Russian Word of the Day

The word вот means ‘here’ in the sense of “here it is” or “here they are.” Very often you find it used in very short sentences:

Of course, it's possible to add modifiers and clauses to make the sentences longer:

Beginners are sometimes confused about when to use вот and when to use здесь/тут. The primary difference is that вот is only used when you are actively pointing out something or someone; in other words, you are usually either gesturing with your hand or nodding toward the item with your head or glancing toward it with your eyes. Тут and здесь can be used without actually pointing out the item. Thus if you are asking the question whether an item is currently present, you use тут/здесь, not вот:

Of course, if you point out the person in your answer, you can use вот in the answer, but you still won't use it in the question:

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:

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.

Recently we discussed the noun tan; now, I would like to continue on the topic and discuss the usage of the verb "to tan".

In Russian the imperfective and perfective forms are the following: загорать and загореть.

Personally, I always try to be careful with tanning. I can only remember a few times in my life that I've gotten badly sunburned. However, as we say in Russian, it was редко, да метко, "rarely but to the point". Every single time it happened, it was a handful. One summer, I remember, I was reading outside; the sun wasn't even out - it was cloudy! Nevertheless, I got burned so badly, I couldn't sleep the following night! What can I say? Just my luck!

A little while ago I wrote about words that can have multiple meanings because of their use in Russian slang. The verb «ломать» as well as its reflexive form «ломаться» are also such words.

The main meaning of this verb is “to break”. However, someone could say меня ломает to express a feeling of withdrawal after using drugs or when being sick and running high fever. Consequently, the word for withdrawals is «ломка».

There is also a rather well used idiom using this verb: «ломать себе голову». It means to puzzle or rack one's brains over something.

The reflexive form, ломаться, means to quit working or functioning.

However, ломаться can also mean, “crack” when referencing changes in a young’s man’s voice.

Also, ломаться has two other meanings in Russian slang. The first one is to "put on airs, while the second one is to "stubbornly refuse to concede".

Here's a video from Kira Muratova's movie. Her movies are always very unique. More often than not the main character is played by Renata Litvinova, who is the queen of putting on airs.

If you would like to see a transcript and translation of this clip, click here.

The second important phrase in Russian that deals with visiting is «в гостях». It is a location phrase, which means it is used with location verbs, not motion verbs. In Russian when you are at someone's home or office, you express that idea with the preposition у followed by the genitive case. Thus:

Of course you can add other phrases that specify where the person was located when you visited them: