Russian Word of the Day

The Russian word for “here” in the sense of motion “to here” is сюда. For instance, if your little brother still has trouble tying his shoelaces, you might say:

The word combines fairly naturally with words that indicate bringing things or people somewhere:

It can also combine with verbs of arrival, but just as in English it can be left out of those sentences as well:

When you make a phone call to a location, that's conceived as a motion phrase in Russian, thus in «Я позвонил ей на работу» “I called her at work” the noun работу is in the accusative case, which makes it a motion phrase; thus the prepositional phrase can be replaced by сюда in sentences about phoning:

Last weekend I was invited to my friend’s wedding. It was a great celebration with lots of dancing, delicious Russian food and… wait for it… drinking! Being there made me think of a great word to write about — «горько». No Russian wedding can go without people yelling «горько» to the bride and groom. Literally translated, this word means "bitter”. According to the tradition, people say it at the end of their toasts or just surprise the newlyweds with it at any moment during the wedding to make them kiss. The idea behind this tradition is that the guests want to see the bride and groom kiss. By yelling «горько», people let them know that they can’t stand the “bitterness” in the air and ask them to make it sweeter by kissing each other.

Sometimes the guests play it trickier and instead of just yelling «горько», they start saying that the wine is bitter or the food is bitter; thus, indirectly asking the newlyweds to sugar it up. Once they made them kiss, everybody begins counting very slowly to see how long the kiss will last. It is generally considered that the more the guests yell, «горько», the happier the couple’s life will be. Therefore, when you are at a Russian wedding, don’t hesitate to use it!

Russian has two words for “here” in the sense of location “at here”: тут and здесь. They mean exactly the same thing; the only difference is that тут has a more conversational tone, so if you are writing a formal essay, stick to здесь. Sample sentences:

One mistake English speakers make in Russian is to use these words when trying to say “Come here,” and they produce something like «Приходи здесь». The sentence is completely awful in Russian. The first problem is that здесь/тут can only be used to mean location “at” a place, not motion “to” a place. The second problem is that if you are talking to someone in person, then they have already arrived, so приходить/прийти “to arrive/come” just doesn't make sense. The right way to say it is «Иди сюда». We'll discuss сюда in the next few days.

The Russian word for paw is лапа. It is a perfectly regular second declension noun:

Just as in English, we can use this word when talking to a dog to make him perform tricks:

Unlike English, Russian can produce a bundle of diminutive forms to say the same thing:

Sometimes the word is also used as a derogatory word for human hands as well. For instance, if man makes an unwanted advance, a woman might say:

But the place where this word gets a lot of mileage is in the diminutive лапушка, which is roughly the equivalent of “a sweetie” or “a cutie” in American English. For instance, if your neighbor shows you a boxful of newborn kittens, you might say:

Tanya, who occasionally writes for this blog, has a little dog named Wiggles. Sometimes she will say to him:

And sometimes that form is even used with people:

It is interesting how some slang words in Russian are formed from something completely unrelated. The words колбасить and колбаситься would seem to come from the word колбаса “sausage” or “salami”; however, in reality, they have nothing to do with it.

If someone says, «меня колбасит», don’t just assume they want to have a salami sandwich... What they probably mean is that they feel weird for whatever reason. They may be under drug or alcohol influence, sick or just nervous.

However, sometimes this word can be used to express a positive feeling:

The word колбаситься means "to have fun", while dancing, relaxing, and acting silly and often irresponsible.

«Колбаса» in Russian slang is used to describe something enjoyable and of a good quality, while «колбасня» a fun time, a wild party or generally something worth experiencing.

I think I used these words the most while living in a dorm in Israel during my high school years. My friends and I колбасились “had fun” at so many different колбасня’s “great parties.” Even though sometimes нас колбасило “we were freaking out” before our exams, we tried to calm down because a well-written exam is another reason to поколбаситься “relax and have some silly fun”!

The most generic perfective verb for travelling by air in Russian is полететь “to fly”:

Perfective verbs like полететь have several different uses. The nature of the perfective verb is to put focus on the result of an action, so полететь can mean “to head off somewhere by air and actually arrive there.” Thus it can be used to describe a series of flights, each one complete:

The verb can also mean “to go and arrive” on a single trip; we see it in that meaning in a headline from Guy Laliberté's recent flight into space. (He is the founder of Cirque du Soleil).

One last use is a colloquial one. It can also mean “I'm gone,” just as побежал and пошёл can.

Another verb for travelling by air in Russian is лететь “to fly”:

This is a determinate (unidirectional) verb of motion, which means it is normally used to indicate a flight currently in progress. Thus if you glance at the sky and spot an airplane, you might say:

If you are a friendly type of person, chatting with your fellow passenger on an aircraft, you might have the following dialog:

Time for a pop quiz: what verb should you use when you see birds in flight? The multidirectional летать or the unidirectional лететь? Come up with an answer, then scroll down to see my response.

The answer is: it depends. Let's say you are sitting on a bench, and you see a bunch of swallows darting hither and thither. In that context you will use the multidirectional form:

But if a mother spots geese going in a particular direction, she will use the unidirectional verb to test her son's knowledge:

The word ботаник means botanist. It declines perfectly regularly, assuming of course you know the seven-letter spelling rule:

A ботаник is a person who studies ботаника botany. (Note that the nominative singular ботаника ‘botany’ is written the same way as the accusative/genitive singular of ботаник ‘botanist.’) The definition of ботаник on ru.wikitionary.org runs something like this:

Some botanists have extraordinary lives:

That, however, is not the image associated with the word in Russian pop culture. There a ботаник is someone who is involved in completely uninteresting and testosterone-deficient activities, in other words a geek or a nerd:

Seven-year old Mariana walked into the living room where her father, Alyosha, and I were sitting. She placed an ashtray in front of us and said «Нате». I looked at the two of them in confusion and Alyosha said:

Alyosha had totally misunderstood the source of my confusion. He thought I was surprised that she thought I would smoke, but really I was confused because I didn't have the foggiest idea of what «нате» meant. It was my first trip to Russia, having had five years of college Russian. It would not have surprised me for someone to say, “Oh, you don't know the difference between ОВИР and УВИР is? The latter is the department where you process the special form that gives foreigners the right to use a public toilet, and the former is the office where that toilet is located. Be sure to bring some small gift to УВИР or they won't put the right stamp on the form, and when you go to ОВИР, be sure to put the seat down when you are done or the babushka who monitors the sinks will yell at you.” That wouldn't have surprised me at all. But to have a little nine-year old Russian girl flummox me with two syllables was downright demoralizing.

It turns out that «на» and «нате» mean “Here you go.” It's used when you are handing something to someone. «На» is used when you are talking with someone in ты form, and «нате» is used when speaking to someone in вы form. That's right. The Russkis have added -те to something that's not a verb. Makes me want to study an easier language, like Pashto or Thai...

«На» and «нате» are very informal words. You will hear them used in homes and among friends. Don't use them in formal circumstances. I once flashed my hotel pass to a doorman in Russia and said «на». He had annoyed me, and my use of «на» really ticked him off. He caused me continual grief for the rest of my stay at that hotel. (It really was rude of me, and I should not have done it. Just because someone is a jerk to you does not mean you should be a jerk to him.)

And here are a couple examples of how it can be used:

The verb pair приходить/прийти is usually translated as “to arrive, come.” Notice that there is an й in the perfective infinitive:

In English we often use the preposition “at” with the verb “arrive,” so we have to bear in mind that for Russians arrival is a motion; that is, you complement the verb with either в/на + accusative or with к + dative:

Now here's an interesting quirk. Compare these two sentences:

1. Профессор пришёл в университет в восемь часов утра.
2. Профессор пришёл в Москву в восемь часов утра.

Although the sentences are grammatically identical, (1) sounds perfectly natural, whereas (2) sounds awful. That's because the stems ход- and ид- often imply going somewhere by foot, and it's quite uncommon to travel to a city by foot. In other words, avoid приходить/прийти when talking about travel over a long distance.

One last quirk. When someone knocks at a door, in English the response is “Come in.” Beginning students sometimes translate that as «Приходите, пожалуйста». A Russian will never say приходите in that context because the person knocking has in fact already arrived. Instead a Russian will express that idea with входить/войти “to enter”:

The word красавица, which means “beautiful girl,” has the same root as «красивый», “beautiful or handsome”, «красота» “beauty” and «красный» “red.” Sometimes it can be translated as “beauty” as in the name of the famous fairy tales, «Спящая красавица» “Sleeping Beauty” and «Красавица и чудовище» “Beauty and the Beast.”

When I think of красавица, I imagine a pretty girl from the Russian countryside of Gogol’s time. She is wearing a colorful dress and a kokoshnik-tiara. Her hair is neatly braided in one long thick braid, and her big brown eyes are coyly cast down. She is the classic «русская красавица» “Russian beauty” that has been praised by so many literary masters.

The masculine form of this word is красавец “stud.” In day-to-day speech we sometimes use «красавец» or «красавчик» to express our approval or when we are pleasantly surprised with someone’s behavior:

«Красавица» can be used in a similar way as well:

I have a personal history with this particular word. When I was a little girl, I could not pronounce some letters. The letter “r” gave me the most trouble. My mom would make me read and do various exercises for at least thirty minutes a day before I could go play with my friends. Needless to say, I really wanted to break this vicious cycle and learn to say the “r” right so I could finally go run around the yard. One day I was home alone, playing with my dolls. For some reason I decided to practice my “r’s”, using the word красавица. It came out so perfectly clear; I could not believe I had nobody home to brag about it to! I remember saying it over and over again, worried that I would lose it… but I never have. When I think about it, it is very neat that it was this word, красавица "beauty", that made my speech more beautiful!

The most generic verb for travelling by air in Russian is летать “to fly.” It is a perfectly regular imperfective verb and conjugates exactly like читать:

This is an indeterminate (multidirectional) verb of motion, which means it has several uses. First of all, in the past tense it can mean a completed trip to and from a place:

By using a unidirectional verb in that context, Russian clearly states that Mom is no longer in Moscow. She went there and then departed. Another example:

The verb can also be used of flying generically or of the ability to fly:

Побежать is the perfective form of the verb бегать “to run.” It incorporates one of the four most irregular verb stems in the Russian language:

Побежать literally means “to run”:

Although the verb does mean “to run,” it's actually used in conversation more often to mean “to take a quick trip” or “to be moving quickly” instead of literally running. The same is true for the English verb “to run” as well, of course.

On the colloquial level the verb can almost mean the equivalent of the English “I'm out of here/I'm gone”:

Russians love their proverbs and pithy sayings. It is amazing how many of them we have and use excessively to express so many different emotions. It seems that we have one for every life situation. We love them almost as much as we do our swear words (Honestly, I once heard a guy speak using just swear words! Quite an experience, I might add…)

«Собака на сене» is one of the very neat expressions we use. It is translated as “dog on hay”. The full saying goes: «собака на сене: и сама не ест, и другим не даёт», “dog on hay: she neither eats it herself, nor lets the others”. It is used when someone does not do something simply out of spite or uses something that others want just so they will not get it.

Here is how my kitty demonstrates it:

There is a really great play written by Lope De Vega that is called «Собака на сене». There a beautiful duchess falls in love with her secretary. She cannot be with him because of the difference in their social status, but at the same time her jealousy is driving her crazy. She is torn between what her honor dictates her and what her heart yearns for. That makes her act like the dog in the proverb: she does not commit to either being with her love or agree to let him go. It is a beautiful love story with a very happy ending.

This play was staged and made into a movie in 1977 by a talented director, Yan Frid. This adaptation is very popular and much loved in Russia. I would recommend for everyone to see it!

The verb pair говорить/сказать means “to say, tell.” It conjugates like this:

Sample sentences:

The perfective form of this verb is often used in polite requests for information:

Ever since I started writing blog entries, my friends have been begging me to write about «супер-пупер». This expression is similar to “super-duper” in meaning but, because of the obvious references, it sounds much funnier in English. The first time they heard me saying it, they could not stop laughing.

Just like in English, «супер-пупер» is formed in consonance with «супер» "super". I wonder why it is «пупер», though. Maybe it has something to do with «пуп» or «пупок», "belly button." In Russian «Пуп Земли» means "The Navel of the Earth", a cosmological notion of the center of the world in various religious and mythological traditions. It is a very important and holy place, a place where God sits. (source) It might be a little too far fetched but it seems that «супер-пупер», which essentially means "the greatest", is associated with the holy place.

As it often happens with slang, expressions come and go; words that seemed so popular just recently are being replaced by the even newer ones. Likewise, «супер-пупер» is no longer a commonly used expression; however, people will not look at you funny if you use it. It will just make them smile.

The verb pair говорить/поговорить means “to talk, have a conversation, speak.” It conjugates like this:

Sample sentences:

Let's say your friend has just finished a conversation on the phone. In English we might say “Who were you talking to?” A beginning Russian student will be tempted to translate that with the dative case «Кому ты говорил?» Russians will never never use the dative in that context. Instead they use the preposition с followed by the instrumental case:

One of the first words we learn in a beginning Russian class is говорить “to speak.” Although we should learn most verbs in Russian in pairs, in the meanings we discuss today it has no perfective partner. It conjugates like this:

Like all common words, говорить has multiple meanings, and one of its meanings is “to be capable of speech”:

Говорить also means “to know how to speak a language.” In English we say things like “She speaks Spanish,” where Spanish is the direct object of the verb. You can't do that in Russian. That's right. It is ungrammatical to say «Она говорит испанский язык». Sure, the Russians will understand you if you say it, but you will sound like an ignorant foreigner, and your Russian 101 teacher will never write you a recommendation. Instead they use special adverbs that start with по-:

There are some languages for which Russian does not have these adverbs in по-, for instance тви Twi (language of Ghana), апаче Apache, чероки Cherokee, эсперанто Esperanto, and суахили Swahili (language of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda), пушту Pashto (language of Afghanistan and Pakistan), бенгали Bengali and урду Urdu and хинди Hindi (languages of the eastern Indian subcontinent). In that case one uses the preposition на followed by the prepositional case, although those languages are usually indeclinable, so you don't really know that it's prepositional unless the word язык is included in the sentence:

Previously we discussed how the «у меня есть» construction can be equivalent to a I have construction, and we also discussed иметь, which means “to own, possess.” But if you look up иметь in some dictionaries, sometimes you will find something like this:

have /hæv/ n.: 1. иметь;

This sometimes leads to confusion: when can you use иметь for have, and when does that not work? Here are couple of rules of thumb:

1. When you want to know whether someone has a particular item on them at a particular moment, then you cannot use the иметь construction, you must use a variation of the есть construction:

(See this post for a discussion of the use of не in polite requests.)

2. When you want to know whether someone owns something, both the есть and the иметь construction are theoretically possible. Both are grammatical:

The normal way to ask the question is «У вас есть машина?»¹ But if you want a verb that is vastly more formal or emphatic, say when a lawyer is interviewing a suspicious client, then you might hear «Вы имеете машину?»²

3. There are dozens of phrases where иметь bears the tense of the sentence but the noun that follows it in the accusative case bears most of the meaning. For instance:

There are lots of phrases like this. Here are some examples:

¹ Bear in mind that the question «У вас есть машина?» is ambiguous. It can mean either “Do you own a car?” or “Do you have a car [at your disposal today]?”

² Bear in mind that «Вы имеете машину?» can only mean “Do you own a car?”, not “Do you have a car [at your disposal today]?” Thus if you want to be perfectly clear that you are asking about ownership, then can use иметь, but it will have either a vastly more formal or more emphatic sense than “у кого” phrases.

Russians are very big on their холодные закуски “cold appetizers.” Amongst them meat and vegetable salads are very popular. These salads do not necessarily have lettuce in them. In fact most do not. Usually everything in these salads is pre-cooked; more often than not it is boiled. One of the most famous Russian salads is селёдка под шубой, which literally means “herring under a fur coat.”

No holiday table in Russia can go without селёдка под шубой, although I've noticed that my American friends are not too fond of it… to say the least! Personally, I am not a big fan of fish (except maybe for smoked salmon my parents make), but I really like this salad, perhaps because it reminds me of my carefree childhood without all the bill-paying and responsibility-taking.

The main ingredients are beets, potatoes, carrots, onions, mayo, herring and some parsley or scallions for decoration. We never add any salt to this salad but the herring makes up for it. After the beets, potatoes and carrots are boiled, they are cut into cubes. Mom pours boiling water over the onions and lets them soak for about a minute. This little trick lets the onions keep their taste but gets rid of the strong odor. After all the ingredients are fully prepared, we layer them, alternating vegetables, mayo, and herring. Then after decorating it with the greens, we leave the dish in the the fridge for a couple of hours. There you have it, the famous Russian селёдка под шубой!

«Приятного аппетита»! "Enjoy"!