Russian Word of the Day

The word for flu in Russian is грипп. It is a perfectly regularly first declension noun:

The flu is a pretty miserable experience, so let's document how to talk about our misery.

* For some dialects of English you could translate this as “There is a terrible flu going around Moscow.” In my dialect of American English it is ungrammatical to use the indefinite article with the word flu.

Russian has several verbs that can be translated as ‘study.’ Today let's start by looking at учить/выучить:

You can use this verb to discuss what subjects you studied in grade school or high school. In this sense you usually use it in the imperfective.

If you are studying/memorizing a set of facts, then you can use both the imperfective and perfective:

The most common Russian word for six is шесть, which declines like this:

When шесть occurs in oblique cases (oblique means a case other than nominative or accusative), it works pretty well like we would expect from a theoretical point of view; that is, it declines as we would expect and the noun it quantifies shows up in the same case in the plural:

Now here's the weird part... If шесть is part of a nominative case number phrase or an accusative case number phrase, then the noun it quantifies shows up in the genitive plural:

That may seem quite complex. Just be glad your not studying Polish: its number system is even more freakish... and fascinating.

The Russian word for new is новый. It's a perfectly regular adjective in its long forms, and it declines like this:

Hm... what kind of sample sentences should we come up with. Ah, of course. No one is more obsessed with newness than the people who love new cars. Let's work with that:

Here are the short forms and the comparative:

And here are a couple ways you can use them:

The first word we Americans learn for friend in Russian is друг. The word has a consonant mutation in the plural:

This word is problematic when translating from Russian to English. Americans use the word ‘friend’ very loosely. It may be a close, personal friend, one with whom you share all your intimate secrets, or it may be someone you have known for five or ten years and never had a negative encounter with. That's not the case with Russians. Russians will only use друг to mean someone they know very well, someone who knows your likes and dislikes and knows better than to buy you white bread because you only like black bread. Anyone else you know is знакомый ‘acquaintance.’ I actually like the Russian distinction. It seems more meaningful than the American version.

The Russian word for ring is кольцо. In the genitive plural the soft sign expends into a full-fledged vowel. Note also the stress shifts:

The word can indicate almost any ring, so even a basketball hoop can be called кольцо:

But of course the most common ring of all is the wedding ring:

The Russian word for park is парк. It is a perfectly regular first-declension noun, as long as you keep in mind the seven-letter spelling rule:

Today let's look at the word in contexts that distinguish location and motion. Remember that motion phrases with в/на use the accusative case, whereas location phrases use the prepositional:

The Russian word for 'to sleep' is спать/поспать. It conjugates like this:

The perfective form of the verb has the prefix по-, which often adds the idea of ‘for a while,’ as it does in this verb.

When you use duration phrases like два часа ‘for two hours,’ they normally require the use of an imperfective verb, but in the case of perfective verbs prefixed with по- in the ‘for a while’ meaning (and sometimes for verbs with the prefixed with про-), duration phrases are possible:

But of course when you talk about sleeping somewhere regularly, you must use the imperfective:

¹ ‘Alconaut’ is a Russian slang word for an alcoholic. Here is what lurkmore.ru has to say about the word:

The Russian word for taxi is такси. It is an indeclinable neuter noun, which means it never changes its endings:

Adjectives that modify indeclinable nouns must still occur in the case form required by the context:

Of course those are all possible in the plural as well:

Since Russians usually don't own cars, they use taxis a lot more than most Americans. This last summer in Kazan I used them constantly. To my surprise, when I bought tickets at the movie theater at Кольцо, I was given a discount taxi card:

I'm Scottish by descent, and let me tell you that we Scots hate paying more than we have to. For us, receiving a discount card is like... gosh... what can I compare it to? It's like getting free and painless high-quality dental work. I mean, you just can't think of anything better. I used that discount card all the time. And what's even better is that when you order your cab using your cell phone, they automatically pick up your number and when your taxi arrives, you usually get a text message saying that it has arrived. For instance, here is a text message I received:

It reads, “Black Hyundai #348 is waiting for you. The driver's number is 524-XX-XX.” Most taxis don't have a taxi sign on them, so that information is really convenient. Why the heck haven't American taxis picked up such a common-sensical idea?

Taxi service is reasonably priced in Kazan, but I wouldn't be surprised if it triples over the next year. Some regulations are going into effect that will increase the fees taxi drivers have to pay, which will probably result in less competition. I'm not looking forward to the change.