Russian Word of the Day

An English speaker might assume that лимонад means lemonade, but in Russian it means almost any non-alcoholic beverage, usually carbonated, and usually sweetened with fruit or berry syrup or sometimes with various herbs or artificial flavors. In other words, it means soft drink. That's right: in Russian both Пепси-Кола and Кока-Кола are лимонад.

In Russia there are many лимонады that we Westerners usually don't encounter in the US. For instance:

Probably the scariest one of them all is Тархун, pictured to the right, which is flavored with dragon's wort. Its green coloring makes it look like an industrial-sized bottle of Nyquil, and its flavor is somewhere between vile and repulsive.

Here are some sample sentences:

I have never had this conversation in Russian, but I can imagine having it:

Being from the crazy American West where little ol’ ladies own pistols and any self-respecting plant has thorns and a self-respecting river should be dry, I seem to have always known the words centipede and millipede. The difference is vital. A millipede you can drop down the back of your friend's blouse, and she'll squirm and shout and hate you for a week, but she won't go to the hospital. If you drop a centipede down the back of your friend's blouse, the centipede will bite like crazy, and she will want to go to the hospital and will hate you forever.

The stem сорок- means forty. The stem нож- means leg/foot, and the -ка suffix makes it a noun. Thus сороконожка literally means forty-footer. Cool, huh? Russians apply the word to any creepy-crawly that has a whole bunch of legs. There's a more bookish word that has the same meaning, which is многоножка, which means many-footer. We have a calque of that word in English, myriapod, but I've only heard entomologists use it. Certainly ordinary people in the US don't know that word. There is another word, сколопендра (borrowed from Latin scolopendra) which means centipede exclusively. Here are some sample sentences:

Эта сороконожка не кусается. Она — твой друг.	Эта сороконожка кусается. Она — не твой друг.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia	Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

If there is any word in the Russian language that a modern American is bound to misunderstand, that word is салат. For an American the primary meaning of salad is a mixture of raw leafy greens with a bit of dressing on top, perhaps with tomatoes or some other vegetables added. In Russia the leafy greens are not a requirement at all. If you mix a quantity of any vegetable matter with some kind of herbed sauce and serve it up on a plate, that is салат. For instаnce, a hundred grams of potatoes combined with enough mayonnaise to cover them, that is салат. If you combine a hundred grams of cucumber with enough sour cream to cover the slices and enough dill to make the sour cream green, that is салат.

Among the most well-known Russian salads are:

For a marvelous rant inspired by Мимоза, see Tanyant. For those of us who are vegetable-impaired, there is a valuable website called Мир салатов The World of Salads.

Салат can also mean lettuce, and thus it can also mean any salad made with lettuce as well. But what Russian ever uses lettuce?

Салат из крабовых палочек
Artificial crab salad

In English we say “to take an exam.” In Russian we say «(на)писать экзамен». If you try to say in Russian «Я взял экзамен» that means “I took the exam [and it's no longer where it originally was].” «Я хорошо написал экзамен» means “I did well on the exam.” «Я плохо написал экзамен» means “I did poorly on the exam.”

Sample sentences:

¹ Of course инглиш is not the Russian word for English. English students in Russia often play with English and Russian simultaneously for humorous effect.

Back in the Soviet era there wasn't much tropical fruit in Russia. You couldn't find a banana to save your soul. Now bananas in Russian are as common as smog. Imagine my surprise, then, when a former student of mine wrote from Moscow that she had bought canned passion fruit and yogurt with passion fruit. Wow, everything has changed in Russia since communism fell. I hate it when that happens.

The Russian word for passion fruit is маракуйя, a word most likely borrowed from Spanish. (There are also some other phrases that describe it, namely, страстоцвет съедобный, пассифлора съедобная, and гранадилла пурпурная; маракуйя seems now to be the standard.) Words ending in -йя are uncommon in Russian, so one immediately is curious what the genitive plural is. It turns out to be маракуй.

Some sample sentences:

The Russian word for soup is суп. It is an end-stressed noun in the plural, but stem-stressed in the singular, which means it declines like this:

The Russians love soup, and frankly the best soups I've ever had in my life have been in Russia. That's because the Russians aren't worried about things like heart disease and cardiac plaques: there's plenty of fat or butter in every soup. And soup is an essential part of обед. If you try to serve a Russian обед and there's no soup involved, you can be darn sure they think you are stinting on your hospitality. The most famous Russian soups are a beet soup called борщ (see Olga's entry about it) and a cabbage soup called щи.

Although for classroom purposes we say that Russian has six cases, in fact it has quite a few more. Some nouns distinguish a locative case that is separate from the prepositional case, and суп is one of them. That is, sometimes instead of «в супе» you may encounter «в супу» with the meaning “in the soup.” The locative case is slowly dying out in Russian, merging with the prepositional. «В супе» is much more common these days than «в супу».

You may also encounter a partitive case form супу, which means “some soup” as in «Хочешь супу?» “Do you want some soup?” or «На завтра хозяин сварил грибного супу из шампиньонов» “For tomorrow the host has made some mushroom soup from champignons.” The partitive case is also dying in Russian, merging with the genitive case. Mostly you will find the plain genitive case in such contexts nowadays.

Sample sentences:

¹ Кто in Russian applies to animals as well as people, so the sentence means “What kind of critter is floating in my soup?”

Okay, brace yourself, this one is freaky. In addition to meaning caviar and vegetable pâté, икра also means calf in the sense of the gastrocnemius muscle on the back of your lower legs. In that sense it is mostly used in the plural, although the singular also exists:

Sample sentences:

Just because a can has the word икра on it does not necessarily mean that it contains caviar. If you chop vegetables finely, season them and mix them with some oil until they make a paste that resembles pressed caviar in texture, that is called икра, in which context it's probably best to translate it as pâté. One of the most common is баклажанная икра eggplant pâté (recipe), which is as ubiquitous in Russian families as California Dip is in American families. Кабачковая икра squash pâté is also common. I've even had грибная икра mushroom pâté in restaurants.

The word икра has several meanings in Russian. The first one that comes to mind is caviar, which means fish eggs. Russians love caviar. In the US it's a rare family that buys caviar, but in Russia it's very common to buy caviar for parties. It's considered a treat and a way of showing your guests that you are a host that will go all out for them. It is either put in a bowl from which the guests serve themselves with a small spoon, or it is set upon pieces of bread with butter.

The most common type of caviar to buy is красная икра red caviar. Sometimes red caviar consists of light orange eggs, each of which is a bit bigger than the plastic head of a sewing pin.
	Sometimes it is larger salmon eggs that resemble the “Balls o' Fire” bait used in the US for fishing.
Sometimes it is чёрная икра black caviar, which is small gray-black sturgeon eggs and is the most expensive kind.

A quick look on the web shows that you can easily pay over a hundred dollars an ounce for caviar, and I've even seen it priced at nearly two hundred dollars an ounce:

What could be odder than paying $200 for a tiny mass of fish eggs? Why, smearing it on your face for cosmetic effect, of course:

When my fellow blogger Таня saw this picture, she said, “I just want to lick that caviar off her face!” Thanks a million, Таня. That's an image I won't be able to get out of my mind for weeks.

Here are a few sample sentences:

Wow, those Italians… feeding caviar to the poor. I'm moving to Milan.

The word for nothing in Russian is ничто. Grammatically we call it a negative pronoun, and as a pronoun of course it occurs in all six cases:

The first curious thing to note about the word is that you rarely encounter the nominative case form; instead you often find the genitive. For instance, if you wanted to say “nothing helped,” you might expect the translation to be «ничто не помогло». That is a perfectly grammatical sentence, but more often you would hear something like this:

That's not to say you won't ever see ничто. Back around 1997 there was an advertising campaign in Russia for Sprite. It began with posters of sexy models that said «Имидж ничто…» “Image is nothing…” and followed a while later by another set of posters with sexy models that said «Жажда всё» “Thirst is everything.” I remember being confused when I saw the first set of signs because they had nothing about Sprite on them, but weeks later I understood it when the second set of signs appeared that included Sprite images. Apparently the campaign worked: even a decade later you can still find people playing with the phrase. For instance, at the beginning of this month there was an article on podrobnosti.ru entitled «Имидж ничто, ответственоость всё» “Image is nothing; responsibility is everything.” The phrase has even penetrated popular humor:

“Image is nothing; thirst is everything. I won't let myself dry out.”

It's worth remembering that once you put a form of ничто in a sentence, you must also include the negative particle не before the verb. And if ничто is the object of a preposition, the ни separates from the rest of the word and moves in front of the preposition:

In conversation ничего acquires a wide range of meanings:

Thus in the end nothing means a lot of different things. Ironic.

In English we have some little rhyming phrases that people occasionally throw in conversations for cutesy effect. For instance, when saying goodbye, you might hear:

Russian is not bereft of its cutesy moments as well:

«Привет-буфет» is a relatively recent phrase. Older Russians may not know it. «Здорово, корова» has been around a long time.

The phrase силиконовая грудь means silicon breast [implant]. You are not likely to need one of these in Russia, but I had to blog about it because I came across this headline and story the other day:

Another headline reveals that silicon breast implants may also protect you from terrorism:

Perhaps if our previous President George W. Bush had known this, he could have set up a breast implant division of the Depart­ment of Homeland Security. Really, ladies, get your implants now: it's just another way you can participate in making America safe. The one downside, I suppose, is that the implant will prevent you from going into outer space:

¹ ДТП = дорожно-транспортное происшествие traffic accident (lit. road-transportation incident)

Грудь is a feminine noun that means bosom in the sense of chest or breast(s). It's mostly used in the singular, even when talking about women's breasts. Although sometimes you'll hear people stress the word a bit differently in the singular, the most common stress pattern for the noun is:

Sample sentences:

Грудь is also used as a symbol of the center of one's feelings and desires just as heart is used in English:

The Russian word for leg is нога. Just as рука means both hand and arm in Russian, so also нога means both leg and foot. Interestingly enough, it's stress pattern is identical to that of рука:

My favorite idiom with this word is (с)делать ноги, which means to flee, run away, haul ass. Well, no, it's not as vulgar as “haul ass,” but you get the idea. Examples:

Я бы на его месте делал ноги, пока не поздно. (source)	In his place I'd get out of there before it's too late.
Говорят, что каждого нового ухажёра Наоми быстро начинала звать своим "мужем", строить планы на будущее, говорить о детях… И вскоре после этого мужчина обычно делал ноги. (source)	They say that Naomi [Campbell] would quickly start calling each new suitor her “husband” and start planning for the future, talking about children… And right after that the man would take to his heels.
Недавно жили две мышки домашние в клетке. Одна умерла, а вторая сделала ноги куда-то к соседям. Теперь я совсем одинокая . (source)	Not long ago [I had] two pet mice living in a cage. One died, and the other ran off to some neighbors' house. Now I'm all alone.
Сама же Германия с конца 1944 года лишь делала ноги, панически отступая от Красной Армии. (source)	Germany itself began to flee at the end of 1944, retreating before the Red Army in a panic.

Лучше means better. It can be used either as an adverb or as a short-form adjective.

If you want to include a “than” in the sentence, then the word you want is чем:

Interestingly enough, if the чем is followed by a noun or pronoun in the nominative case, you can make an equivalent construction by dropping the чем and using the genitive of the noun/pronoun:

Лучше is also often used with future tense verbs or imperative verbs to express the idea of “it would be better”:

Last but not least, here we have a standard mother-in-law joke that uses the word:

Not too surprisingly, the Russian word for kilogram is килограмм. Note the double м. The genitive plural is килограммов, but after numbers you often find a zero-ending form. That is, you will encounter both пять килограммов and пять килограмм in the meaning of “five kilos.” The zero-ending form is more common among people who constantly deal with large weights. Once in a blue moon you will encounter a Russian who thinks that only the form in -ов is correct in that context. There is also an indeclinable short form кило. Thus these are all possible sentences:

This brings to mind a classic joke: What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? An American experiences this joke in two phases.

Phase 1, grade school: Your buddy poses the question, and you look around yourself dumbfounded and answer “a pound of gold” because obviously everyone knows that gold is heavier than feathers. And then your buddy points out that he said “a pound” of each, so obviously they weigh the same, and you are a complete doofus for not understanding something that simple. You begin to re-evaluate your choice of buddies.

Phase 2, high school: In chemistry class you learn that feathers are weighed using Avoirdupois ounces, whereas gold is weighed in Troy ounces, so in fact a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers (detailed explanation). You realize that not only were you wrong back in fourth grade, but you had it exactly backwards, and your buddy was also a doofus.

The Russians have a similar joke, but with a much clearer set of consequences:

See the difference between Russian and American culture? Americans get lost in the picky details, and the Russians go right for the most relevant result!

Note: вата is actually cotton wool or cotton wadding like the stuff you would use in dressing a wound. When you translate a joke, though, you want to express it in a short punchy way that gets a laugh from the target audience, so it's okay to take some liberties instead of going for a straight word-for-word translation.

When a plane or flying animal lands, the landing can be expressed by the verb садиться/сесть. There is a subtlety in the use of the prepositions with this idea. First off, if you land on something, then that is often expressed by motion phrases with the accusative case:

But the location where the craft lands (not the the thing it lands on) is expressed with location phrases:

1963 — Neva River

The verb садиться/сесть is also used to express the idea of boarding a bus, train, plane, or car:

The primary meaning of the verb садиться/сесть means “to sit down.” It is one of only four verbs in Russian that have a reflexive imperfective and a non-reflexive perfective:

When you sit down on a chair or couch, you express that with на and the accusative case. When you sit down at a table, or at an item placed on the table, you express that with за and the accusative case:

The verb has several other meanings which we will address in the next few entries.

The verb сидеть/посидеть means “to be sitting.”

Some examples:

The sitting meaning of this verb is sometimes de-emphasized quite a bit, and it ends being best translated simply with “to be”:

The verb has an additional meaning of "to be imprisoned" as well.

Сидеть/посидеть is never used in the sense of “to sit down.” For that see tomorrow's entry.

One common pet in Russia is the ёж or ёжик, which means hedgehog. Bear in mind that most Russians live in apartments, so small pets are eminently sensible. This little cutie was found in the region of Astrakhan:

The noun is an end-stressed noun, which means that when it has a grammatical ending, the stress shows up on the first syllable of the grammatical ending:

Americans aren't particularly well acquainted with hedgehogs, so here are a couple of remedial facts from Russian Wikipedia:

The animal is also used in the expression «Это и ежу понятно!» “Everybody knows that!” (Literally, “this even to a hedgehog is comprehensible.”) Those types of emotionally colored statements are often best translated with idiomatic equivalents instead of trying for a word for word translation. Sample sentences:

And of course we can't talk about such an adorable little animal without sharing at least one pet owner's video of a hedgehog eating… um… actually, I can't figure out what the heck it's eating, but it's still adorable.