Russian Word of the Day

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:

Мы с Иваном ходили в магазин.

John and I went to the store.

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:

Нам с женой очень жалко Ивана, поэтому мы с ним часто ходим в кино.

My wife and I feel really sorry for John, so we three often go to the movies. or My wife and I feel really sorry for John, so we often go to the movies with him.

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:

Мне очень жалко Ивана, поэтому мы с ним часто ходим в кино.

I feel really sorry for John, so he and I often go to the movies.

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:

Вы с Женей часто ссоритесь?

Do you and Zhenya argue often?

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

Вы с Женей часто ссоритесь?

Do you [two] and Zhenya argue often?

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:

Ей очень жалко Веру, поэтому они с ней часто ходят в кино.²

She feels really sorry for Vera, so the two of them often go to the movies.

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

Им очень жалко Веру, поэтому они с ней часто ходят в кино.

They feel really sorry for Vera, so the three of them often go to the movies.

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

Ему очень жалко Веру, поэтому они с ней часто ходят в кино.³

He feels really sorry for Vera, so the two of them often go to the movies.

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.

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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:

Глеб с Анной издевались над иностранцами.	Gleb and Anna taunted the foreigners.
Милиционер остановил Петю с Андрюшей и попросил документы.	The policeman stopped Pyotr and Andrei and asked for their identification.
Мама дала Вере с Таней изюм.	Mama gave some raisins to Vera and Tanya.
Моя сестра постоянно болтает об Анжелине с Брэдом.	My sister constantly chatters about Angelina and Brad.

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

On Saturday I was sitting just outside the men's section of the place where I get my hair cut here in Kazan, when a guy walked up and asked «Сколько там мастеров?» A second-year student of Russian would probably have translated the sentence "How many masters are there?" and would then have no idea what it meant. Here's the scoop. The word мастер in Russian often bears the meaning "someone qualified in a particular trade." In other words, he wanted to know how many barbers there were there that day.

The word itself is one of those that have a stressed -а in the nominative plural, and thus is end-stressed through the plural instead of stem-stressed:

	Sg	Pl
Nom	мастер	мастера
Acc	мастера	мастеров
Gen
Pre	мастере	мастерах
Dat	мастеру	мастерам
Ins	мастером	мастерами

There is no commonly used word in English that is quite as general as мастер in this sense, so when translating it, it is best to substitute the common name of the tradesman who practices the trade in question. Thus, if you are sitting outside an establishment that cuts men's hair with the old-fashioned standard cuts, the phrase «Сколько там мастеров?» is best translated "How many barbers are there?" The lovely and willowy Розанна who cuts my hair also does women's hair and can color hair as well. She would probably object to the word barber, and in fact someone with all those skills in the States would be better labeled a "hair stylist," so in this case the best translation may be "How many hair stylists are there?" or "How many stylists are there?"

I was in the dormitory of Moscow State University in 1986. My bathroom sink began to come out of the wall. The floor attendant said «Я вызову мастера». In this case she meant the guy who takes care of the dorm's minor maintenance requests, so her sentence would be best translated as "I'll call the handyman" or "I'll call the maintenance man." (BTW, when he showed up, he simply took a look at the sink, shoved it bank into the wall and smeared some cement over the screw and brace that held it in place. The wall was cinderblock. And the sink was anchored to the cinderblock by a screw... The word мастер struck me as completely ridiculous in that context.)

Thus if you summon a мастер to fix the plumbing, translate мастер as plumber. If you summon a мастер to fix your electrical outlet, translate it "handy man" or "electrician," depending on just how qualified the guy is.

In our first years of learning Russian we spend a lot of time learning conjugation and declension, trying to figure out how to weave sentences together with subjects and direct objects and prepositional phrases. It's an amazing grammatical dance that has its own beauty, though perhaps it takes ten years before one really sees the beauty part... Anyhoo, so you take your first trip to Russia, and you are braced to collide with strange cases and unreal conditional clauses and sentences that last longer than Kafka's, and then you are stunned to learn that it's the really short sentences with nothing but the nominative case that entirely floor you.

For instance, yesterday morning I was in my currently favorite eating place, and I heard the following conversation:

Треугольник.	A triangle.
Вы здесь будете?	Will you here?
С собой.	With one's self
Нагреть?	To warm up?
Нет.	No.

I can pretty well guarantee you that right now first- and second-year readers are thinking "What the heck?" The conversation is between a woman customer (blue lines) and the cashier (yellow lines). Spend a minute or two to see if you can figure out what the heck they are talking about, then click 'read more' for a line-by-line explanation.

Read more »

Let's say a young Russian student is composing an essay and decides to write “I want to earn a billion dollars” in Russian. He knows the word for million is миллион, so he figures a billion must be биллион, but, being an enterprising student, he quickly double-checks his Russian dictionary. He is pleased to note that the word is exactly as he expected, so he writes «Я хочу заработать биллион долларов.» Alas, he has made an error. Even though you can find the word биллион in Russian dictionaries, people rarely use it. Instead they say миллиард:

Я хочу заработать миллиард долларов.	I want to earn a billion dollars.
Бюджет штата Аризона уменьшили на два милларда долларов.	The Arizona state budget has been reduced by two billion dollars.
У бывшего премьера Таиланда отобрали полтора миллиарда. (source)	One and a half billion dollars have been confiscated from the former Prime Minister of Thailand.
Минобороны потратило пять миллиардов рублей на неудачные испытания беспилотников. (source)	The Ministry of Defense has spent five billion rubles on unsuccessful drone aircraft experiments.

If you are translating from English to Russian, you must be quite careful if the source document has the word billion in it. In the US the word billion always means 1,000,000,000. That's not necessarily true in other English-speaking countries. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in England the word meant 1,000,000,000,000. (In the States we call that a trillion). The US system is known as the “short scale” system of naming numbers, and the old British version is known as the “long scale.” In 1974 the UK officially switched from long scale to short scale, but there are still people in Britain who use the word the other way. That means that a good translator will take the time to determine the nationality of the author and the country in which the source was published before he finalizes his translation, and even then it's a good idea to see if the source document has some internal confirmation of which meaning is intended.