The primary meaning of the verb садиться/сесть means “to sit down.” It is one of only four verbs in Russian that have a reflexive imperfective and a non-reflexive perfective:

When you sit down on a chair or couch, you express that with на and the accusative case. When you sit down at a table, or at an item placed on the table, you express that with за and the accusative case:

The verb has several other meanings which we will address in the next few entries.

The verb сидеть/посидеть means “to be sitting.”

Some examples:

The sitting meaning of this verb is sometimes de-emphasized quite a bit, and it ends being best translated simply with “to be”:

The verb has an additional meaning of "to be imprisoned" as well.

Сидеть/посидеть is never used in the sense of “to sit down.” For that see tomorrow's entry.

The verb pair слушать/послушать means “to listen,” and it is completely regular in its formation:

In English the verb takes an object after the preposition “to,” but in Russian the thing you listen to appears in the accusative case with no preposition preceding it; that is, the verb takes a direct object:

The verb sometimes has the meaning “to obey,” just as the English verb also carries that shade of meaning:

Sometimes the verb is best translated “to attend” when a lecture or concert is involved:

There are also several stock phrases that make use of this verb, the most common of which is the telephone greeting «Слушаю!» or «Слушаю вас!», both of which are best translated as “Hello.” Last but not least is «Слушайте внимательно!» “Listen attentively!” This is a phrase used by every teacher in every Russian classroom when they want the children's attention.

Every once in a while when you have mastered some grammatical backflip, you discover that one is not enough: you have to do a grammatical double gainer. This is the case to say that someone “doesn't have” something or that “there isn't” something somewhere.

You recall that when a person has something, in Russian we express by saying “At so-and-so is such-and-such.” The person shows up in the genitive case as the object of the preposition у, and the thing the person has shows up in the nominative case, and the “there is/are” is expressed by the word есть:

When the person doesn't have something, the “doesn't have” idea is expressed in the present tense by нет, and the thing he doesn't have shows up in the genitive case.

The past tense of нет is always не было, and the future tense is не будет. Notice the contrast between these sentences. In the “have” sentences, the verb changes according to the gender/number of the subject. In the “doesn't have” sentences, the verb does not change for the subject because there is no grammatical subject (that is, nothing in the nominative case), and the verb defaults to neuter singular form:

These tricks also apply to sentences expressing sentences with the idea of “there is no” or “there was no”:

Every once in a while when you are studying a foreign language, you have to learn to do some grammatical contortion and say something in a way that seems bizarre in contrast to your native language. For us English speakers, learning how to say “have” in Russian is one of those.

In an English sentence like “John has a book.” John is the subject of the sentence. The thing that he has is the direct object. To communicate the same idea in Russian, you have to rephrase the sentence as “At John there is a book.” Specifically, when a person has something, the person shows up in the genitive case as the object of the preposition у, and the thing the person has shows up in the nominative case, and the “there is/are” is expressed by the word есть.

Есть is the present tense form of the verb быть, so if you want to put those sentences in the past or future, you use the past and future forms of быть to say “At John there was a book” and “At John there will be a book.”

When an organization (as opposed to a person) has something, then instead of using the preposition у, the prepositions в and на are used with the prepositional case. Thus “The university will have/has/had a dormitory” comes out:

“The post office will have/has/had a fax machine” comes out:

Actually these sentences can be translated two different ways. «На почте есть факс» can be translated either “The post-office has a fax machine” or “There is a fax machine at the post office.” If these types of sentences use prepositions other than у-в-на, usually “have” is not the best translation: