Russian Word of the Day

Today we will talk about the verb учиться:

I like to translate this verb as “to go to school,” and in that sense it is only used in the imperfective. You can use it to contrast going to school (university/college/junior college/etc.) versus having a job:

The verb is used for asking what school you attend as well:

The verb pair кормить/накормить means to feed or to nourish. It is a shifting stress verb with a perfectly predictable л that appears in the я form:

First off, you can use this verb to discuss feeding farm animals:

You can also use it for feeding people:

In the US in the past there have been various food scandals, including that ridiculous time under Reagan when ketchup was defined as a vegetable for school lunch purposes. Russia, alas, is also not without its school food scandals. Right now there is company called Конкорд in Russia that has roused the ire of Moscow's parents by providing miserly food portions for public schools. They are even accused of providing the kids with fewer calories than prisoners used to get in the gulags. If you'd like to see some pictures of the food and look over a blog that deals with the issue, just click here.

Russian has several verbs that can be translated as ‘study.’ Today let's start by looking at учить/выучить:

You can use this verb to discuss what subjects you studied in grade school or high school. In this sense you usually use it in the imperfective.

If you are studying/memorizing a set of facts, then you can use both the imperfective and perfective:

I'm in Kazan with a group of students. Many of them are in host families. Americans are very communicative, so before the program began, one of our students sent a message to her host father to say that she was excited and looking forward to meeting them. She wrote:

Я очень возбуждена и спешу встретиться с вами.

Now that's pretty damn amusing. The word she chose for ‘excited’ means excited when the appetite is excited by exercise or a solar cell is excited to stimulate the emission of electrons by photons. But when applied to humans it can mean ‘sexually excited.’ The word she chose to for ‘to look forward to’ also means ‘to be in a hurry.’ So in effect the good-hearted girl had written:

I am very aroused and rushing to meet you.

Our resident director clarified the situation to the host father...

The verb ‘to stimulate; excite; arouse’ in Russian is возбуждать/возбудить. It conjugates like this:

This word can be used when one's appetite or thirst or curiosity or surprise are aroused:

I suppose I must give at least one sexual example:

The verb pair приглашать/пригласить means ‘to invite.’ Note the с~ш alternation in the perfective:

The person you invite goes in the accusative case:

The place you invite someone to appears in a motion phrase, so you often have в/на followed by the accusative case:

You can also use к + dative to specify the person one is going to visit, which more often than not is specified with к себе or к нам, and в гости is often included as well:

It's possible to get names after к as well:

¹ Савик Шустер is the host of «Шустер live», a Ukrainian socio-political talk show. Despite being broadcast on Ukrainian TV, the show is conducted in Russian.