Russian Word of the Day

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.

There are three words that native speakers of English often confuse at first in their studies of Russian:

1. The first one of those is дома, which is an adverb that means “at home.” It never changes its endings.
2. The second is домой, which is an adverb that means “home” in the sense of “homeward/to home.” It never changes its endings.
3. The third is дом, which is a noun that means “house” or “building” and occurs in the singular and plural of all six cases.

Today we are focusing on домой in the meaning “home/to home/homeword.” Here is a subtlety. In English we can say “She is home right now” and “She is heading home now.” The former indicates location, and the latter indicates motion. In Russian you have to use дома in the former sense because it is a location phrase, and you have to use домой in the latter phrase since it indicates motion. Note also that as an adverb домой cannot be used with a preposition:

That last example is particular interesting. When you want to specify that you are going to someone's home, the word домой can be made more specific by adding a prepositional phrase using к followed by the dative case:

Actually in the previous three examples it's more natural to leave домой out, but it's perfectly grammatical to include it.

The Russian word for ‘how’ is как. When you start studying Russian, you first encounter it in “How are you?” phrases:

Since the word asks about the manner in which something is done, we call it an adverb. Since it poses a question we call it an interrogative adverb. In the following sentences the word is an interrogative adverb. In English we often use the pronoun ‘you’ or ‘I’ or (if you are really pedantic) ‘one’ in sentences that ask how to do something. Similar sentences in Russian often ask usе an infinitive construction:

One of the words you use in Russian to describe where something is located is the adverb слева, which can be translated "on the left" or "on the left-hand side." When you get experience your first Russian-language tours in Russia, your tour guide will certainly use the word in phrases like this:

To express the concept "to the left of," you add the preposition от followed by the genitive case:

Although слева can be used to indicate location, the word can also mean "coming from the left" or "from the left" or "from the left side":