Today's word is one that I personally haven't come across that often, but I like how it is formed. Words and their roots fascinate me, so it's nice to see a word that makes such sense. Рукопись means manuscript. It refers to text written by hand. In fact, it is the combination of: рука(hand) and писать(to write). It can’t be any more straightforward than that! It can also mean a draft one would send to a publisher.

Я отправила рукопись редактору.
I sent the manuscript to the editor.

Он не интерестуется рукописями о президентах.
He is not interested in manuscripts about presidents.

Профессор yслышал о древних рукописях.
The professor heard about the ancient manuscripts.

Я занимаюсь переводом арабской рукописи.
I am busy with the translation of the Arabic manuscript.

Привет is a friendly greeting that is usually transated into English as ‘hi.’ It is a friendly greeting used among people who are already on good terms:

The word is often used with передавать/передать to mean “say hi to so-and-so” or “give regards to”:

My favorite use of привет is in the phrase «с приветом», which means that the person you're talking about has some quirks or is crazy or abnormal.

С миру по нитке — голому рубаха.
Just a thread from everyone in the world, provides a man a shirt.
Literal translation: A thread each in the whole world- a shirt for the naked.

I like this quote. It's very Russian to take a sentimental concept like unity or charity and put it into practical terms. This proverb came up while I was searching for interesting uses for the word нитка-the singular for "thread."

*Please note that in the genitive case you would not say "нитк" but "ниток." A lot of times when there is a genitive for a word with a hard consonant followed by "ка" the letter о will appear and divide the consonant and the к.

Here are some sentences:

Мама, где мои нитки?
Mom, where is all my thread?

Мне нужна красная нитка, пуговица оторвалась.
A button came off, I need the red thread.

Мы все нитки потеряли?! Как я буду шить без ниток?
We lost all the thread?! How am I supposed to sew with no thread?

Держи нитку с иголкой.
Keep the thread with the needle.

The busiest place the house I grew up in was always the kitchen. My mother is an amazing cook and I always spent a lot of time trying to learn and help. Today's word is кухня, kitchen.

Whenever we had gatherings,

Мама звала меня на кухню помочь.
Mom would call me into the kitchen to help.

My father also liked to take his turn at cooking.

Где папа? Он на кухне.
Where is dad? He is in the kitchen.

And now that I have my own house,

Самая большая комната в моём доме — кухня.
The biggest room in my house is the kitchen.

Which is exciting because I get to design it any way I want.
However, it is also overwhelming.

Существует огромное количество вариантов оформления кухонь!
There are a huge number of options for designing kitchens!

In most Russian apartments the bathtub is located in a room next to, but separate from, the room that has the toilet. Since bathtub in Russian is ванна, the room that contains it is called a ванная. Ванная is a deadjectival noun; that is, it is an adjective in form, but a noun in meaning, so it declines like this:

Now, we are going to have a bit of a translation problem here. In the US the word bathroom means the room that contains the toilet. (It might be different in the UK...) I just asked a buddy of mine “What do you call a room in America that has a bathtub but not a toilet?” He looked at me with incredulity, as if I were an American manqué, and said “I don't know. I have never encountered the situation.” ‘Washroom’ doesn't work, because it, too, implies a toilet, as do john, head, wc, powder room, restroom and lavatory. So for the purposes of this blog entry I will call it the “bathtub room.” That sounds odd in American English, so if you are a Russian reading this blog, don't use the phrase yourself; just understand that we are making do. That said, here are some sample sentences: