Russian Word of the Day

One of the Russian words for dog is собака. It can be used for either a male or female dog:

There is a curious phrase that uses the word собака to mean “a whole lot of”:

«Как собак нерезанных» literally means “like unslit dogs.” How could such a phrase come to mean “a whole lot of”? In years agone the stray dogs around Russian villages would slowly grow in numbers until they became dangerous. Every once in a while the villagers would get together and round up all the strays and slit their throats to bring them back to manageable levels. You can imagine that the phrase nowadays is mostly used in a negative sense. For a recent interesting blog entry about stray dogs in Russia, see Josefina's entry on the Russian blog at transparent.com.

My favorite recent quote involving собака is in a rant about the lousy job some Russian translators did in putting subtitles to an episode of House:

There are quite a few other words related to dogs in Russian, and we'll discuss some of those over the next few days.

The Russian word for blog is блог. What exactly is a blog? Ru.wikipedia.org describes it like this:

Юлия Третьякова, a blogger apparently from Томск, recently discussed the most popular blogs in Russia. Here's her list along with the reasons that people read them:

drugoi.livejournal.com

e_grishkovets.livejournal.com

temа.livejournal.com

dolboeb.livejournal.com

katechkina.livejournal.com

tanyant.livejournal.com

mi3ch.livejournal.com

kitya.livejournal.com

One of the most beautiful words in the Russian language is ненаглядный. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll probably find something like dear or beloved. That's probably adequate for a fast and dirty written translation, but it entirely misses the image of the word. Let's break it down by first considering how the verb it comes from is made up.

When you add the prefix на- to a verb and also make it reflexive, then it adds the idea of "to do to the point of satiation." Thus начитаться means “to read until you can't read any more,” and наесться means “to eat until you can't eat any more.” Very often these verbs are used in sentences with the negative particle не to catch the idea of “I couldn't get enough of” something. Examples:

The verb глядеть means “to look at,” so наглядеться means “to look at someone to the point of satiation.” It's mostly used with the negative particle не:

Thus the adjective ненаглядный comes from the verb phrase «не наглядеться», i.e. it means “the one you can't stop looking at.” In translation, we have to find some other English phrase that captures the emotion of the comment to really get it right:

Can you picture it? To be so wrapped up in one person, to have that beloved face constantly before you when you wake and sleep... ’tis a madness devoutly to be wished.

Ещё means still:

When ещё combines with the negative particle не, we translate it into English as “not yet.”

Sometimes ещё has the meaning of “also, another, additionally, some more.”

Most students of Russian first encounter the word кататься in the phrases кататься на лыжах “to ski” and кататься на коньках “to skate.” A single skate is a конёк or “little horse.” If you use your imagination, you can see how an ice skate might look a little like a horse. Roller skates are called роликовые коньки, more commonly known as ролики, so you can also кататься на роликах.

Кататься is a handy verb that refers to any kind of motion for fun. It often translates the English “ride” or “take a ride.” The perfective is покататься.

For all of the above, use ездить instead of кататься if you are traveling for transportation rather than for fun:

More riding for fun:

Amusement park rides are called аттракционы:

Some English words ending in –ing turn into this rather peculiar set of coinages:

Sometimes this verb is used for things you don’t ordinarily ride on for fun:

The word уже means already. Be careful to get the stress right because if you say уже that means narrower.

When уже combines with the negative particle не, we translate the combination into English with the phrases “no longer” or “not anymore.”

The Russians use уже much more than the English speakers use the word already, and very often the meaning is somewhat attenuated. That kind of “faded” уже is sometimes captured by the word “now” or “really,” and sometimes it's best left simply untranslated.

One last quirk is that уже is sometimes shortened into уж. There is also a noun уж that means “grass snake.” So how do you tell when the Russians mean “already” and when they mean “grass snake”? Frankly, if you can't tell the difference between those two things in context, you aren't smart enough to study Russian. Consider switching your major to French.

The word for a tear is слеза. Notice the stress pattern:

A few sample sentences:

The word teardrop is big news this month in the US due to a viral e-mail going around that contains, among other things, this picture and these words:

When I saw that note, I had no idea whether it was real or not, so I headed right away to snopes.com to see if it had been debunked. Go figure: it's legitimate, and the monument even has an official website where you can see a picture of Putin at the dedication.

The words левша and правша mean leftie (a left-handed person) and rightie (a right-handed person) respectively. The former declines like this:

The word правша declines precisely the same way. A few example sentences:

Though every beginning student of Russian knows that there are masculine nouns and feminine nouns, not every student knows that there are common gender nouns as well, and among them are левша and правша. A common gender noun is one that takes masculine adjectives if referring to a man and feminine adjectives if referring to a woman. Thus one could theoretically say:

Simlarly if a common gender noun is the subject of a sentence, it induces masculine agreement in the verb if the noun refers to a man and feminine agreement if the noun refers to a woman. Thus, though not a common thing to say, one could theoretically say:

The word for jaw in Russian is челюсть, which is a feminine noun. Not too surprisingly, the movie “Jaws” was translated into Russian as «Челюсти».

Doubtless the most famous historical incident involving a jaw is Samson's slaying of the Philistines:

Sometimes your neck and head can hold a lot of tension, in which case you should take the following advice:

When you combine челюсть with the adjective вставная “insertable” or съёмная “removable,” it means denture:

Oh, the horror! Oh, the humanity! Actually, when I read things like this in Russian, I'm encouraged: it proves that not it's not just we Americans who can be shallow beyond words.

The verb надевать/надеть means “to put on” an item of clothing. It conjugates just like одевать/одеть:

The item of clothing that is put on goes in the accusative case:

If you put the item of clothing on somone else, the other person appears in the accusative case after the preposition на:

You can also specify various body parts after на, and other prepositions can also be used to indicate layers of clothing:

Let's think about the verb одеваться/одеться. It conjugates like this:

The verb means “to get dressed.” If the item of clothing is specified, then it occurs in the accusative case after the preposition в:

If one person dresses another, then the non-reflexive form of the verb is used:

You know how there are certain rules of language you are taught in school that absolutely everyone violates? One of those rules is you absolutely musn't use одевать/одеть to mean "to put an item of clothing on (oneself)." The Russians violate this rule like crazy. Absolutely everybody from news anchors to professors to welders makes this mistake, so in the press you can see things like:

In that sense you are supposed to use надевать/надеть, thus the previous sentence should have been written «Анжелина Джоли надела платье задом наперед». (See tomorrow's entry for details on how to use that verb.)

Today I'd like to write about пирожки (singular пирожок), a word maybe as famous as матрёшка , although the former belongs to the food category and is not a souvenir as the latter. Russian cuisine is famous for its doughy things, and пирожки are among them. Basically, it is dough with filling inside. The filling can be anything: berries, mushrooms, roots, vegetables… anything you wish to put in there. The dough is not a simple dough, however, but a little complicated to make, and it takes time to master the skill of preparing it. In Russian it is called сдобное тесто. Recipes vary, but the thing they all have in common is that they have yeast, and and the dough takes time to rise. Many great Russian authors, e.g. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Paustovsky, and Turgenev, numerous times mention in their writings the process of making the dough for pirozhki (or for bliny, like Сhehov, who wrote a special short story about it, «О бренности»; see «Как испечь блины по-чеховски?» for details . K. Paustovsky in his autobiographical novel «Повесть о жизни/Розовые олеандры» discusses the making of куличи (a type of пирожки for Easter), and he calls the process of preparing the dough священнодействием а sacred act:

I myself remember the same kind of feistiness over making dough for kulichi. Maybe it is because kulichi are for Easter, and because of the religious connotation, extra care was needed. Usually for regular pirozhki it is much less demanding! Kulichi don't have a filling; they are made in oval molds and have raisins inside. Pirozhki have the filling, as I mentionned above, and here each chooses each own! My all time favorites are two kinds: pirozhki with eggs and green onions, and pirozhki with apples. One has to boil a few eggs, and then finely chop them with green onions, and add salt and pepper. For the kind with apples I stew finely chopped applles with water and sugar for about forty minutes, making sure they stay moist, adding water if necessary, and then put them in pirozhki. The last trick (but not the least!): do not forget to baste your pirozhki with egg (beat one egg with a whisk for basting) before baking, it will add such glamour to your pirozhki that they will be hard to resist, just like in that picture! Actually, the pirozhki in the picture I made myself for a party at my house, they turned out very delicious, and everyone liked them!

Good luck with making your own pirozhki, and

ПРИЯТНОГО АППЕТИТА ! BON APPETIT !

Let's think about the verb помогать/помочь. It conjugates like this:

The main meaning of the verb is “to help, give aid to,” and the person receiving the help appears in the dative case. The action which the subject helped the indirect object to do appears in an infinitive phrase:

Ушная сера means earwax, and a glob of that stuff that impedes your hearing is called ушная пробка “an ear clog.” Often the Russians will simply leave out the ушная part and just say сера or пробка. I really couldn't care less about this phrase, but the other day one of my students was given an assignment to write a bunch of phrases starting with «спасибо за» “thanks for,” and he came up with:

The phrase is grammatically perfect, so I can't take off any points. But by God, for that kind of disrespectful composition, I'm surely going to stiff him on his final grade, подлец the bum.

Let's think about the verb ложиться/лечь. The first thing to notice is that it is one of only four verbs in Russian where the imperfective is reflexive and the perfective is not.¹ It conjugates like this:

The primary meaning of the verb is “to lie” in the sense of “to lie down.” The first thing to notice is that the thing you lie down on appears in the accusative case after the preposition на:

It's also possible to lie under something под + accusative:

We often find this verb in is in combination with спать. The resulting phrase means “to go to bed.”

¹ You get extra points if you can name the three other verbs. Lots of people can name two others, but if you get three others, you are special. Add a comment to this post to prove your prowess!

² The verb “to lie” in the sense of “to lie down” is currently shifting in English. The old standard for the past is to say “Yesterday I lay on the couch after lunch because my head hurt” and the standard for the infinitive can be seen in “My head hurts, and I need to lie down.” In modern American English now people often say “Yesterday I laid down on the couch after lunch” and “My head hurts, and I need to lay down.” This verb is one my personal pet peeves in life, and I'm going to defend the old literary norm either to my dying die or to the day my sister finally admits she has been saying it wrong all these years, whichever comes first.

Death seems to be a-comin’ awful fast.

One of the meanings of the word охота is desire. The word can be used predicatively, in which case the person who has the desire is in the dative.

Oddly enough, one of the uses of this word is to express the idea of disbelief and surprise that we express in English with sentences like “What the heck did you do that for?” or “Did you really mean to do that?” Examples:

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The Obama administration wants to “push the reset button” on relations with Russia, and someone had the cutesy idea of presenting Lavrov with a large button with the word “reset” printed on it in Russian and English. The word they printed on it was перегрузка, which, alas, does not normally mean reset. It can mean “cargo transfer” or “overload,” but it can't mean “reset.” (Lavrov said it meant “overcharge,” which probably caused a lot of confusion. It doesn't mean charging too much money.)

Secretary Clinton said “We worked hard to get the right Russian word.” Oh, really? You worked hard to get one word right? And you still failed? If you had asked one single Russian person, you could have had it right. Would that really have been so much work? If they worked really hard and still couldn't get a single word of Russian right, I'm not sure there is much hope for improvement over the previous eight years of pathetic foreign policy blunders.

One might think that had former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice been involved, she might have caught the error since she spoke some Russian. The American press has often stated that she spoke fluent Russian, but quotes in the Russian press indicate that her spoken Russian was only mediocre. Would she have caught an error in a non-political word? Probably not.

Okay, now that I have had my obligatory moment of cynicism, there is a kinder angle. One word for reset is перезагрузка. All it would take was a typographical error of leaving out the middle -за- to end up with перегрузка. An embarrassing error, yes, and a sign that the cutesy prop was likely part of a last minute effort, not an actual bit of careful diplomacy. That said, I think I can still give the current administration the benefit of the doubt.

Photo of Clinton's reset button. To add insult to incompetence, the Russian word was printed in English letters. How tacky is that?

Follow-up, Tuesday, March 10, 2009: I have now heard from several sources that some Russians will use перегрузить instead of перезагрузить in the meaning of “reboot a computer”; the corresponding noun form would be перегрузка instead of перезагрузка. Other more stylistically careful Russians respond and say, “Oh, no, you can't ever say that in that meaning.” I place this dissonance in the same category as the English error, “I itched the back of my hand until it turned red.” Standard English requires “scratched” not “itched” in this context, but I have heard (less educated) native speakers of English say it. To my ear it sounds absolutely wrong, but some people say it. So the appearance of “pergruzka” on Clinton's rest button may have had one of two sources: a typo for перезагрузка, or her informant might have been someone who thought, “Well, sometimes we say it перегрузка” and just made a lousy stylistic choice.

Follow-up, Tuesday, March 19, 2009: Amusing spoofs on the button are appearing all over the web.

The other day an anonymous querent wondered about the correct way to say “Thanks for the salmon!” The answer is: that depends.

If you mean that you are grateful for an entire salmon, then the word you want is a masculine word ending in a soft sign: лосось. If you mean that you are grateful for a filet of the fish which you intend to consume as food, then the word you want is a feminine word: лососина. Thus:

Actually лосось can also mean simply the flesh of the animal, but every once in a while you will meet some pedant who will want you to distinguish the two words.

In the US one associates salmon particularly with the the states of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. In Russia Камчатка is the major нерестилище of salmon. A нерестилище “spawning ground” is a place where fish lay their eggs.

Let's think about the verb готовить/приготовить, which conjugates like this:

The verb pair готовить/приготовить has a couple meanings, the first of which is “to prepare.” The person/thing who is being prepared appears in the accusative case, and the thing for which they are being prepared appears in the dative case after the preposition к:

The second meaning of the verb is “to cook”:

The Russian word for a male virgin is девственник, and a female virgin is девственница. The provenance of the word is obvious — дева means maid or maiden, one who is presumably devoid of sexual experience.

True story: on my second trip to Russia I was having a conversation with Лидия, a homely Russian instructor with a poofy hairdo whose mannerisms were the most prudish you can imagine. During the conversation I couldn't remember the word for virgin, so in the most tactful way possible I asked «Как называется мужик, который никогда не имел интимных отношений?» “What do you call a guy who has never had intimate relations?” Without a moment's hesitation she looked me straight in the eyes, batted her lashes and replied «Импотент».

How do Russians deal with the last names and first names of foreigners? The general rule makes sense: the name declines if it ends in a sound that is typical for a male/female name and if it matches the gender typical of such names.

Not too surprisingly, if the foreigner is male, and if his first name and last name end in a consonant typical of a Russian masculine first declension noun, then the first and last names decline just like masculine first declension nouns. For example, Brad Pitt's name declines like this in Russian:

Likewise if a female foreigner's names end in a letter typical of a second declension noun, the names decline like second declension nouns. Thus Christina Aguilera's name declines like this in Russian:

If either of a man's names ends in a sound that is not typical for a masculine first or second declension Russian noun, then that name is not declined. The other name may still decline. Here's how the names of Antonio Banderas and Gérard Depardieu work:

If either of a woman's names ends in a sound not typical for a second declension noun, then that name does not decline. The other name may still decline. As example we see Paulina Rubio and Jane Fonda:

If a foreign name ends in a sound atypical for Russian male and female names, then usually the name doesn't decline at all, e.g. the names Вупи Голдберг, Мелани Гриффит, Пинк, and Антонио Сабато never change their endings.

A few general examples:

(Can you believe that Julio Iglesias, the idol of menopausal women everywhere, even has an official website in Russia? Click here to immerse yourself in the degradation.)

The generalizations we just discussed take care of most foreign names in Russian. There are lots of other possibilities, but they are too many to enumerate in a short blog entry. Suffice it to say that every once in a while names surprise you.

Quirky exceptions:

• Heaven knows why, but—in terms of official written Russian stylistics—Polish last names in -ski are usually transliterated into Russian not as -ский but as -ски, and they do not decline, thus «фильмы Романа Полански» “the films of Roman Polanski.” If you are writing a formal report in Russian or giving a formal presentation, that's how you have to treat them. But those rules don't hold up later in the day. Even overeducated native speakers of Russian with a fetish for film will say фильмы Романа Поланского when socializing after their big presentation.
• Likewise, although first and last names in -а are generally declined, officially speaking last names that end in -иа are not declined in überformal contexts, thus you'll hear «книги Джона Гарсиа» “the books of John Garcia” if someone is making a formal presentation, although afterwards, when their students are fawning over them at the parties after the conference, the same speaker will say книги Джона Гарсии.

One last thought: the Russians themselves are not always sure how to handle foreign last names and whether to decline them or not, or even how to spell them. When I looked at the Russian Wikipedia entry today for author John David Garcia, I saw that in the title of the page they spelled his name Гарсиа (standard transliteration of the name), but in the body of the article they tended to write Гарсия.

Today let's think about the verb отвечать/ответить. Notice that it's imperfective form is a first conjugation verb, and its perfective form is a second conjugation verb:

The first meaning of the verb is “to answer, respond”:

If you answer a person, the person appears in the dative case:

If you answer a question, then вопрос is the object of the preposition на in the accusative case:

If you combine both the person to whom you are responding and the question, then you have two options. The person can appear in the dative case outside of the на phrase, or you can turn the person into a possessor of the question inside the на phrase: