Russian Word of the Day

When I was a kid, my favorite Sunday breakfast was cherry vareniky. My dad was great at making them, and I was great at helping and supervising. Almost every Sunday I would beg my dad, «Пожалуйста, сделай мне вареники с вишней!» "Please, make me cherry vareniki!"

A couple of weeks ago I decided to learn how to make this treat for myself. «Бэлла, вареники легко сделать» "Bella, vareniki are easy to make," my mom declared, so together we made a big batch. I invited some friends over, and by the end of the night there were no vareniki left - не было больше вареников!

The word вареники roughly translates to "little boiled things." Basically they are crescent-shaped stuffed dumpling. The fillings range from berries to meat to cheese. Often they are topped with sour cream. It is an easy and convenient food to make and freeze, therefore it is very popular in Russia and Ukraine. In fact, the city of Cherkasy, Ukraine, put up a big monument featuring the folk hero Cossak Mamay in front of a giant varenik!

Every student of the Russian language knows that Russian nouns have a singular form and a plural form. Many don't know that a thousand years ago those nouns had a “dual form” as well. The dual meant “two of an item”, whereas the plural meant “more than two of an item”. Thus града meant “two cities” and сътѣ meant "two hundreds" and сестрѣ meant “two sisters”. At that time the number дъва was an adjective that agreed with masculine dual nouns and emphasized twoness, and дъвѣ was an adjective that agreed with neuter/feminine nouns and emphasized twoness as well. So back then we had дъва града “two cities”, дъвѣ сътѣ “two hundreds”, and дъвѣ сестрѣ “two sisters”.

Over the centuries time/entropy/life disrupted all that beautiful grammatical symmetry. The "-a" form of masculine nouns often resembled the genitive singular, so nowadays the numbers два/две are followed by nouns in a form that generally coincides with the genitive singular form. The gender association of the numbers shifted as well: nowadays два is used with masculine and neuter nouns, and две is only used with feminine nouns. Here are some sample sentences:

The Russian word for chocolate is шоколад, which is a perfectly regular noun. Theoretically it occurs in the plural, but it is fairly uncommon to encounter the plural form:

In Russian sometimes people use the genitive form of a noun to mean “a small quantity of” or “some”:

Шоколад is one of those words that has an alternative old genitive form that ends in -у. Such a form is called the second genitive. When it is used in the meaning of “some,” we call that usage the partitive genitive. It's entirely possible that you might encounter a sentence like this:

Those second genitives are old-fashioned. You are more likely to hear it from the mouth of a Russian бабушка than from someone under thirty years of age.

When you go to Russia you will encounter all sorts of chocolate that you have never seen before. My favorite one this summer was this one:

The line беречь от женщин means “keep away from women.” I about died laughing when I first encountered it. I wonder what happens when you feed it to women? Perhaps they turn into gremlins?

Here are some sample sentences:

Previously we discussed выходить/выйти in the sense of ‘to exit, walk out of, step out of.’ Today we want to focus on a subset of those meanings. The past tense of the verb is often used to mean “to leave a place with the intention of returning shortly.” When used this way, it is often accompanied by the preposition на followed by a time phrase in the accusative:

Over time words change their meanings, and their meanings can change in several ways:

• A particular meaning of a word can be used less and less often to the point that many people don't know the old meaning. For instance, “charity” in English used to mean “love of one’s fellow man,” a meaning of the word that nowadays is not well known outside of religious circles.
• A general meaning of a word can be used more often in a more specific sense. “Charity” is again a good example, which nowadays mostly means “giving money to the needy” or “an institution that helps the needy.”
• A particular meaning can be generalized.
• A brand new meaning can be applied to a word with only the vaguest of connections to its previous meanings. The use of “mouse” in the sense of a device used to reposition the cursor on a computer screen.

And when a word is being used in a new sense, that sense is not usually reflected in dictionaries for some time. One such word that has a very common meaning these days that is not shown in most dictionaries is the word акция which can now mean "sale, special" in the sense of a temporarily reduced price. I was very surprised to learn this meaning this summer, because previously the most common meaning of акция was “a share of stock.”

Here are some examples of that usage from this summer. In this first ad if you buy малютка, then you get a free bib, so probably the best translation of акция is “special”:

In this next one if you buy Ryaba brand mayonaisse, you can win 10,000 rubles, so again “special” is the best translation:

This next one is a banner hung in front of a Пятерочка grocery store. Notice they've added супер to the word, so here we have a supersale:

The Russian verb that means ‘to exit, walk out of, step out of’ is выходить/выйти:

The verb is most often used with the preposition из and the genitive case to indicate the place from which the subject is leaving. Although the essential meaning of the verb is 'to exit,' it often sounds stiff to use 'exit' in translation. A good translation will substitute other phrases that capture the same idea but flow better:

The Russian word for devil is чёрт. It's a bit irregular because it becomes soft in the plural, thus it declines like this:

In English it sounds rather quaint to say "Go to the devil," but in Russian the phrase is much stronger and not quaint at all. To catch the emotional color of it in English, it is best to translated it as "Go to hell":

Another way to say about the same thing is to literally say "The devil with you":

In the US many Christians consider it offensive to take the Lord's name in vain. In Russia it is more offensive to swear using the word "devil." Interestingly enough, by saying "to God with him" they can express indifference or minor irritation. It's not nearly as strong as saying "The hell with him" and can be said in polite company, so I think it is best to translate those phrases into English with "To heck with him/her":

Of course, if you are a sensible foreigner, you aren't going to go around Russia telling the Russians to go to hell, but you will still encounter the word in real life, art, and literature. My favorite "to hell with you" is in a song by Веня Д’ркин called «Ты нравишься мне» “I like you”. Ah, rage and betrayal and desperate love all wrapped up in one melodious package. You can listen to the song here, along with a translation.

The word for Monday in Russian is понедельник. First a bit of history. The verb "to do" is делать. "To not do" thus is «не делать», and in ancient Russian one of the words for Sunday was неделя "the day on which you do nothing". The preposition по means after, and the suffix -ник forms a noun, thus the word понедельник means "the day after Sunday." Cool, huh? Of course nowadays nobody thinks about that history when they say понедельник. They just think of the first day of the week.

Some Americans say things like "I hate Mondays." The most common phrase about Monday in Russian is «Понедельник — день тяжёлый» "Monday is a tough day."

Though it is easy to memorize the days of the week in Russian, English speakers will need to keep in mind the prepositions that are used with them. If you want to say that something happened (or will happen) on a particular Monday, then you want the preposition в followed by the accusative case:

If you go there every Monday, then you want the preposition по followed by the dative plural:

If something started on Monday and is still continuing, you want the preposition с followed by the genitive case:

And if you want to give a range of days over which something will happen, for the starting day you use с + genitive and for the ending day you use the preposition по + accusative:

Last but not least, of course, you use the word in the nominative case when answering what day of the week it is:

¹ Some of my native speaker informants prefer the preposition до + genitive in this context along with the adverb включительно inclusively. Thus:

Growing up in the US, children commonly say things like "Me and Johnny went to the store." Although it sounds perfectly normal to many people, it is considered terrible written style (and also bad style for public speaking), and grade-school teachers make a great effort to break kids of this habit. The only acceptable written form is "Johnny and I went to the store."¹ If we transform that word-for-word into Russian, we get the sentence «Иван и я ходили в магазин». Although every Russian will understand such a sentence, it is not the most typical way to say it. Instead the more common way is:

The phrase «мы с Иваном» is actually ambiguous. It can mean "John and I" or it can mean "We (a group of two or more people) and also John". The same holds true for the phrase «мы с ним», which can mean "he and I" or "we [two or more people] along with him." For instance, if my wife and I are having pity on our poor, miserable bachelor friend, John, I can say:

Although the second translation is the more natural way to put it in English (and thus the better translation on this occasion), the first translation captures the idea that John is included in the concept of мы in the sentence.

On the other hand, if I go to the movies with John but my wife does not come along, the same construction just means me and John:

The same ambiguity holds for the phrase «вы с Иваном», which can mean "you [one person] and John" or "you [more than one person] and John. For instance, let's say I'm talking to a female friend about her son Женя. If I want to ask whether she often argues with him, I might ask:

Or if I am taking to both her and her husband, I might say the same thing with a different meaning:

The same holds true for phrases with они, which can be interpreted a variety of ways. Let's say I'm talking about my female friend who is feeling sorry for another female friend. This sentence could result:

Of course, if my friend's husband also feels sorry for Vera, we could have a parallel sentence:

The same situation also of course applies if my friend is a man:

To review, the phrases «мы с ним», «вы с ним», «они с ним», «мы с ней», «вы с ней» and «они с ней» are ambiguous in that they can refer to groups of two or more people.

¹ Actually, the teachers do too good a job of breaking us of that habit without explaining the situation more thoroughly. In fact many teachers overgeneralize and just teach their students that any time they are tempted to say "me and you" (or any other combination of "me and..."), they must replace it with "you and I" (or "... and I"). Even very educated people — sad to say that among them are my own mother and sister — thus will say things like, "Just between you and I, I think that is a bad idea." The correct thing to say in that context is "Just between you and me..." But just try to convince them of that... it's a lost cause.

² In this context with the third-person plural pronoun, some native speakers prefer «Ей очень жалко Веру, поэтому она с ней часто ходит в кино», but in rapid speech the «они с ней часто ходят» form is entirely possible.

³ In this context with the third-person plural pronoun, some native speakers prefer «Ему очень жалко Веру, поэтому он с ней часто ходит в кино», but in rapid speech the «они с ней часто ходят» form is entirely possible.

We mentioned the other day that the preposition "с" + the instrumental case means "with." There is another context where it means "with," but we don't translate it as "with," and that is when two nouns are joined together as the subject (or object) of a sentence. In these contexts we must translate "с" as "and." For example:

In this context translating "с" as "with" sounds terrible in English and is a grammatical error.

The preposition "с" has several meanings and can be used with several cases. When "с" means "with" it is followed by the instrumental case:

One thing a beginner has to watch out for is that sometimes you must NOT use "с" in translating the English word "with." This is particularly true when indicating the "means by which" you do something. This is the "pure instrumental" meaning of the instrumental:

In those last three examples it would be wrong in Russian to include "с".