Russian Word of the Day

The Russian words студент and студентка are false cognates... sort of. A false cognate is a word in one language that sounds similar to a word in another language but does not share the same meaning. For instance, the English word ‘embarrassed’ is a false cognate with the Spanish word ‘embarazada’, which actually means pregnant. (The latter brings up all sorts of amusing errors when a gringa says “Estoy embarazada” meaning to say “I am embarrassed” but ends up stating “I am pregnant.” Alas, cross-cultural communication is full of such errors, and most of them are much more subtle than that one.)

Anyhoo, the word for “male college student” declines like this:

and the word for “female college student” declines like this:

A college student is not the same as a high school student, so you can't use these words to talk about kids in grade school or high school. Here are some sample sentences.

¹ For many years Arizona State University has been called in Russian Аризонский государственный университет “Arizona Federal University.” This is an old error in translation. The “state” in ASU does not mean the nation state of the USA (государство), but rather the State (штат) of Arizona.

Russian has a whole series of verbs that mean ‘to enter.’ One means to enter by one's one power, another by vehicle, another by water, another by crawling, another by running... Frankly, I expect that if we ever achieve interstellar space travel, it will develop verbs that mean ‘to enter by space’ and ‘to enter by hyperspace.’ For today we will focus on ‘to enter (by one's own power)’ or ‘to walk in to.’ That verb is:

Note that the place you enter appears in the accusative case after the preposition в.

One of the most flexible verbs in the Russian language is заниматься/заняться. In it's most generic sense, one can translate it as “to be occupied [with something].” Today we will discuss it in the sense of “to study.” It conjugates like this:

In the sense of “to study” the verb is used for advanced studies:

The perfective of the verb can mean “to start studying”:

A majorly important verb in Russian is договариваться/­договориться. It means ‘to come to an agreement about doing something.’ It conjugates like this:

The verb is first of all used to say you agree with the plans that have been discussed. In that context one uses it almost exclusively in the plural:

Almost every conversation about making plans includes the word that way. The verb can also be used in the sense of “to make plans”:

The Russian word for lecture is:

Лекция is a на word; that is, you must use the preposition на with it if you are attending a lecture or going to a lecture:

If you go to a place using на, you come back from it using с + genitive:

There is a BIG difference between Russian and American lectures. If you attend a lecture in Russia, the lecturer often just sits there in front of the listeners and reads his notes. In the US that would be a recipe or failure. In the US a good lecturer must stand up, and either lecture entirely without notes or with just occasional references to his notes. In the US the lecturer must be emotionally engaging, or else he won't be given an honorarium again to speak. In Russia, no.

Now to American readers those comments immediately condemn the Russian system. That's because they are lazy-ass Americans. Generally the Russian system has produced better educated people than the American system over the last sixty years (though I think the Russian system is now decaying). The truth is this: if you are addicted to entertainment, you will probably be less productive in terms of scientific production than the people from less ‘friendly’ systems. So get off your tush and go do your homework!

Shady_arc responds:

As one of those studied in Moscow State University, I actively object your impression of Russian lectures. It is just that there is a lot of bad lecturers who, well, do what they can for the laughable increase in payment they get (I heard, no more than $1000 for a semester of weekly/twice a week course of lectures). A failure is still a failure, US or Russia, though in my 6 years I have never seen a sitting lecturer, not even once. Russian students, even the most promising ones, don't think twice before skipping a class or two (or half of them). Bad lecturers just make things easier for you: you simply sleep at home instead of sleeping at his lecture. And hope the lecturer isn't too pround of himself to get even with you on exam. Good students know very well that they WILL get away with skipping most of the classes they find bad: a rare professor will treat a student badly for missing classes if that student is obviously above the level of 90% of the others and knows the subject.

The tests and exams are (were?) usually held twice a year, at the end of the semester, so for decades the students had become used to living a joyful life from September through December and from February till May. This is changing now, as institutes and professors try to introduce more often, smaller tests over the course of the semester, and also control attendance. However, 5 years ago when I was in late years, still many did not attend regularly. I'd say... of all ~180 people that were in our stream (half of the students of our year: they share rougly the same lectures on common disciplines) about 40-80 were found on good lectures. For bad lectures it may fall to as low as 10-25 - basically, just a senior student (more often girl than not ) of each group.

There are always several good lecturers who make even quantum theory quite engaging and understandable. Also, there were many professional, though a bit boring lecturers. Still, they covered their subject, so you didn't even need the textbook much if you had carefully noted their, er, performance. Worst of all, there were indeed lecturers who are in this, probably, just for an increase to their salary. Students don't choose their teachers, so it is a matter of luck.

Personally, I did encounter a lecturer who knew what he did, yet made his subject pretty confusing. I did encounter a lecturer who was the authour of the book we used in out studies, and his lectures were so much more boring and primitive than his textbook: he even used slides instead of writing on the blackboard on his own. I attended classes of a teacher who, given the opinions I heard, was pretty good in the past; but, hell, by the time being he was so old he could barely speak intelligibly. That was the only time I was really ashamed for my university.

Note also, that in Russia (don't know how it is in US) the important general courses come in two parts, lectures by lecturers (~180 students in a large auditorium... theoretically) and classes (seminars) for small groups covering more practical skills, like discussing philosophy in more detail or soving some matrix equations. A group is 15-25 students. As a rule, these two types of classes are taught by different people, unless you are lucky/unlucky enough to be in the group whose classes are conducted by the same person who gives lectures. This also gives a different perspective, as, well... think of mathematics: solving equations is different from proving why they are solved this way, but still, the material for theoretical lectures and classes partially intersects. You may get bad lectures but good classes or vice versa. And when you prepare for the exam, you'll most probably need textbooks, anyway.

Don responds: Shady, thanks for your most excellent response to my blog entry. I'm adding your commentary to the main entry of the blog article instead of to the comment section so that others can see it promptly.

I have to agree with you, partially at least. My only study time in Russia proper was in 1986 at МГУ, and indeed the lecturers there were both competent and interesting. Of them I have no complaint.

On the other hand, the first class I had in Russian literature that was actually taught in Russian (as opposed to English language lectures on Russian literature) was taught by a Russian in the US, and he used precisely that methodology I have described. He sat in class, read his notes, and had us copy them down in our notebooks. I'm sure that the other students despised that approach. Myself, I took the lecture for what it was and in fact memorized the notes word for word, which made the instructor quite happy with my final exam of the first semester. By current US standards the class was an abomination in terms of methodology. In terms of my personal learning, I still remember his definition of литературный язык, still appreciate Krylov's fables and Lomonosov's poem on the use of glass.

Nowadays the greatest pedagogical abomination in the United States has got to be the misuse of PowerPoint. For a student-side discussion of this see Carolyn Works's blog entry (mirror)

One of the verbs that means ‘to fall in love’ is:

Note that the verb is complemented by a prepositional phrase with в followed by the accusative case.

Although the verb is mostly used in the past tense, it can be used in other tenses as well.

You may recall that we previously said that полюбить can also mean ‘to fall in love.’ That leaves us with the question of when to use which verb. Actually, you can start some pretty interesting arguments among Russians about which is the more serious emotion, полюбить or влюбиться. Nonetheless, I can give you one guideline, if you suddenly fall head over heels in love with a person, then влюбиться is the verb you use to describe it, not полюбить.

One of the verbs that means to love is:

When you use the imperfective, it means the subject has an established liking for the direct object, and it can be translated as like or love:

The verb can also be complemented by the infinitive:

The prefix по- often adds the idea of ‘start to,’ and that applies to this verb. In English the equivalent of ‘start to love’ is ‘fall in love with’:

Love... it comes in so many forms... specifically nouns and verbs, and today we are going to talk about the Russian noun любовь, which is a third declension noun, complicated by a fleeting vowel:

You don't encounter the plural forms very often, but theoretically they exist.

Любовь has several meanings. First off, it's love, the positive feeling that binds people to other people in the best sense:

Любовь can also mean the person that instills love in you:

Now here's an interesting cross-cultural parallelism. In the Christian tradition there are three theological virtues, which are usually called faith, hope and love. But if you read a King James Bible, you will find that one of the older words for love is charity. Faith, Hope and Charity can all be women's names in English. And in Russian those words can also be women's names:

I Cor 13:13 still makes me tremble:

I find my relationship with Luludya goes much more smoothly if I give her grandmother a certain sum of money every Friday. Last week I was a bit late with her gift. Honestly, I wasn't skipping it on purpose — I know better than to try anything like that — but I was in fact a few hours late with the payment, an honest mistake, and as I entered the harridan's room, she gave me a certain look. When I returned home, I sensed a certain rumbling in my bowels, and then I spent the next ten hours in the smallest room of the house, and I knew:

The phrase for ‘the evil eye’ in Russian is ‘дурной глаз’ or sometimes ‘лихой глаз’ or ‘худой глаз.’ When someone is affected by the evil eye, the Russians often use the word сглазить ‘to hex, jinx, curse’ to describe it. This verb only occurs in the perfective:

You can find the verb in phrases such as:

Some years ago I came across a book called “Murphy’s Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong” by Arthur Bloch which contained a definition that went something like this:

The Unspeakable Law: The moment you mention something, if it's bad, it happens; if it's good, it goes away.

Many Russians have an inner feeling that the second bit is true. You musn't praise or compliment someone or express good expectations, otherwise you'll jinx yourself. So if you say something good, you need some magical little phrase to counteract the potential jinx. In AmE we say "knock on wood" in that context, and Russians may ceremonially spit over their left shoulder, which is represented in written form as «тьфу, тьфу», and then they add something like «чтобы не сглазить» “so that we don't jinx overselves”:

Certain recent events have brought me to the conclusion that I may sometime need stronger counteragents to the evil eye. Fortunately a quick web search has revealed a most amazing website in Russia where for a mere $500 one can obtain such help. Here's a description of their remarkable wares:

Yes, indeed. Three or four of those and I think I won't be having problems with the evil eye anymore. I'll place my order today.

The eyes are the mirrors of the soul, but sometimes something robs them of that ethereal connection. For instance, we can get something in our eye. In Russian this often includes the word соринка, which means ‘a little bit of junk’:

After someone has had too much to drink, the eyes may become bloodshot:

Yesterday we mentioned that the word глаз declines like this:

Note the alternative forms of the genitive case. The forms in -у are ‘second genitive’ forms which appear nowadays in certain stock phrases like «с глазу на глаз» ‘privately, confidentially’:

‘To believe one's eyes’ is a stock phrase expressed with the dative plural:

Yesterday we mentioned that the word глаз declines like this:

Note the alternative forms of the prepositional case. The prepositional form in -у is a ‘locative’ form, which appears after the prepositions в and на when they indicate location. Thus I might say:

But if I'm talking about an eye, then the form in -е appears:

Luludya withdrew her lips from mine, gazed up at me soulfully and whispered:

Several hours later, in the exhausted aftermath, it struck me that perhaps some Americans might have taken those words the wrong way, had they been in my oh-so-fortunate place. Camels have the most beautiful eyelashes of any animal. It is no surprise that a Gypsy woman in the throes of passion would say such a thing. And upon reflection it strikes me that all the best things in life are born in love, so it is only suitable that Luludya's love for me should elicit a blog entry on eyes.

The Russian word for eye is глаз, which declines like this:

Old Russian in addition to singular forms and plural forms had ‘dual’ forms, which were used to indicate things that came in pairs. For masculine nouns like глаз, that ending was -а, producing Old Russian глаза ‘two eyes, a pair of eyes.’ Nowadays that form has generalized to the plural form. We'll deal with the alternative forms of the genitive and the prepositional soon.

When you describe someone's eyes, the most common common colors are these:

When one is with one's beloved, it is absolutely essential to compliment the eyes, and since Russian intonation is different from English intonation, one must practice the phrases over and over again so that they sound sincere. Intonation construct (IC) 2 is often used for emphatic statements, so one could make the following compliment:

IC 5 is used for oohing and aahing, so one could pose the compliment thus:

Now we should probably address the issue of... damn... Luludya is calling my cell phone. Half a mo... Ohmigoodness, she just said:

Gods! Is it any wonder that I love this woman? I must go to her immediately! Grammar must wait until tomorrow!

Russian has two words for blue, and the one that is the equivalent of light blue is голубой, which declines like this:

In its primary meaning the word means the same as its English equivalent:

The word also has an alternative slang meaning, which is ‘gay, pertaining to homosexuals’:

Interesting enough, голубой in this sense can only be applied to men, not to women.

The Russian word for tea is чай. It declines like this:

You don't usually find the plural forms, but occasionally they are used to mean ‘types of tea.’ Mostly you just use the singular.

Tea always reminds me of a classic English joke. Supposedly between Lady Astor and Winston Churchill there was constant verbal sparring:

If you want to ask how often something happens in Russian, you can use the phrase «как часто»:

Now here's one of those subtle differences that occur between languages. Although the «как часто» phrase is perfectly grammatical in both Russian and English, the frequency of the use of the phrase is not the same. The English phrase is much more common in usage. In Russian it is more common to ask the question slightly differently, phrasing it simply "Do you often?":

When you ask the question, it is usually used with intonation construction three, jumping up on the stressed syllable of часто:

The adverb часто means frequently. Since it tells how often something happens, we can more specifically call it an adverb of frequency. It's often used much the same way as its English equivalent:

Часто is what we call the the "positive form" of the adverb; adverbs often have a "comparative form" as well, and in this case that form is чаще.

You may remember from yesterday that the case forms of год are:

Today we need to discuss the genitive singular forms. The modern version of the genitive singular is года, but there is an older form that arose as a consequence of the u-stem genitives which nowadays only appears in stock phrases. So you will occasionally find phrases like:

For instance:

There is a tendency in language to make the things that are irregular more regular. Thus the older plural ‘brethren’ in English has been mostly replaced by ‘brothers.’ Similarly nowadays it is much more common in Russian to say «год от года» than «год от году». It is still more common to find «без году неделя» than «без года неделя», but that ratio will most likely eventually change in favor of года.

Language changes. For instance, as I was growing up, I never heard anyone say “You want to come with?” for “Do you want to come with us?” I remember the first time I heard it. I thought “No native speaker of English could possibly ever say that!” I was wrong. All sorts of US native speakers say it nowadays, and nowadays it almost doesn't sound strange to me. This should teach us a lesson. No native speaker ever knows the entirety of his language. And if we find that Russian speakers occasionally give us contradictory language about their native language, this is also normal. In such situations, you need to ask multiple native speakers about your language issue, and then draw a rule of thumb from their responses.

The case forms of год are:

Note the two nominative plural forms. Dictionaries list both, but truth to tell you almost never see the года version for the plural.

Note the two forms for the genitive plural. The form лет is used after numbers and а few other words like много, мало, сколько and несколько. Годов is used everywhere else:

Note the two forms of the prepositional case. The form in -у is used to say "in such and such a year", and the -е form is used as the prepositional case form in other contexts:

We will address the alternative genitive forms tomorrow.