those ideas we have to use special adverbs beginning with по- followed by one of those language adjectival stems without the й at the end:

With the verb понимать you can use both forms: «Я понимаю по-английски» and «Я понимаю английский язык.» And you'll definitely here it in sentences like «А ты понимаешь русский язык?» “Don't you understand plain Russian?” when you want to imply the person you are talking to is a blockhead.

The next curious thing is that there are quite a few languages that you can't really discuss using the adjective-noun combinations that we mentioned above. For instance, in Arizona there is a Native American language called Navajo навахо. In Russian there is no phrase like навахоский язык or навашский язык. For such languages the only way you can get those ideas across is to use the name of the language in the prepositional case after the preposition на:

Although theoretically those sentences are perfect, some Russians are a bit uncomfortable with them and want to include the word языке in front of the indeclinable language:

Of course the straight accusative option is still available for понимать: «Он понимает навахо» “He understands Navajo.”

Other languages that work like this are тви Twi (language of Ghana), апаче Apache, чероки Cherokee, эсперанто Esperanto, and суахили Swahili (language of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda) , пушту Pushtu (language of Afghanistan and Pakistan), бенгали Bengali and урду Urdu and хинди Hindi (languages of the eastern Indian subcontinent). When languages are indeclinable, you don't really notice that after на they are in the prepositional case until you encounter one of the non-European languages that declines, like тагалог Tagalog (language of the Phillipines): «Говорим на тагалоге» “We speak Tagalog.” Tagalog is interesting because nowadays there is an adjective (and thence an adverb) тагальский по-тагальски that have been derived from the noun, so for this one you can say it the other way as well: «Говорим по-тагальски» “We speak Tagalog.”

If you mention a text written in the language, then the на form almost always works:

But what about languages that aren't spoken? What about languages that communicate using the hands? With them we can still use the verb говорить, but only the на complement is possible: «Я говорю на языке русских глухонемых» “I speak Russian sign language” (lit. “I speak in the language of Russian deaf-mutes”).

The Russian word for garlic is чеснок. Garlic is not only delicious in certain dishes, but also a very good remedy средство for colds because of its antibacterial properties. My aunt found garlic to be very useful in treating her own flu symptoms. She took a few cloves of garlic and diced them finely with a knife. Afterwards, she placed the diced garlic between two thin pieces of cloth and tied it around her nose and mouth. She walked around with this mask for fifteen minute intervals three times a day and by the following day her flu symptoms were completely gone. Usually when I had a cold, my aunt tried to persuade me to try her garlic remedy but I always refused and told her that she was crazy for tying a handkerchief full of garlic around her nose. «Оля! Пожалуйста попробуй мое чесночное средство и твой грипп сразу пройдет» “Olga! Please try my garlic remedy and your flu will immediately go away”. Even though I could see that her remedy always worked, I refused to try it and preferred suffering until my immune system took care of the flu.

It is important to note that the word гриб refers to the word mushroom while the word грипп refers to flu. These two words sound very similar, but they obviously have different meanings.

The Russian word for fish is рыба. In general fish is a good source of omega 3 fatty acids and a variety of minerals and vitamins. Many delicious Russian dishes can me made out of fish. In particular, many fishermen like to make a traditional fish soup called уха. The only ingredients needed to make уха are water вода, fish рыба, potatoes картошка, carrots морковь, salt соль, black pepper чёрный перец, and sometimes other spices специи. It has become a tradition in my family to make уха every time we go fishing. Usually my family goes fishing in the winter because the fish are especially hungry during this season. Early in the morning рано утром and late in the evening поздно вечером are the best times to catch fish, and I enjoy having a hot cup of уха after sitting for many hours in the cold weather.

Fish is also a popular alternative during a religious fast пост because meat is a prohibited food. Each year two weeks before Christmas, my mother says «Завтра мы начинаем религиозный пост и будем есть рыбу вместо мяса» “Tomorrow we start the religious fast and will be eating fish instead of meat.” The switch from meat to fish has never been a problem for me because I find fish to be absolutely delicious!

The Russian word for perfume is духи while the word for cologne is одеколон. The variety of different perfume and cologne scents are endless and each person chooses the scent that is individual to them.

25 years ago, when my father dated my mom, he bought her a small bottle of very expensive perfume called Magie noire. This was a very popular perfume in Russia and many women gave it a nickname of Чёрная Магия Black Magic. My mother loved this perfume and every time she put it on, she said «Это мои самые любимые духи! Я их просто обожаю!» “This is my favorite perfume! I just adore it!” As a child I remember that she constantly wore the crisp scent. Today she still has the perfume, and it smells just as crisp as it did 25 years ago. For the purposes of preserving the perfume as long as possible, my mom wears it only on very special occasions. Occasionally I will ask my mom if I can wear it. «Мама, можно я намажусь Черной Магией сегодня?» “Mama, can I wear Black Magic today?”, and she always answered «Только если это необходимо» “Оnly if it is a necessity.” To me, my mother’s perfume is a bottle of treasure because it carries so much family history with it. Of course, I could buy another bottle of the same perfume, but the contents of the bottle would not carry the same meaning anymore so I plan to preserve this family treasure for as long as possible.

Don's additional notes: the word духи belongs to a class of words we call pluralia tantum, which means words that only have plural forms and not singular forms. English has such words as well, like the word “jeans.” If a plurale tantum is the subject of a sentence, then the verb must appear in the plural: “My jeans are on the ironing board,” not “My jeans is on the ironing board.” The same is true in Russian, though of course you can see it in the adjectives as well, as in «Мои джинсы новые» “My jeans are new,” where новые is in the plural. Likewise in both languages pronouns that refer to pluralia tantum occur in the plural: “They are on the ironing board,” where “they” is plural, and «Они новые» “They are new,” where они is plural. That's why when Olga's mother said that she adored her perfume, she put said not “it” but “them”: «Я их просто обожаю!»

When you deal with pluralia tantum, you can't guess the gender from the singular since there is never a singular. Instead you have to look up the gender (and the genitive plural) in the dictionary. Here is the complete declinsion of духи perfume:

Finally, there is potentially confusion when reading this word because the word for spirit (supernatural being) is дух, which declines like this:

Notice that the word духи perfume is end-stressed, whereas the word дух spirit is stem-stressed. In speech, theoretically, one should never confuse them since the stress patterns are different, but in writing you will have to use context to distinguish them.

The Russian word for water is вода. I like to live a healthy lifestyle and as a result, I find myself watching the health channel quite frequently. I was watching a program about water and the reporter said «Доктора рекомендуют людям пить от двух до трех литров воды каждый день» “Doctors recommend that people drink two to three liters of water every day.” It is critical to consume enough water to avoid dehydration, especially in Arizona. A few reasons for drinking enough water daily are to increase energy поднять энергию, free the organism of toxins избавить организм от токсинов, loose weight потерять вес, and improve function of the digestive system улучшить функцию пищеварительной системы. There are many more benefits to drinking an adequate amount of water, but even the short list I came up with should be enough to motivate everyone to drink more water. Despite the obvious importance of water, many people still do not consume enough even when hiking on a hot summer day. I often find it strange when I hear a story on the news about a hiker who chose not to bring enough water and had to be airlifted to the hospital due to acute dehydration.

Don's additional notes: the dimunitive form of вода is водичка, so if someone says «Не хочешь водички?», then you know that they mean “Do you want some water?” But you have to be careful because the diminutive of водка is водочка, so if someone says «Не хочешь водочки?», then they mean “Do you want some vodka?”

The Russian word for vodka is водка, and the dimunitive is водочка. So when when he offers you a bit of vodka, a Russian might say «Не хочешь водочки?» Vodka is so associated with Russian culture that doubtless we will blog on the subject many times.

There are many jokes about Russians and vodka. Here is a representative one:

The Russians have an amusing tradition of making rhymes about all sorts of things. I remember in 1986 when I first went to Russia, Gorbachev raised the price of vodka in order to dissuade Russians from drinking excessively. (In this he was following the example of the short-lived Andropov.) I remember my buddy Алёша quoting the following to me:

By "the same thing they did in Poland," they meant the uprising by Solidarity.

The Russians have a thousand stories about the power of vodka. One of them is that vodka foot baths can help eliminate foot odor. The MythBusters tested this hypothesis, and to my great surprise pronounced it true. Mind you, they were washing the feet in vodka, not drinking it. There have been a couple episodes where they explore other vodka stories as well.