The other day I was talking with my buddy Юрий when my brain rаn up against a linguistic wall: I didn't know how to say “I lost my voice” in Russian. Of course, a good language student never lets the lack of vocabulary stop him. He just improvises with words he does know. So I said “у меня исчез голос”, literally “at me the voice disappeared.” That made the communicative point and the conversation continued, but I was irked that I didn't really know the way a Russian would normally say it. So I started asking about that concept and here's what I came up with.

First of all, there is the verb хрипнуть/охрипнуть, which covers two concepts in English: “to have/get a hoarse voice” and “to lose one's voice.” The verb is conjugated like this:

Since this verb covers the meaning of two different phrases, sometimes it has two possible translations:

That means that if you are translating something from Russian to English, you might have to pay close attention to context to see whether completely losing the voice or becoming hoarse is the point. Of course, there can't be that many contexts where it's important to distinguish between simply becoming hoarse (partially losing one's voice) and completely losing one's voice, so maybe the issue is mostly moot.

Here's another example:

There are a couple other phrases that mean the same thing. We can use the verb оседать/осесть “to sink” or терять/потерять “to lose.” For instance:

Галитоз is a medical term that means “bad breath.” You may recognize it as meaning the same thing as the English word halitosis. When Russians borrows words based on Latin and Greek roots or words, they usually remove any grammatical ending from the word. Other examples:

Normally when Russians talk about bad breath, they don't use the medical term. Even educated native speakers might not know it. Instead they say «У него плохо пахнет изо рта», which in a word for word paraphrase comes out “At him it smells bad from the mouth.” Sample sentences:

My favorite bad breath phrase in Russian is «У меня во рту как будто эскадрон ночевал» “It's like an [entire] company [of cavalry] spent the night in my mouth.” But that's not the only one. The Russians love to play with language, and they can get quite creative when describing bad breath, for instance…

Warning! The following example contains English vulgarity and русский мат!

There are a lot of versions of this phrase that vary in their degree of nastiness. I was curious which one was the most common, so I googled them all and came up with this hit count (15 May 2009):

Versions 1 and 2 are kiddie talk. Adults may use them to avoid obscenity. #3 uses a fairly neutral word but still gets the point across. 4 and 5 are obscene. Do NOT use them in front of your instructors in Moscow or in front of your host mother.

Every American college student should go to Russia. It's just such a great experience. Russian friendships are intense. The Russian countryside is gorgeous. Astonishing museums and architecture. There are beautiful churches in which to pray and contemplate what good works we might like to accomplish over the next year. Ah, such opportunities! So why is it that those American students always end up drinking obscene amounts of vodka, throwing up at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, singing “Rubber Ducky” with a German accent in the middle of Red Square at three in the morning in the company of some Russian ballet dancer they've been flirting with since eight in the evening at the Irish Bar on the Arbat? And in the morning they wake up with похмелье, a hangover.

A smarmy American might even suggest that we have a spiritual obligation to get at least one hangover in Russia since the Primary Chronicle quotes Vladimir the First as rejecting Islam because the Russians love to drink, and thus to really get into the spirit of Russian language study, you have to tie one on. Wow, a little education and we can justify just about anything.

“I have a hangover” in literary Russian is «У меня похмелье» or «Я с похмелья». Notice that с here is followed by the genitive case, not the instrumental. It is incorrect to say «Я с похмельем». You'll also hear the more conversational «Я с бодуна», which means the same thing. Here are a couple sample sentences:

Actually, I doubt hangovers have anything to do with sneezing. Probably they just encountered a drunk with a cold.

You might think that people would battle hangovers with the obvious solution: sobriety. Nope. There is an incredible wealth of material out there discussing the question «Как опохмелиться наилучшим способом?» “What is the best method to cure a hangover?” More precisely, the verb опохмеляться-опохмелиться mostly means “to treat a hangover by using more alcohol,” or as some people say in English “to take a hair of the dog that bit you.”

Russians can discuss this question for hours and hours on weekends… weekends with bloodshot eyes and aching heads and the taste of dachsund fur and horseradish in their mouths. There is even a website devoted to the issue. Here is an actual answer to the question I found on the web:

The guy's spelling suggests he was actually writing with a hangover «он писал с похмелья». I thought he was making up the Антипохмелин, but apparently it's a real product. You can see a picture of it at the right.