Russian Word of the Day

The Russian word for tea is чай. Russians drink a lot of hot tea, even when it's hot out. They seem to have this theory that if you drink hot tea, then you sweat, and sweat cools you down, so drinking hot tea cools you down. Don't try to argue with the logic of that. They won't buy it.

In the States if you ask someone under 30 how to make tea, they will probably tell you something like: "Put the teabag (чайный пакетик) in the cup (чашка). Pour in boiling water (кипяток). When the water changes color, pull the teabag out." If they are tea experts, they might add, "Pull out the teabag as soon as the water changes color or the tea will turn out bitter." A Russian would just laugh at that. Yes, Russians have teabags, but making tea with them is a sign of incompetence. That's right: tea-bagging = incompetence.

So how do Russians make tea? Obviously you have to start with a чайник teapot:

You may notice that the teapot is not the same thing as an American tea kettle. The teapot is smaller. If you rotate it, then you see that it has a built-in strainer:

Here's how it works. You put a ton of tea in the teapot, then you add hot water. This makes a заварка, which is an intense tea brew. You then fill your cup perhaps one fourth full of the заварка:

Then you take hot water out of a tea kettle which has brought the water to a temperature so hot that even the animals around Chernobyl would be intimidated:

You then fill the the cup with the Chernobyl water:

You then let it cool down a bit, say for 1.5 days (полтора дня). Then you drink the tea. And that's the proper way to make tea.

Okay, I was kidding about the 1.5 days part. But they really do heat the water up über-hot, and you really do have to let it cool a while.

The Russians have a special word for boiled water which is кипяток. It is derived from the verb кипятить “to boil,” so etymologically кипяток means “boiled stuff.” Nowadays we Americans are convinced of the healthful benefits of water. We drink it from from the tap, from special spigots on refrigerators, from dopey coin-machines that charge us extra money for water delivered through the same distribution system as the water that flows into our kitchens and bathrooms, and from environmentally-assinine plastic bottles with designer names. Americans are so water-focused that we are stunned to learn that many Russians believe that drinking tap-water is unhealthy.

That's right: unhealthy. Truth to tell, city-wide distribution of clean water is a recent phenomenon in the history of man, and one that is not even consistent in the United States. Water quality in Russia still varies widely. As recently as 1997 one study reported a 95% incidence of giardiasis (nasty diarrheal disease) among travelers to St. Petersburg.¹ So when a Russian tells you that it's not a good idea to drink tap water, they are not passing on some quaint superstition, but rather a serious concern. For that reason, seasoned travelers to Russia often drink and brush their teeth in кипяток. Well... that's not quite right. Кипяток is water that is still boiling hot. Once it has cooled off, it is no longer кипяток. So experienced travelers drink and brush their teeth with water that was once кипяток. The noun has a fleeting vowel, so it declines like this:

Sample sentences:

¹ Ortega YR, Adam RD. Giardia: overview and update. Clin Infect Dis. 1997 Sep;25(3):545-9.

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

Чай first of all means the leaves of the tea plant and the drink made from those leaves. Sample sentences:

Just as in English, infusions and tisanes of other leaves are also called чай even when they contain no tea leaves:

The plural of the word can mean “varieties of tea,” although it's an uncommon use of the word:

Every once in a while you will encounter an old-fashioned u-stem genitive form of this word. Even though it looks like a dative, it's a genitive in meaning, which adds the idea of “some” to the sentence:

You may also encounter an old-fashioned u-stem locative form of the word as well. Again, although it looks like a dative, the meaning is locational:

The Russian word газировка is a slang term for газированная вода (carbonated water) and can be translated as soda. At one point it was almost synonymous with various soft carbonated drinks like Тархун, Буратино, Дюшес, Байкал, and so on... Now people tend to go by the brand’s name, especially when it comes to the popular Coke and Pepsi products.

In the Soviet days and even the early nineties, one could often spot special self-service soda fountains on city streets and public areas like airports, train stations, parks, farmer markets, and etc. The bulky, rectangular apparatuses were similar to the vending machines of today; you’d insert a kopeck or two and select the desired drink (sweet drinks cost more). There were no bottles or cans, every machine had a reusable стакан (glass) that was to be rinsed off with water in a special compartment and then used for the газировка. On a hot afternoon there could be a line of people standing next to the soda machine, each patiently waiting to quench his tormenting thirst. If lucky, you could hear one of these glasses shatter on the pavement and then find out that it was the last one, or better yet you could absorb some of your predecessor’s germs. For some reason I still miss those machines, although since then have been turned into scrap metal and become part of Soviet-era nostalgia. How awesome would it be to just have one in your kitchen right now?

Image from wikipedia.org

This is an image of a typical Soviet-era self-service soda machine. It's one kopeck for plain carbonated water and three kopecks for the water to be mixed with sweet syrup.

Here are some example sentences with газировка:

An English speaker might assume that лимонад means lemonade, but in Russian it means almost any non-alcoholic beverage, usually carbonated, and usually sweetened with fruit or berry syrup or sometimes with various herbs or artificial flavors. In other words, it means soft drink. That's right: in Russian both Пепси-Кола and Кока-Кола are лимонад.

In Russia there are many лимонады that we Westerners usually don't encounter in the US. For instance:

Probably the scariest one of them all is Тархун, pictured to the right, which is flavored with dragon's wort. Its green coloring makes it look like an industrial-sized bottle of Nyquil, and its flavor is somewhere between vile and repulsive.

Here are some sample sentences: