Russian Word of the Day

Злой is an adjective that beginners trip over for several reasons. First off, it is so short that it looks funny and they can't really believe that it's not longer:

Very often beginners memorize the word as meaning “wicked.” That's true as far as it goes:

However the word very often just means “mean” or “angry”:

In English we say a man is handsome and a woman is pretty. Russians roll both concepts up in the single word красивый. It is completely regular in its declension, including its comparative form красивее:

Sample sentences:

(Note that when «донельзя» is used to mean “very,” it is written as a single word and the stressoccurs not on the last syllable, but on the penultimate syllable. You could also say «до невозможности» in that context.)

Какой is one of the question words in Russian. It asks a question, so we call it ‘interrogative,’ and in terms of its endings it's an adjective, so we call it an ‘interrogative adjective.’ It declines like this:

Although какой can be translated several ways, it's most common meaning is “what kind of”:

Sometimes какой has about the same meaning as который, and in those instances we can often translate it as ‘what’ or sometimes ‘which’:

English is interesting in terms of comparatives. Sometimes you can use a comparative with -er, but you can't use a comparative with “more.” Thus “cuter” is okay, but “more cute” is not. We call the -er form the simple comparative. Sometimes the “more” form is okay, but the “-er” form is not. Thus “My life is more interesting than yours” is okay, but “My life is interestinger than yours” is not. When you use “more” with an adjective, we call that the compound comparative. Russian also has both simple and compound comparatives. The word used for compound comparatives is более. The более form is almost always acceptable in Russian:

Note: Задача really means assignment or taks, but in certain contexts like арифметическаая задача it can mean the equivalent of equation. The normal word for equation is уравнение.

Another word that means bigger is больше. In this meaning it is what we call a comparative adjective:

Just as with other comparative sentences, if чем is followed by a simple noun phrase in the nominative case, you can make an equivalent phrase without чем by putting the noun in the genitive. Thus the second and third sentences from above can be rephrased as:

One thing you can't do with больше is to make a sentence like “John lives in a bigger house than Victor.” When “bigger” directly modifies a noun, Russians have to use either «больший» or «более большой», thus:

Больше has other meanings as well. We will explore them over the next couple weekds.