M.C. Escher-one of my favorites

Today's word of the day is the verb рисовать. This means to draw. As in a picture, not а lottery. I grew up loving to draw and doodle. So much, that I was often in trouble for drawing during all my classes.

Here are some examples using our word:

Он рисует красивый цветок.
He is drawing a beautiful flower.

Я учусь рисовать.
I am learning to draw.

Я собираюсь наказать всех моих детей. Они рисовали на стене!
I am getting ready to punish all my kids. They drew all over the wall!

Катя, пожалуйста, нарисуй мне что-нибудь.
Katya, please draw me something.

Выбирать is the Russian word for "to choose," "to select" or "to pick." Here is how you conjugate the verb:

So let's look at some examples using my favorite dessert, ice cream.

Мама с детьми пошли за мороженым.
Mom took the kids out for ice cream.

Она сказала: «Выбирайте для себя по два сорта.»
Pick out two flavors for yourselves.

Нина выбрала клубничное и ванильное мороженое.
Nina chose strawberry and a vanilla ice cream.

A Костя выбрал шоколадное и малиновое мороженое.
And Kostya picked chocolate and raspberry ice cream.

Я всегда выбираю эскимо.
I always choose the chocolate-covered ice cream bar.

Another meaning of выходить/выйти is “to turn out” in the sense of “to end up” or “to come of” or “to work out.” In this sense it is usually used in the perfective, and you encounter it particularly in the negative sense:

You can find this meaning in the future tense as well:

Previously we discussed how the verb нравиться/понравиться works, but we didn't mention when to use the perfective form. The perfective is especially used when you are asking about someone's first impressions of something:

The future form is also used:

In English we often say things like “I like tomatoes.” To express the same idea in Russian we use the verb нравиться/понравиться, but the verb does not mean ‘like’. Before we discuss its usage, let's look at its conjugation. Note that it is a reflexive verb:

Нравиться literally means “to please/be pleasing,” so to communicate the ‘like’ idea, you have to mentally rephrase “I like tomatoes” as “Tomatoes please me”. Notice this is grammatically quite different than the analogous English sentence. In English the person experiencing the pleasure is the subject of the sentence, and the source of the pleasure is the direct object:

In Russian the source of the pleasure is the subject of the sentence, which means it appears in the nominative case. The verb, of course, agrees with the subject. The person experiencing the pleasure is the indirect object and appears in the dative case:

Thus when one person likes another, we can have sentences like these:

There is one last quirk. In the Russian sentence, the source of pleasure often (though not always) shows up in final position, just as in the English sentence, even though grammatically it is the subject. Notice that the verb agrees with the subject in the Russian sentence, even though the subject is at the end of the sentence:

Here are some present tense sentences. Notice carefully the case of each subject and object, and how the verb agrees with the subject:

Now let's look at those same sentences in the past tense. Note how the verb agrees with the subject: