One of the meanings of the word охота is desire. The word can be used predicatively, in which case the person who has the desire is in the dative.

Oddly enough, one of the uses of this word is to express the idea of disbelief and surprise that we express in English with sentences like “What the heck did you do that for?” or “Did you really mean to do that?” Examples:

The verb pair покупать/купить means “to buy, purchase”. Notice that the imperfective has the prefix по- and the perfective does not.

The thing purchased goes in the accusative case. In English the person for whom something is purchased can be either an indirect object or the object of the preposition “for”:

Likewise in Russian the person for whom something is purchased can either an indirect object (dative case) or the object of the preposition для, which governs the genitive case:

Some sample sentences:

You will recall that one of the differences between imperfective and perfective verbs is that perfective verbs are used when the result of the action is in focus, and you use the imperfective when the result is not in focus. Thus the following dialogs are both possible:

«Я джинсы покупал» is best translated “I shopped for jeans” because the speaker is not specifying whether there was actually a result to his shopping, whereas «Я джинсы купил» means the speaker actually made the purchase, so “I bought jeans” is the best translation.

Food prices have actually risen quite a bit recently in Russia (source|mirror). The BBC has been tracking the crisis in world food prices since July of 2008, and Moscow is one of the cities they are tracking. You can follow their coverage here.

* In English we usually discuss potatoes in the plural. Russians usually use the singular word картошка which can mean either "a potato" or "potatoes" generically.

Today let's think about the verb pair смотреть/посмотреть, which is conjugated like this:

The first meaning of this verb is “to watch.” The thing watched goes in the accusative case:

When you watch someone do something, like watching someone enter a room, the person and the activity are expressed in a completely separate clause introduced by как:

The verb is also used to mean “to look at,” in which case it is used with the preposition на followed by the accusative case:

When you look in a mirror or into/out of a window or into someone's eyes, you use the preposition в followed by the accusative case:

The verb can also be used to mean “to keep an eye on,” in which case it is used with the preposition за followed by the instrumental case:

That last sentence is amusingly amibiguous since the word свеча means either candle or suppository, resulting in a viable translation of “The nurses kept a sharp eye on the suppositories since there was a shortage of them.”

When talking about food, it is important to mention the concept of огород, the individual plot of land, typically small, where people grow their own vegetables. Sometimes they also plant a few fruit trees, providing them­­selves with fruit: pears, apples, cherries, etc. The importance of огород can not be underestimated. If not for the огороды, during the Soviet era and post-Soviet collapse millions of people would not have made it: literally, they would probably have starved to death. Statistics show that, for example, in Soviet times, the individual plots of land made up around 30% of arable land, whereas колхозная земля (factory farm land) was over 70% of the arable land, and yet «колхозные земли производили меньше, чем пятьдесят процентов овощей» “factory farm lands produced less than 50% of [the country's] vegetables!” The difference is startling, no?!

Many wonder how such a difference in crop yield could be explained?? There are some theories on that account that circulate. The one I like the most is the theory of “love energy.” It states that all is energy, and where we put loving energy, there life flourishes, in all its manifestations and forms, because love is the only energy that sustains life. Plants also feel it, and respond to this energy accordingly. So, on individual plots of land people tend to their plants with love, and so they respond with magnificent yields. Whereas on factory farm land all is обезличено depersonalized. Machines are in charge of everything, and so the plants are not used to their full potential. In J. Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy" it talks a lot about it. Recently, I also discovered the long-time Russian best-seller "Anastasia: Ringing Cedars of Russia" series, where they also talk extensively on the subject. I learned about this series from an interview with L. Sharashkin, which is amazing in its content; when I listened to it, it was eye-opening in a lot of ways to me: after that interview I wanted so much to read the "Anastasia..." books. I found them on-line, and, amazingly, it also talked a lot about the "plant issue"!

Anyway, to finish off my contribution, I would say that up to this day Russians are very fond of their land plots, and grow (with love!) a significant share of their food supply on their private plots, огород. BTW, those огород vegetables are millions times more delicious than vegetables we sometimes eat from factory farms!

Though this will sound very odd to English speakers, Russian has no single word that means "to spell." Russian spelling reflects pronunciation much more closely than English spelling. For the most part Russians don't need other Russians to spell a word letter by letter when they have heard an unfamiliar word.

But of course Russian spelling doesn't reflect pronunciation perfectly, so they do have ways to clarify the unclear. The most common phrase is «Как пишется это слово?» “How is this word written?” In response the other party will not name the letters of the word, but rather pronounce the word syllable by syllable, with all the unstressed vowels pronounced stressed. For instance, the word хорошо is pronounced [хəрашо], and to clarify the spelling we might have the following conversation:

Theoretically one could tell a Russian «Скажите это слово по буквам» “Tell me that word letter by letter,” but Russians will never say that to each other, and they will never tell each other how to spell a word letter by letter. (Well, maybe if they have a terrible phone connection, but never face to face. And even if the phone line is bad, they won't use the names of letters, but rather words that start with those letters.)

So for the most part Russians tell each other how a word is spelled «по слогам» “syllable by syllable.” Another phrase that nowadays means “syllable by syllable” is «по складам». That phrase actually has a bit of history. In olden days people were taught to read each letter out loud, naming the letter, and then combining each group of letters into a syllable. The names of the letters reflected the old names of the letters, not the current names. For instance, if someone wanted for some reason to spell «бабо», they would say:

буки азъ - ба, буки онъ - бо

where буки, азъ, and онъ were the old fashioned names of those letters.

For a discussion of чтение по складам see this article at gramota.ru.