Russian Word of the Day

Last month Tanya and I drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas, where we stayed at my father's house. In the morning we went to the casino around the corner to have breakfast, which has long been one of my father's daily habits. Despite having lived in the States for 13 years, Tanya had never gone out for breakfast here, so when the waitress asked, “How would you like your eggs?”, Tanya didn't really recognize the question and didn't have the vocabulary in English to answer. And when I wracked my brains for the Russian terms, only two came quickly to mind. That means it's time to blog about eggs!

Let's start with the basic declension. Notice that the й becomes a full-fledged и in the genitive plural:

Russians usually eat chicken eggs, just like Americans. That's a shame. It would be much more interesting if they ate emu eggs:

Russians in Russia never go out for breakfast. Diners that serve an early morning breakfast are standard Americana but are simply not part of the Russian milieu. Why would you get up so early and pay excessive money for what you can eat more cheaply at home? But of course even at home you prepare your ordinary chicken eggs куриные яйца a dozen ways, so how do the Russians describe them? Probably the most generic phrase is яичница, which means eggs fried in almost any fashion. Then there is омлет, which can mean either scrambled eggs or an omelet, and it may or may not include milk or flour or sugar mixed in. Other options:

Last but not least, there is a song called «Яйца» by Дискотека Авария, a pop-music group known for their humorous lyrics. You can view the song and a translation here. If you find yourself scratching your head about why this song is funny, it's because we've not mentioned one little fact: colloquially яйца also means testicles.

The number of native Russian words that start with э is very small. In that sense it is one of the most uncommon letters in Russian… except for the fact that it is the first letter of это, and это is one of the most common words in Russian. Weird, eh? Something similar is true in English. The number of English words that start with the sound [ð] is very small, but it is the first sound in the English word the, which is among the most common English words. That's really got nothing to do with today's topic, but I've always wanted to say it.

One of the little difficulties for us foreigners studying Russian is to figure out when we need to change это to agree with a noun, and when not. It's confusing because really there are two different это words in Russian. The first we will call “unchanging это,” which has only one form, and the other we will call “adjectival это,” which has endings that change for case, number, and gender. The neuter singular form of adjectival это is spelled the same as unchanging это, and that's where the confusion lies.

Unchanging это is first of all used in the phrase «Что это?», which can be translated quite a few ways, depending on the number of things the questioner is asking about:

Likewise in the response to those questions, это can be translated quite a few ways:

Thus unchanging это can be translated as this, that, these, or those, depending on context. Now notice that in the English translations of those sentences above, whenever we are dealing with unchanging это, the this/that/these/those in English is separated from the noun it refers to by a form of the verb “to be.” That's going to be our rule of thumb for identifying unchanging это:

Rule of thumb: When “this” (or that/these/those) is separated from its noun by a form of “to be,” use unchanging это in Russian.

Unchanging это also appears in какой and чей questions. Here there is a quirk in Russian word order. For instance, an American might expect the translation of “What kind of car is that?” to be «Какая машина это?», where какая agrees with машина in gender and number, and where we use unchanging это because “that” is separated from машина by “is.” That's true as far as it goes. But for some reason the Russians always like to move the это to a position immediately after the question word:

As to adjectival это, it has the following forms:

We use adjectival это to directly modify a noun. When translating adjectival это, there is no form of the verb “to be” between this-these and its noun:

Adjectival это is also used in phrases equivalent to colloquial English “this one” and “these ones”:

Unchanging это has one more quirk. We'll address it in a day or two.

The Russian word карта is translated as map. It can also be translated as card, whether it’s a collectible card (коллекционная карта), or a playing card (игральная карта). The dimunitive is карточка and is usually used to describe smaller sized cards, like a business card (визитная карточка) or a postcard (почтовая карточка).

Карта and карточка are very similar words but are rarely used interchangeably. For example, it would be incorrect to call a topographic map топографическая карточка, or refer to a postcard as a почтовая карта. Don't call a map карточка, and in most cases try not to refer to a small card as a карта, and you'll be fine.

Image from contact-plus.ru

The discount card is one of the exceptions where you can either say дисконтная карточка or дисконтная картa.

Here are some examples with the words карта and карточка:

Now here's where the preposition через gets really, really interesting. Observe the following interaction and its translation. The context is a conversation that occurs in a subway car between two subway stops.

Despite the fact that the original contains the word одну “one,” and the translation contains the word “second,” the translation is not an error. The word через means “through,” so the idea is that you need to ride through the upcoming station and get off at the one that follows. Here's another example. The context is two acquaintances standing in front of a building.

«Через два дома», translated word for word, means “through two buildings.” Here the idea is that it's not the building in front of you where Alexandra lives. You need to pass by two buildings, and then you will find the right one. Not that first building, not the second one, but the one after that. And the most concise way to say that in English is with the phrase “the third building.”

This is one of those places where we see that not all languages say things the same way. If you want an English translation of this construction that is concise and sounds natural, then you have to add one to the number that was used in the Russian sentence.

I want to impress upon you how important this concept is. People with no foreign language experience, or language experience only in closely related languages, will assume things like, “If it says ‘five’ in the original, and it doesn't say ‘five’ in the translation, then the translation is wrong.” They may be mistaken. Sometimes a target language simply says things in a different way than the source language, even in such ways that require a change of numbers in the target language.

Let me summarize: if a source text does not correspond word for word with its translation into another language, that does not necessarily mean that the translation is wrong. This may even apply to sentences that contain words that at first glance seem to have an unchangeable meaning (like numbers). Sometimes the little functional words that coordinate everything else throw a wrench into the system and have to be taken into consideration.

Some years ago I read a book entitled “Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths,” which had the following insight: every ethnic group has some food to which it is irrationally attached. In the case of Scandinavians it is lutefisk. The Scots revel in abominable haggis, and the Mexicans in menudo.

For the Russians that food is сало. No comestible could be more perfectly designed to arouse fear and loathing in American hearts. It is essentially a chunk of fat from the back or belly of a pig. The сало may be smoke-cured, brine-cured, or salted. You can then eat it raw, or it can be chopped up small, fried, and served as a condiment. The first time that I had it, it was simply served raw in little white chunks on a plate, and I was incredibly grateful that my host had some Bulgarian sauce to pour on it, otherwise I don't think I could have kept it down. And if you take a slice of it and put it on some rye bread that has been rubbed with garlic, it is the perfect accompaniment to shots of vodka (source). Sometimes it is sprinkled with black pepper to make it pretty:

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

Doesn't that look yummy? A marvelous article on сало can be found at appetissimo.ru, which lets us know that сало won't make us fat or clog our arteries and really should be consumed with hooch. And if you read Ukrainian, don't miss out on the Salo Lovers Club.

Here are some sample sentences.

The Russian word пропуск has more then one definition and can be a bit difficult to use and easy to confuse, especially if you are not following the conversation closely. It can be translated as “admission,” “pass” or “permit. Sometimes it means password but words like пароль and пассворд are used a lot more often for that. Пропуск can also refer to absences and no shows. And at last, it can be translated as a gap or a blank between something.
The word originally comes from the verb пропускать, which means to let pass, and to skip.

When пропуск means a pass or permit, it declines like this. (Note the irregular nominative/accusative plural).

Image of an old Soviet пропуск that allows for unrestricted travel around the city during an air raid. Taken from autogallery.org.ru.

Here are some examples for the use of various translations of the word пропуск:

Here's where the preposition через starts to get interesting. It can be used in the context where in English we use the phrase “every other”:

In this sense you can often say the same thing in Russian with a paraphrase starting with forms of the adjective каждый every:

This is a very popular Russian idiom used to calm someone who has been injured in some way. The literal translation is: before (до) wedding (свадьбы) it will heal (заживёт). You are pretty much telling a physically or emotionally wounded person to stop worrying and take it easy because the injury is not permanent and will eventually heal in time for the wedding. I heard the phrase a lot as a kid, mostly from parents and doctors. I still get it now and then when I do something stupid, like cut my hand while carelessly opening a can of peaches.

Now, cобачья свадьба “a dog's wedding” is an example of an idiom that has almost vanished and lost its meaning. When I heard it for the first time, uttered by an elderly gentleman in a fit of anger, I had no idea what it meant—just another ancient slang term on the brink of extinction. Собачья свадьба is used to describe a fling, a love affair, a one-night stand. You might bump into it in some old movie or novel… but in today’s world it will likely come from a crazed dog lover who actually wants to organize a real dog wedding.

Image from zoochel.ru

The Russian word for wedding is свадьба, which means both the marriage ceremony itself and the festivities that follow it. The word can also mean “wedding party,” in the sense of those who participate in the wedding. Since свадьба includes the later festivities, sometimes it's better to translate it as “reception.”

Most of the Protestant weddings I have attended in the US follow a fairly standard pattern: first there is a brief wedding ceremony in a church, which often takes less than half an hour. There may be hundreds of guests at the ceremony, and those who attend it are not necessarily invited to the reception. The wedding reception is a party or dinner afterwards, which may be held in another building on the church grounds or in a room at some other location rented for the event. All wedding receptions include a small event where the bride and groom mutually cut the wedding cake and feed each other a small piece. My favorite reception of all time was a seven-course sit-down dinner and dance for one hundred people. Now that was a reception.

The standard non-religious Russian wedding is a very different thing. It begins with a visit to ЗАГС or a wedding palace where the brief ceremony itself is held.¹ The bride, groom, and closest friends participate; parents do not necessarily attend. This is followed by a traveling party where the same people drive around town visiting various city sights where they drink champagne and take photographs.² This is followed by a meal, usually in a home, but sometimes in a restaurant.

In English one “holds” a wedding somewhere, and the guests “attend” a wedding. In Russian they often use the verb играть “to play” and гулять “to enjoy oneself” to express similar ideas:

Of course, not all weddings fit the description above. Devout Orthodox Russians will have church weddings, which are elaborate and lengthy affairs. For a decent description of a modern Russian wedding, see www.womenrussia.com. When you are in the mood for some amusement, you should read about the many interesting customs around weddings in Russian villages of yesteryear, which included the kidnapping and ransoming of the bride.

¹ ЗАГС is a civil registry office which often has a particular suite of rooms where marriages are solemnized.

² If the wedding is in Moscow, the wedding party usually includes visits to Red Square, the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the scenic city overlook in front of Moscow State University.

Another meaning of через is “in” in the sense of “time period at the end of which something will happen.” In this sense it also takes the accusative case.

This use of the word can also happen in the past tense, in which case it is best translated “later”:

Another basic meaning of the word через is “across.” Again it is complemented by the accusative case:

¹ From “Verbs of motion in Russian” by L. Muravyova, Russky Yazyk Publishers, Moscow, 1995, p. 155. This is still my favorite reference textbook on Russian verbs of motion.

The word pучка means “little hand”; it is a diminutive of pука. It’s a tender way of referring someone’s arm or hand, but it has other meanings as well and can be used to refer to a number of different objects.

For example, the most popular use of the word pучка a person might encounter is when it stands for a pen. So don’t be thrown off balance when you are at some lowly Moscow coffee shop, solving a crossword puzzle, and a random guy leans over and says, «Пожалуйста oдолжите мне вашу ручку на пару секунд» “Please lend me your little hand for a few seconds.” Most likely he is not some creep nicely asking you to let him hold your hand, but rather a man who needs to borrow your pen.

If you ever find yourself in an overcrowded trolley, riding down Проспект Мира one early morning, you will most likely hear the irritated driver yell out the warning, «Пожалуйста, держитесь за ручки» “Please hold on to the little hands” when someone trips. In this case pучка means strap.

To open a door, you place your hand on the дверная pучка. Door handle is another translation of this word and often, it’s not even necessary to use дверная if the word “door” is already present in the text. «Kогда закроешь дверь, на всякий случай, несколько раз подёргай за ручку» “When you close the door, pull on the handle a few times, just in case.”

So, the word pучка can mean handle. But it is important to mention that the word рукоять (or рукоятка) also means handle and is more popular with certain objects. For example a knife handle is translated as "рукоятка ножа." While a handle of a teakettle is "ручка чайника."

The word pучка can confuse people at first because it has several meanings and might not work with some objects. In order to avoid misunderstandings and mistakes, try to be aware of the context it is used in by listening for other key words.

Image of the Russian doll pens is taken from rospis.net.

Here are some examples of how the word pучка can be used:

The most basic meaning of the word через is “through” in the sense of physically going through something. It is a preposition that is complemented by the accusative case:

Russian word for a vacuum cleaner is пылесос. Пылесос is combination of the word пыль (dust) and the morpheme сос (suction, sucking).

In English we often make a verb from a noun, and very often there is not much difference in the endings between noun and verb, thus “This is my new vacuum” and “I vacuum the house on Tuesdays.” In Russian, when you have a noun like пылесос, you have to add additional morphemes to turn the noun into a verb. In the case of пылесос-, the Russians add the morphemes for second conjugation verbs to make an imperfective, and then they add a prefix про- 'through' to make the perfective. Thus пылесосить and пропылесосить both mean to vacuum. To say that someone is vacuuming, use the verb пылесосить. To state that someone has already vacuumed say пропылесосил (masculine), or пропылесосилa (feminine). Here's the complete conjugation:

Image of an ancient Soviet vacuum cleaner; taken from foto.sail.msk.ru

Here are some sample sentences:

The word похожий means “similar to, resembling”:

Here are some sample sentences:

Of course the adjective exists in the short form as well.

The short forms of these words are incredibly common when commenting on resemblances between people. Note that the person you resemble shows up in accusative case after the preposition на.

If the antecedent of the word is это, then of course you use the neuter short form:

The neuter short form also doubles as an adverb, and in this usage can have the same meaning as кажется ‘it seems’:

Вкусный means tasty or delicious.

As a standard hard adjective it works pretty well like you'd expect it to in sentences:

This adjective, like most other qualitative adjectives, also has short and comparative forms:

That by itself is not so interesting, but it gets interesting when we think about the neuter short form, which for most hard adjectives also doubles as an adverb. Russians use adverbs a lot more than English speakers, and they use them in ways that are quite unnatural to the American ear. An English speaker would almost never use the word 'tastily,' but you can find it all the time in Russian:

That last example is of a type that used to drive me crazy. I wanted people to write вкусна in the feminine form, in other words with standard adjectival agreement. But in these types of contexts, the вкусно isn't referring directly to the beef. Instead it means something like “it is tasty to eat the beef”, in other words the ‘it’ isn't referring to the noun itself, but to the more abstract experience associated with the beef. Frankly, it still stresses me out that the Russians do that.

The subject of the wide use of adverbs in Russian is an interesting one. We'll try to include other examples in the near future.

Сердце is the Russian word for that muscular, blood-pumping organ ticking in your chest known as the heart. And, of course, in various cultures around the world it’s not simply an organ, but also a poetic symbol for love and the spiritual being of a person.

Here are a couple of words and a saying that derive from сердце:

Сердечный— This adjective can be used to describe a medical heart condition or warm feelings. When referring to a heart attack, say сердечный приступ, and when mentioning a close, good-natured friend, say сердечный друг. In medicine, cердечный is usually translated as cardiac.

Сердцеед— A perfect word to describe Casanova, Don Juan and other ordinary, skirt-chasing womanizers who constantly break some poor heart. The term is a combination of the words heart and eater, literally translated as “heart-eater”. Сердцеедкa is used to describe a female with the same qualities.

Сердце не лежит— The saying explains the feelings of someone who is resistant, objecting and just not in the mood for something. For example, “y него сердце не лежит к этой профессии,” can be translated as, “His heart is not really in this profession.”

Here’s a short, vacuous dialogue about heartache between a sorrowful man and his doctor friend.

The Russian word for voice is голос. Notice that it is end-stressed in the plural and has an irregular nominative plural:

Here are a few sample sentences:

The word батарея is simply translated as battery, and just as in English, it can refer to a few different objects. First, to a battery that is used to run electronic equipment, which Russians often call батарейка. Then, to a military battery, as in an artillery unit grouped on the battlefield for better tactical maneuvering and action. Thirdly, it labels the radiator, part of the traditional heat transfer system that warms all Russian apartments and houses by hot water and steam circulation in the winter, late fall and early spring.

Image of a radiator from http://obninsk.name

Somewhere on the North American continent there is a gringo who has studied Russian who someday will see the word пудинг and immediately think of Bill Cosby and his Jello pudding commercials. Nope, Russian pudding is not that. The dictionary at gramota.ru describes it like this:

One of the best пудинги of all time is творожный пудинг “farmers cheese pudding,” which is essentially a Russian cheesecake. Best of all, it's considered a dietetic dish that is especially healthy for children. If it's good for kids and can also be part of a meatless lifestyle, it obviously must be very healthy for adults, too! And what's even more interesting is that this cheesecake is made with «манная каша» “Cream of Wheat.” Doubtless you are now consumed with a desire for healthy cooking, so this link takes you to a bilingual recipe which I snagged from supercook.ru, and this link takes you to my cooking blog to see how I adapted it for personal production.

One last comment: I first encountered творожный пудинг in 1986 at Московский государственный университет. In the basement of the main building there was a shop that sold it along with other food items. They must have chosen the word пудинг because of the exotic sound of the word to the Russian ear. Students at МГУ could be counted on to be sophisticated enough to deal with that sort of thing, right? But really ordinary Russians almost never use the word пудинг. Instead they call this dish творожная запеканка.

In English we say a man is handsome and a woman is pretty. Russians roll both concepts up in the single word красивый. It is completely regular in its declension, including its comparative form красивее:

Sample sentences:

(Note that when «донельзя» is used to mean “very,” it is written as a single word and the stressoccurs not on the last syllable, but on the penultimate syllable. You could also say «до невозможности» in that context.)

The Russian word варенье is used to identify a type of thick, sweet, conserved fruit or berry syrup. It is not exactly a jam, but more like a preserve. Berries and fruits are boiled in water with a lot of sugar until everything becomes thick and heavy. In fact, the word comes from the Russian варить (to boil) and can be confused with варение (the process of boiling something).

You can assuredly say that варенье is a part of the Russian cuisine and culture just like pelmeni, borscht and vodka are. Russian summers are brief and winters can get a little long, so people put up perishable fruits and berries for the cold days by preserving them. It has always been the most common type of dessert on the table and one of the essential innards of every home’s kitchen cabinet, especially if there are children. Most mothers and grandmothers have their own recipes with special ingredients that usually make homemade варенье taste far superior to whatever might be found on the supermarket shelf.

Варенье made from cherries. Image from sarsmis.livejournal.com.

Here are some example sentences: