Russian Word of the Day

Thanks so much for all the warm expressions of sympathy yesterday from people about yesterday's misadventure. It is good to know that so many other people have been in similar situations. Falling in love with a Gypsy woman is an overwhelming experience, but after certain conversations today with Luludya's mother, father, grandmother and grandfather, I think it is an experience I can survive, with a judicious application of Bandaids and Neosporin. Even Luludya herself thinks so, which leaves me free to return to my topic of yesterday.

The Russian word for year is год, and, unsurprisingly, it is used to express age. But the age construction in Russian is rather different than the English construction. In English we say, “I am fifty years old”, whereas the Russian equivalent is “to me fifty years”.

The difficulty with the construction for us Yanks and Brits is that Russian numbers are more complex than English numbers. The number один is an adjective and agrees with its noun, so one year is один год. Numbers whose spoken form ends in два, две, три and четыре require the genitive singular of the noun they quantify, which gives us два/три/четыре года. Most nominative case numbers whose spoken form ends in something other than those just mentioned require the genitive plural of the noun they quantify, thus пять лет, шесть лет, etc. That's right: the genitive plural form of год after numbers is лет. Don't ask questions. Just believe. This brings us to the following grammatical analyses:

Of course, we can use years to express many other things than age. For instance, duration phrases use numbers. Most time/duration phrases are in the accusative case, which copies the nominative for inanimate phrases:

There is a bit more to say on this subject, but I see Luludya's number on my caller ID and I must attend to her immediately lest she become testy. More tomorrow!