Russian Word of the Day

Today let's discuss читать/прочитать.

The prefix про- adds the idea of ‘all the way through’ here.

Now here is a subtle bit of grammar. If you want to find out if someone has read a particular book or author, you usually ask the question in the imperfective.

This is called the general-factual meaning of the imperfective (общефактическое значение несовершенного вида). When you are interested in the fact itself, not focusing on the completion of the fact, then you ask in the imperfective.

It is possible to ask the question also in the perfective, but it means something different.

Often when you learn a verb in Russian, it's helpful to learn the verb as a verb pair. One such pair is читать/почитать.

When по- is prefixed to many imperfective verbs, it adds the meaning of ‘for a while,’ as it does with читать. So the verb pair читать/почитать is good for indicating how long one reads.

For the most part one can't use bare accusative duration phrases with perfective verbs, but one exception is perfective verbs when по- means ‘for a while.’ ¹

Читать/почитать can also take a direct object, usually the thing you are reading or the author you are reading.

¹ Another exception is verbs prefixed with про- when it means ‘through a specific period of time.’

I have just realized that I have never blogged before about the word читать. Hm. Seems pretty basic, eh? Still, we can probably come up with something. Let's start with the basic imperfective verb.

The verb has several meanings, one of which is ‘to know how to read.’ In this sense it only has an imperfective, no perfective.

If you want to specify the ability to read a language, then add the language in the по- adverbial form.

Ah, that last little dialog is a cultural puzzle for the reader. In what well known series of novels can supernaturally gifted beings understand foreign languages without training? You may show off your knowledge in the comments.

The word for cow in Russian is корова. It declines like this:

Here are a few sentences...

* Okay, I admit to some plagiarism here. I was having a flashback to Herodotus, who wrote, “How crocodiles are worshipped by some, killed and eaten by by others.”

The Russian word for night is ночь, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing as English night. In English, once the sky is dark, you can say that it is night. In Russian night usually doesn't start until midnight. The word crossed my mind today because of a wonderful poem by Александр Блок, which goes like this:

Heaven knows why, but I found myself wanting to do a new translation. Whenever I do such a thing, I start off with a fairly word-for-word equivalent. Here's that version:

Here's my fast and dirty new translation. I've spent only 30 minutes on it, so any criticism is probably justified.