Russian Word of the Day

Every beginning Russian student knows that the verb быть means 'to be,' and that in the present tense the verb is generally not used, thus we have sentences like:

Eventually we learn that there is a second verb 'to be,' which is бывать. The -ва- suffix in Russian sometimes forms what we call a frequentative verb, one that indicates that the action happens on more than one occasion. Thus we can have sentences like:

The verb is perfectly regular, just like читать, so you'll have no trouble conjugating it. In terms of translation style, though, you may often find yourself making non-literal substitutions. For instance:

While that is a perfectly grammatical translation, it really doesn't capture what an English speaker would say in a similar situation. For a good flow it is better to substitute motion phrases and add some typical functional words:

The 'go' version works as well:

If you include some other adverb of frequency, then don't include the word 'sometimes':

As weird as this sounds, sometimes it's the English words in Russian that confuse me, not the Russian words. For instance, all over Kazan these days there are signs on restaurants that read Бизнес-ланч "Business Lunch." "What the heck is that?" I ask the locals. They look at me as if I am an idiot and say, "Those are English words. You should understand them." Well that's just it. I do understand them. In the US a business lunch is a lunch where you do business. It's not the name of an item on a menu.¹

Nowadays in Russia a бизнес-ланч is essentially a particular menu offered at a fixed price. No substitutions, please. I think the best translation for it may be "lunch special" or what some menus lable a prix fixe meal. One of the many restaurants in Kazan that offer such meals is called "Meat House."

My students love this place because you can get meat without mayonaisse or sour cream on it. What? No mayo or sour cream, you say? It can't be run by Russians then. You are correct: the food is prepared by Turks. I was interested in the meal represented on this ad:

They offered it for 149 rubles, which is about 5 bucks. I decided to try it. How well did it match the advertisment? You be the judge:

The drink is lemonade. The lentil soup could have used a bit more salt. The bread was good, but I'm not a fan of bread. The donair (Canadian spelling) is finely shaved chicken accompanied by rice and some cabbage, and the salad is made half of croutons and half of vegetables tossed in what the Russians consider a Caesar sauce, but it doesn't have the sardine flavor that an American Caesar Salad requires. Here are some sample sentence:

Business lunches, in the sense of lunches where you do business, are vital in the US. When I was preparing this blog-entry, I came across a business-lunch link from Microsoft. Apparently they consider it important enough to give some basic guideliness for the event. Read it here for your amusment.

One last grammatical comment: бизнес-ланч is a phrase that is currently in a grammatical no-man's land. Although most people decline it, as a foreign phrase it is sometimes not declined by others. The orthographic dictionary at gramota.ru treats it as declineable, so that's the best approach for a foreigner to use. In the case of the examples above, one of my current native-speaker informants sometimes declined it and sometimes didn't. If it disappoints you that the Russian language is sometimes inconsistent, then you must take advice from about 2 minutes 5 seconds into the sword fight in The Princess Bride: "Get used to disappointment."

¹ Well, this not necessarily 100% true. Probably there are some restaurants somewhere in the US that have "business lunch" written on their menu. My point here is that "business lunch" in the sense of a particular meal selection for a particular price is not a standard phrase in American English.

Image courtesy
of Wikipedia

One of the slickest aspects of Russian life these days are certain machines in public places that look sort of like bank machines, but their main purpose is rather the opposite: instead of disbursing money to the person who walks up, they take money from the customer which is then applied to bills. You can pay for your cell phone at these places. You can pay for your internet services. You can pay for water and electricity. You can sometimes even deposit money into your bank accounts through them. It's pretty simple. You walk up. Choose the service you want to pay. Enter your account number. Stick in some cash. Take your receipt. Voilà, you're done!

Officially such a machine is called a платёжный терминал "a payment terminal." You can find them in the subway. You can find them in the underground pedestrian paths under big streets. Heck, you can even find one at the 24-hour fast-food place not a block from where I'm staying. Despite the official name, sometimes people simply call them автомат "automated machine" or sometimes even more sloppily банкомат "bank machine." In either case, they are incredibly convenient. Payment via internet is still not quite as common in Russia as in the US, and it seems like everybody pays for their cell phones mainly at these terminals. Lots of services in Russian, like many cell phone plans, aren't fixed monthly sums. They are pre-paid services, and as your pre-paid account gets low, you need to go to one of these machines to add money to your account, otherwise they'll shut your service down so fast your head will spin. And mind you, young Russians these days send text messages like they were going out of style. I don't think a Russian under 30 can even develop a relationship without text-messaging, so you can imagine that these machines are a vital part of their daily lives:

One of the words you use in Russian to describe where something is located is the adverb справа, which can be translated "on the right" or "on the right-hand side." When you experience your first Russian-language tours in Russia, your tour guide will certainly use the word in phrases like this:

To express the concept "to the right of," you add the preposition от followed by the genitive case:

Although справа can be used to indicate location, the word can also mean "coming from the right" or "from the right" or "from the right side":

The word for bank machine or ATM in Russian is банкомат. Back in the 80s there were essentially no banks in Russia in the sense of an ordinary bank in the US. Nowadays they are everywhere. And one of the chief ways to interact with a bank is through a bank machine:

Just as in the States, to get money from an ATM you need a bank card банковская карта. Usually people will call it simply a карта, and sometimes they will call it кредитная карта. (Usually a bank card in Russia participates as well in the Visa or Mastercard system.) You also need a PIN number, which the Russians usually simply call a код, although it is also called ПИН-код (usually the first part is spelled with English letters, thus PIN-код) or личный код "personal code."

Just as in the States, a bank machine usually belongs to a particular bank. If you use ATMs owned by that bank, there are usually no withdraw fees. If you use one out of their system, there are:

That last example is interesting. «Берут проценты» really means "they charge a percentage." We Americans would expect that they charge a commission «берут комиссию», and that the commission would be a fixed fee. The commission in Russia is often not a fixed fee, but rather a percentage of the withdrawal, sometimes with a minimum amount of, say, $5. In this case phrase "they charge extra" is not a precise or technical translation of «они берут проценты». Instead it is a substitution of the most common English phrase used in that context for the most common Russian phrase used in the similar context.

One of the Russian words for shoe is туфля. Note the genitive plural:

The word is mostly used in the plural:

Of course, it is possible to use the word in the singular:

Young women in Russia are much more likely to wear high-heeled shoes than their US counterparts. If a woman is young and sexy in Russia, then by heaven she is going to dress to kill. The picture below captures a commonplace: here are the feet of a lovely young woman next to the feet of her boyfriend.

It's funny, really. If ever there was a country where sensible shoes would be... well... sensible, it is Russia. There are cobblestone streets, dirt streets, uneven asphalt streets, and potholes the size of Kilauea, all of which can twist your ankle and break your leg at a moment's notice. Young Russian women conquer them all in high-heeled shoes.

We mentioned previously that one of the words in Russian that is translated as need is надо. Sometimes you will run across sentences like this:

Such sentences are conversational, and they really have an implied verb in them. Thus the first sentence probably implies something like «Мне надо купить книгу» "I need to buy a book," and the second probably implies something like «Вите надо взять гаечный ключ» "Viktor needs to get a wrench."

People often use these phrases to ask you what you need:

That reminds me... the phrase is used in a wonderful children's poem by Корней Чуковский called «Телефон». Read it out loud to yourself in Russian. The rhymes are delightful:

You can find the complete text of the poem here.

¹ Шоколада here is in the genitive case, not the accusative. The genitive adds the 'some' idea.

Рисовать/нарисовать means to draw or pаint. It is a perfectly standard -овать verb, which means that in the conjugated non-past forms the -ова- is replaced by -у- :

Sample sentences:

The noun form is рисунок:

Both the verb and the noun are used in the world-famous song «Пусть всегда будет солнце» "Let there always be sunshine." Just as in French you cannot live without knowing "Freres Jacque" and "La vie en rose," just as in Spanish you cannot live without knowing "La cucaracha," just as in English you cannot live without knowing "Oh, my darling Clementine," so in Russian it is absolutely essential that you know this schmaltzy song, without which you will an ignoramus and a hooligan... So click here for the text and a video of the song.

When I was a kid, every morning when I woke up I would go into the kitchen, and immediately my mother would say, "Good morning, sweetie, how did you sleep?", and I would answer "Good, thanks." Or Mom would say, "Good morning, honey, did you sleep well?", and I would answer "Yeah" or "Fine" or "Not so great" or "Awful. I couldn't sleep at all." The verb that the Russians use when asking about how you slept is the pair высыпаться/выспаться "to get enough sleep." It conjugates like this:

Some sample sentences:

The Russian word for address is адрес:

The primary meaning is the postal address to which one send mail. Russian addresses during the 1980s began with country, then city, then city/street/street address and person. There was a certain logic to that. Nowadays the official guidelines seem to have changed, and addresses start with the person and then go to street, and then to broader areas which may include city or region, and finally comes the postal code. For instance:

The word адрес can also be used in the sense of an e-mail address:

The word адрес can also be used in the sense of a person at whom a comment is directed:

¹ Okay, this is nerd humor, so I suppose I had better explain it. Per RFC 2606 "example.com" is one of those domain names reserved for use in documentation examples; in other words, no one anywhere can ever have a working domain named "example.com." If someone gives you an e-mail address with that domain in it, it means they are pulling the wool over your eyes. So the sucker in this example will have no future with the krasavitsa in question.

One of the words in Russian that is translated as need is надо. It is used in impersonal sentences. Impersonal sentences are those which do not have a grammatical subject in the nominative case. The verb used with надо appears in the infinitive form, and the person who needs to do the action appears in the dative case. If you need to do something only once, then usually the verb appears in the perfective:

To put the sentence into the past or future, you add the words было or будет:

If you need to do something regularly, then the infinitive shows up in the imperfective:

Now here is a subtle point. If you use надо 'need' as a rough equivalent for 'it is time to,' then the infinitive appears in the imperfective, even if you are talking about a one time action:

Оканчание is the Russian word for ending in the sense of a grammatical ending. Memorizing noun and verb endings is probably the greatest challenge of the first two years of studying Russian, so it's worth getting a few phrases that help you discuss endings. The verb is оканчиваться, which is perfectly regular:

One way to say "to remove an ending" is «убирать/убрать окончание», and to add an ending «ставить/поставить окончание»:

The Russian phrase for "season" in the sense of the time of year is «время года», literally "time of year," and the plural is «времена года» "times of year." There is also a borrowed word сезон with plural сезоны which means the same thing:

If you want to specify that something happens during a season, then you use the preposition в followed by the accusative case:

Note that if you use the names of the seasons—весна, лето, осень, зима—then those seasons go into the instrumental case when you mean "during that particular season":

One last quirk of the seasons is their starting date. In the States we say that winter starts on December 21st or 22nd. In Russia all the seasons start on the first of the month, so winter starts on the 1st of December.

One of the Russian words for cloud is облако. In the singular it is a perfectly regular neuter noun, but in the plural genitive may surprise you:

Some sample sentences:

Most simple nouns have one or more adjectives derived from them, and to really master Russian you need to learn them as well. In the case of облако the derived adjective is облачный:

Many adjectives have an adverb derived from them that you need to know as well. The adverb formed from облачный is облачно. Adverbs are often used predicatively in Russian:

The Russian word for last name or surname is фамилия. Фамилия does not mean family. Let's say you are in a post office, and the worker there needs to know your last name. He might ask your last name by saying:

Russian last names tend to end in -ин, -ын, -ов, -ев, and -ёв. Those are the masculine forms. You can also have feminine and plural forms as well:

Many Russian last names also end in -ый, -ой or -ский. Those are the masculine forms. You can also have feminine and plural forms as well:

The declension of last names is discussed in these entries:

• Last names in -ин, -ын, -ов, -ев, -ёв
• Last names in -ович
• Adjectival surnames
• Foreign last names

Note for Russian readers: the word 'surname' is not used very often in the United States. I have seen it on a few official forms, but for the most part we say 'last name,' not 'surname.' The one time I visited Britain, I did here 'surname' used.

The word for name in Russian, in the sense of “first name,” is имя. A beginner might assume that the -я ending means that the word is a feminine noun, but in fact it is one of the ten third-declension neuter nouns that end in -я in Russian. It declines like this:

If say, at the post office they need to know your first name, they might say:

But that is a really officious and unpleasant way to ask a name. Normally people will say:

Russian names often sound quite curious to the American ear, and of course Russians also have patronymics that complicate the situation:

Some foods you just can't do without. In the States it's almost inconceivable not to have turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, or hamburgers at a picnic, or apple pie for dessert. If those foods aren't part of your life, by cracky, then you just aren't a real American and your status as a patriot is open to question. Among those foods that are inherently Russian, among those foods without which you cannot even conceive of a Russian upbringing and without which you cannot have a Russian soul is… сметана sour cream. The noun is a perfectly regular second declension noun:

American sour cream is not like Russian sour cream. American sour cream is adulterated with thickening agents to make it firm. If you remove the sour cream from its container, it actually retains the shape of the container… for a while at least.

Russian sour cream flows gently and smoothly, creamy and delicious, just like universal love flowing from the cosmic mind. Fresh and almost without preservatives, you eat Russian sour cream right away, not because you are afraid it will go bad, but because it is so wonderful you would never not eat it all. And like universal love, the Russians pour it over over everything: soups, pancakes, meat dishes, fruits, vegetables… Сметана can even be a dish unto itself. The cafeteria at Moscow State University used to sell glasses full of sour cream for direct consumption, some with sugar added, some without, and people just bought a glassful and ate it with a spoon.

And of course, let's not forget the medicinal powers of sour cream, especially in treating sunburn:

Since I'll be spending the summer in Tatarstan, it seems sensible to blog about the Tatars. They are a Turkic people who speak a Turkic language. A Tatar woman is called a татарка in Russian (gen. pl. татарок). A Tatar man is a татарин. In Russian there are quite a few words for ethnic groups that end in the suffix -ин. Those words have a grammatical peculiarity. The -ин suffix occurs only in the singular forms. The genitive plural has a zero ending:

Some sample sentences:

If you speak Tatar, the Russian word to describe that is по-татарски:

The Russian word for copper is медь. Just as in English it is mostly used in the singular. It is a feminine third-declension noun:

Some sample sentences:

You can make an adjective out of this noun by adding -ный to the stem:

There is a famous poem by Pushkin called Медный всадник, which literally means “the copper horseman.” Oddly enough, in this one instance we translate the title as “The Bronze Horseman.”

The word карлик by itself can be translated midget, dwarf, little person, gnome or Lilliputian.¹ In that sense the noun is animate:

The phrase белый карлик means white dwarf, in the sense of a particular class of stars:

When белый карлик means a type of star, it's best treated as an inanimate:

(If the word were being treated as an animate in that context, we would expect «белого карлика».)

¹ The words dwarf and midget, of course, are in disfavor nowadays in the US; it's more tactful to say ‘little person.’

The word зарплата is a conversational word, short for заработная плата, literally “employment pay.” Normally we translate it as wage, pay, income or paycheck. In the States we discuss income in terms of dollars per year before taxes; in Russia we usually discuss it in terms of monthly pay: