Russian Word of the Day

The verb “to die” is умирать/умереть, and it is conjugated like this:

Here are some sample sentences:

Growing up in Arizona, every time the wind blew I would see tumble­weeds. In American movies they are a symbol of the vast and empty West, or sometimes of eco­nomic deso­lation in the country. Despite their asso­ciation with the American West, they originally came from Russia, and their Russian name is перекати-поле, which means “roll across a field.” The phrase is treated as a neuter noun and requires neuter adjectives and verb agreement.

In Russian перекати-поле is often used to describe a person who doesn't stay in one place very long. It's mostly a negative description since most Russians tend to be born, live, and die in the same area. Notice that when applied to a person, it takes masculine or feminine adjectives, depending on the gender of the person in question:

When you want to express the idea of putting shoes on yourself, one of the options is to use the reflexive verb обуваться/обуться:

Sample sentences:

The third example is amusing not just because of the self-centeredness, but because it rhymes.

Although this is a perfectly good verb, the Russians actually use the phrase надевать/надеть туфли more often to mean “to put on shoes.”

One of the consistent contrasts between Russian and English is that Russian uses simple verbs where English uses phrasal constructions involving verbs and nouns. One example is the verb обувать/обуть “to put footware (on someone),” which is conjugated like this:

Sample sentences:

The word обувь means footware: shoes, boots, waders… anything that protects your feet from damage or helps you walk. It's a feminine third declension noun with both plural and singular forms, although you almost never encounter plurals. It works mostly as a mass noun. Here's how it declines:

Instead of talking abouts men's shoes or women's shoes, the Russians discuss men's footware and women's footware. And of course there are always the styles of clothes to discuss.

The Russians also use the preposition к to mean “to” in the sense of “to someone's home/place.” К becomes ко before certain words, most particularly in the phrase «ко мне».

That last sentence, of course, is rude. It has about the same emotional punch as “Go to hell” does in English.

The Russians also use the preposition у to mean “at” in the sense of “at someone's home/place.” In this sense it is similar to chez in French.

Actually the meaning of у is a bit broader. It can also mean a person's office or workplace:

Let's think about the verb делать/сделать. The nice thing about this verb is that it is completely regular: it has no irregular endings whatsoever.

The first meaning of the verb is “to do.” It can bear this meaning in any tense:

Actually, the question in the past tense can be said either in the perfective or the imperfective, although they don't mean quite the same thing. Remember that the perfective is used when the focus of the question is on the result of an action, and the imperfective is used if result is not particulary in focus. So, for instance, let's say you walk into a room and see your beloved for the first time in two days and you want to know what s/he did the day before. That context does not focus particularly on result, so you use the imperfective verb and ask «Что ты вчера делал(а)?» “What did you do yesterday?” In response you will hear some vapid comment about window shopping and visiting relatives. But if, for instance, you walk into a room bespattered with blood and there is a corpse lying on the floor with a grimace on its face and a knife protruding from its chest, then the result of your beloved's actions are in the forethoughts of your mind and you use the perfective verb and say, «Что ты сделал(а)!?» “What have you done!?” If you deduce from that contrast in translation that the English present perfect tense has something to do with a past action with current relevance, then you have made a linguistically astute observation.

Less dramatic situations work as well. At the end of a typical school day you may say to your son «Что ты сегодня делал в школе?» “What did you do at school today?” But if you walk into the kitchen and see that he has covered all the walls with mustard, then you say, «Что ты сделал?» “What have you done?”

The verb also means “to make.” The thing that is made appears in the accusative case, and the thing or substance of which it is made shows up in the genitive case after the preposition из:

The second-most common word for “to” in Russian is “на” followed by the accusative case. This is potentially confusing because “на” followed by the prepositional case often means “at.” Observe the contrast:

“На” followed by accusative can also be translated as “onto”:

The most common word for “to” in Russian is “в” followed by the accusative case. This is tricky for Gringos because “в” followed by prepositional means “at.” Observe the contrast:

“В” can also indicate motion and be translated as “into”:

Although the most common word for “at” in Russian is «в» followed by the prepositional case, there is a set of very common nouns that use «на» followed by the prepositional case. Among the most common phrases are:

Learning the на words is not all that difficult: by my count there are fewer than a hundred. You can take a look at my most recent list here.

На can also be translated as “on”:

The most common word for “at” in Russian is в followed by the prepositional case:

But в can often be translated as “in”:

If you are an English speaker, your intuition will be a good guide as to when to translate в as in and when as at. Pity the poor Russian speaker, though, who has to figure out the difference in English.

В can also be used to indicate emotional states:

The word потом can be translated several ways, the first of which is with the word then:

The phrase «а потом?» means “and after that?” or “and then?” It sometimes triggers a rhyming response «суп с котом» “cat soup.” It's a response without a specific meaning. It doesn't mean anything bad will happen. It doesn't mean anything good will happen. It is just thrown in when the speaker is having a cuteness seizure. Or when the speaker doesn't want to be more specific because he is irritated or is being coy or wants to tease the listener.

For our foreign readers I should say “a big blue hen” is not a standard English phrase. I simply made up something to rhyme with “and then” to catch the rhyming quality of the Russian phrase.

The word долго means “for a long time,” but it's not the same as давно. Now here is a subtle bit. If an activity has been going on for a long time, but you don't really think of it in terms of starting “a long time ago,” then you use долго instead of давно:

Some people will sloppily translate a sentence like «Мы долго ехали из Москвы во Владивосток» word for word as “We were riding from Moscow to Vladivostok for a long time,” but it's better to paraphrase the sentence thus: “It took a long time to go from Moscow to Vladivostok.” Other examples:

It's possible to find долго and давно in similar-looking past tense sentences, but their meanings are quite distinct:

Russian-speaking Americans often confuse the words давно and долго. Today we will deal with the former. The first meaning of давно is something like “a long time ago.” In this sense it sometimes becomes давным-давно, meaning “a very long time ago”:

Давно is sometimes also translated as “for a long time” in certain senses, but there is a quirk in translating verb tenses between English and Russian with that sense. If you are talking about an activity that still goes on, and that activity began a long time ago, then in English you will often use the present perfect progressive tense, and the equivalent Russian sentence is put in the present tense and uses the phrase давно:

For some verbs you will see the present perfect (see note) instead of present perfect progressive:

If you are talking about something you have NOT done for a long time, then the English sentence is only in the present perfect, and the equivalent Russian sentence shows up in the past tense:

Note: which verbs require present perfect progressive and which verbs require present perfect in English contexts is a complex issue. Stative verbs and dynamic verbs behave differently. The difference between the two is the stuff of which doctorates are made.

Second note: American English is losing the distinction between the past tense and the present perfect. Similarly there is not always a clear distinction between present perfect and present perfect progressive. This is one of the reasons that English is so frustrating to learn. That, and when to use “the,” “a” or no article.

The word новость means a piece of news. In the plural it means news generically as well as shows that deal with the news. If you want to know if a person has heard a specific piece of news, you ask about it in the singular:

If you are talking about the news generically, you usually use the plural:

American students always pick up the Russian word класс right away because of the English word class which overlaps the Russian word in some meanings. And then immediately they try to say “I'm going to class” with the words «Я иду в класс». WRONG!!! Класс does NOT mean a class that you attend. It means the room in which a class is held. And specifically it means a classroom in a grade school or high school, not a university. Thus you could say «В класс вошла учительница» “The teacher entered the classroom.” But you can't use the word to say “I'm going to class” when you are a college student.

Класс actually has a plethora of meanings. It can mean class in the sense of first- or second-class accomodations:

The word can also mean the first years of school for a child:

The word can also be used in dividing social strata:

So how then do we say that we are going to a class? In Russian you have several slightly more specific options that are normally used. First off, if you are talking a grade school class, or a high school class, or a class outside the standard educational system, you can use the word урок lesson, which can include practical lessons like singing or playing an instrument:

If you are going to a class generically, and it's an academic adult class, and you don't need to specify the subject, then you can use the neuter plural word занятия. This is the most common way for a college or university student to say “I'm going to class”:

If you are going to a seminar or lecture class, then you can use those words, either specifying the subject or not:

There are two standard words in Russian for mother: мама, мать. The former is perfectly regular, and the latter is one of the most ancient words in the language and retains old quirks to it:

Although these words mean basically the same thing, they are stylistically different. A child would never say «Мать приготовила ужин» “Mother prepared dinner.” A child will only say «Мама приготовила ужин». Roughly speaking, children, young adults, and adults still living with their parents will usually refer to their parents as мама and папа. As they grow into later adulthood, people in their thirties and forties will refer to their parents as мать and отец. It just sounds more grown up.

Тhese are not hard and fast rules. Emotional closeness and gender influence things as well. A forty year old woman with a really close relationship to her mother may well call her мама. It is less probable that a forty year old man would do so, but it is still possible. And a twenty year old woman whose mother is a shrew may well refer to her as мать.

Sample sentences:

The generic Russian word for a piece of candy is конфета:

Bear in mind that in English the word candy is a mass noun, one which is mostly used in the singular to indicate indefinite quantities of candy. In that sense the Russians use конфеты in the plural. When discussing a single piece of candy, they use the singular:

The candy in Russia is simply wonderful. It's worth paying for a year of studying abroad just to go there and explore the enormous variety of tooth-rotting confections. And the names of some of the candies will bring a smile or smirk to the face of us Americans. Here are some of the ones that have brought a smile to my face:

One of my former students was recently in Russia and sent me the following blurb about the candy she had been buying in Russia:

В магазине «Сахарный Лев»:

• Конфеты «Парижель» — Made by the Ukrainian фабрика «АВК». Тhese are probably the best chocolates I've ever had. They're about 60% of the price of similar candies, which I'm thinking has something to do with the cost of labor in Ukraine. Весовые, 194,20 рублей/кг (280 grams, about 15 candies, for 54,38 rubles.)
• «Бабаевский» шоколад с кусочками вишни, 1 штука, 100г, 46,60 рублей

Here are some great descriptions for various Russian candies:

“Who said moo” candy

The word сегодня is an adverb that means today. It is quirky in that the г is actually pronounced like a в, so the word is usually pronounced something like [сиводня]. Sample sentences:

To express the idea of “this morning,” “this evening,” etc., сегодня combines with the words утром, днём, вечером, ночью:

Despite the fact that сегодня is an adverb, and thus theoretically it should not be able to be the object of a preposition, sometimes you find it as the object of the preposition на in the sense of “for”:

The preposition за has multiple meanings and is used with several cases. One of those meanings is in sentences where someone goes somewhere to purchase something, where it is used with the instrumental case:

The preposition doesn't necessarily imply purchasing.

It can also be used for picking someone up on the way somewhere:

There are quite a few words in Russian that express the idea of needing something or needing to do something. One of the most common is a short form adjective: нужен, нужна, нужно, нужны. From the English point of view the construction associated with the word has a few quirks. First off, the word is a predicate adjective, which means it has to agree with it's subject. So if a book is needed, you say «Книга нужна». If milk is needed you say «Молоко нужно». The person who needs the item shows up in the dative case. Thus «Машина нужна Борису» “A car is necessary to Boris.” Despite the fact that the car is grammatically the subject of the sentence, in conversation it usually ends up at the end of the sentence, and the person usually ends up at the beginning. Thus the last example sentence usually comes out «Борису нужна машина». Here are some sample sentences:

To put the sentences in the past or future, you add forms of the verb “to be.” Since the thing you need is the subject, it determines the ending on the verb.