Russian Word of the Day

One of the few Russian words that every American knows is космонавт, which of course is spelled ‘cosmonaut’ in English.¹ It is a perfectly regular noun that declines like this:

The космо- part is from Greek κόσμος, which meant universe (and nowadays ‘space’), and νάυτης sailor, thus a космонавт is a universe sailor, i.e., a space traveller. In English cosmonaut and astronaut are diffferent only in that the word cosmonaut applies to people of the former Soviet Union or of the countries that succeeded it. Astronaut is more general. It sounds perfectly normal to say “Yuri Gagarin was a Russian astronaut,” but to say “Alan Shephard was an American cosmonaut” sounds ironic.

In 1995 the French decided that astronaut was much too American a word to describe their own astronauts, so they coined the word spationaut. I'm rather amused at the attitude, particularly since the word astronautique was first used in French back in the 1920s, long before Americans decided on the word astronaut in the late 1959.² And then the Chinese, not to be outdone by the Americans, the Russians and the French, decided they needed their own word as well, so in 1998 the word taikonaut was coined from the Cantonese word taikong ‘space’ to refer to Chinese astronauts.³

Whew, can political correctness get much correcter? Now I have to distinguish cosmonauts from taikonauts from astronauts. And with great glee I can now call French astronauts “spacey-o-nauts.”⁴

¹ The other two Russian words every American knows are vodka and czar.

² See an interesting discussion of the orgin of the word on http://www.collectspace.com/.

³ For commentary on the usage of the word taikonaut see this Wikipedia article.

⁴ Note to Russian speakers: in colloquial American English ‘spacey’ means ‘inattentive’ or ‘irresponsible,’ so spationaut when deliberately mispronounced as spacey-o-naut sounds mildly derisive and may evoke a chuckle from American listeners.

In February of 1995 my maternal grandmother died. I flew from Washington to Arizona for her funeral, where we all remembered her kindness and love. It is never a joy to deal with death. The pain of losing those we love cannot be overestimated. But after the funeral we headed north from the town of Oracle, and as we drove we saw a double rainbow in the sky. I had the feeling that somehow despite her death, the double rainbow somehow meant that everything would be okay, that she was somehow okay.

The Russian word for rainbow is радуга. It is a regular second declension noun (assuming you know the seven-letter spelling rule):

* If you are a careful student of Russian, you may want to write «Она была такой доброй» using the instrumental case. That is proper, grammatical Russian. In conversational Russian, however, predicative phrases with strong emotional coloration sometimes appear in the nominative case. In this context where one is reminiscing about kindness and death, the strong feelings make the nominative possible.

The word мы means we. It declines like this:

I often encounter the word in sentences like this:

One of the prepositions that takes the genitive case is из, which means ‘from’. But not all froms are created equal in Russia. Let's start thinking about to/from/at in Russian like this. There are three words for to, three words for at, and three words for from. And they are related, roughly speaking, like this:

So if you go to a place using в, and you are at that placе using в, then you come back from it using из. That applies to most cities and countries and places of business:

These aren't the only contexts which require из, but it's a good start to keep them in mind.

One of the words for you in Russian is ты, which is declined like this:

Ты, of course, is the singular form of ‘you’ that is used when talking to someone you don't have to be more formal and polite with. You can use it when talking to a child. You can use it when talking to a pet. You can use it when you are talking to a brother or a sister. You can use it when talking to one person whom you know well. So, if you suddenly spot someone walking down the street, and you know that person very well, you might say:

In contrast to ты the word вы is used to talk to a single individual when you are speaking more formally. Mastering when to use ты and вы is a bit problematic for American English speakers for several reasons. The obvious reason is that there is only one word for you in English. Previously the general rule for non-Russian speakers of Russian was that one should use вы until a particular Russian suggests otherwise to you. That's not the worst rule on the planet. But nowadays the transition from вы to ты is taking place much more rapidly than previous generations could have dreamed of. Nonetheless, I am still advising my students to start with вы with anyone older than them, and then allow the Russians to suggest making the change when it suits them. If you are a college age or highschool age American talking to a Russian who is the same age as you, go for it and use ты right away.

One last comment. You may have noticed that the instrumental case has two different forms. The more common one is тобой, so that should be your first choice in speech. But if you are ever writing poetry in Russian and need to have an extra syllable in the line, feel free to use тобою.

The word право means right in the sense of “the right to do something”. In the singular it is stem-stressed, and in the plural it is end-stressed.

The word means right both in the sense of moral rights and legal rights:

If you combine the noun with водительский in the plural, then the phrase means driver's license.*

* In Arizona, at least, the official phrase is “driver license”, but normal human beings say “driver’s license”.

The word нельзя means “it is forbidden”. In this sense it is used with imperfective verbs:

If you mention the person who is not allowed to do something, that person goes in the dative case:

Нельзя can also mean “it is impossible”. In that sense it is used with perfective verbs:

The word милый in its various forms means sweetheart, dear, darling. It's used as a term of affection between boyfriends and girlfriends, among family members and close friends.

The adjective can also be used in a diminutive form, миленький, which is particularly well known in the folk song «Миленький ты мой». Here is the song and the translation:

The word секрет means, surprise-surprise, secret. On that score it's not interesting at all. What is interesting is that the Russians use this phrase all the time in the phrase "if it's not a secret." They use the phrase to soften what might otherwise be a rude question:

The word for river in Russian is река. Note how the stress shifts. For the most part in the singular it is end-stressed, with the exception of the accusative, and in the plural it is stem-stressed:

Growing up in Arizona, I was used to orderly and well organized rivers that had no water in them. I mean, why would they have water? Imagine my shock when I got to Russia and discovered that Russian rivers have water in them. I mean, sure, I knew that it was a theoretical possibility, but why? So very strange. Reader, you'll just have to get used to that idea. Here are some example sentences:

Bodies of water are generally на words:

Можно is a great Russian word that means “it is allowed”. In that sense it is always complemented by an imperfective verb:

If you want to specify that a particular person is allowed to do something, then the person appears in the dative case:

Last summer I lived in Russia in my own apartment for the first time, so I learned all sorts of new skills... how to pay for the phone, how to pay for the internet, how to add money to my World of Warcraft account... Anyhoo, not too surprisingly, I also cooked. I love to cook. The mix of vegetables and meat and spices... it's simply a joy. But the Russians and the Tatars are really not into spices, so I ended up eventually buying консервы “canned food.” I brought it home, and to my shock, my otherwise well-outfitted kitchen had no can opener. To my greater shock, I realized that I didn't even know the Russian word for can opener. Such ignorance was insupportable! Particularly since it would lead to my personal hunger.

I traipsed over to the nearest department store, waltzed into the kitchen section and said to the clerk:

He looked at me as if I were a retard, the retardedest of retards, and said:

Ah. Excellent. I am now somewhat less retarded. Of course, although the phrase word-for-word means “canned-food knife”, the proper translation is simply “can opener”.

Hm... what kind of sentences can we come up with for that lexical item...

Those were all kind of boring. Have to come up with something more amusing. Here goes...

The word консервы means “canned food”. It is a word that only occurs in the plural in Russian, never the singular. Such nouns we call “pluralia tantum”. It declines like this:

Here are some example sentences:

That last line, by the way, is a hint about tomorrow's word of the day...

Yesterday we talked about the incredibly simple impersonal sentences in Russian. Of course that wasn't the whole story. If it were, Russian would be much too simple and not worth studying at all. What if we want to say that a person feels cold? Then we put that person's name in the dative case:

Of course you can use dative pronouns as well:

The word холодный is an adjective; adjectives are used to directly modify nouns:

Many qualitive adjectives in Russian can be turned into adverbs by removing the adjectival ending and ending -о, thus the adjective холодный ‘cold’ becomes холодно ‘coldly’ (note the stress shift):

But one of the most interesting uses of adverbs in Russian is in impersonal sentences. Do you remember back in high school that you learned a rule of English grammar that says, “A complete sentence must have a subject and a verb”? That's not true in Russian. Some sentences in Russian have neither subject nor verb. More specifically, when a sentence in Russian has no nominative subject, neither expressed or implied, that sentence is called an “impersonal sentence” «безличное предложение». For instance:

That's right «Холодно» all by itself is a complete sentence in Russian. If you want to put the sentence into the past you use было (not был, была or были). If you want to put the sentence into the future, you use будет (буду, будешь, будем, будете or будут):

You can add modifiers of place to such sentences as well:

There are many other words in Russian that can be used this way, among them quite a few that have to do with weather or light or darkness:

Isn't that great? There are so many things in Russian that are so complicated that it's a joy for us foreigners to find something that's easy to say in Russian!