The Russian word “рынок” is the equivalent of the English word “market.” Just like the word “market” it is used to describe economic structures in which people trade, exchange, buy and sell, whether goods, specific services or valuable information.

Here are some examples of this discordant word:

But most of the time when Russians, especially the elderly, refer to a “рынок” they are speaking of the food market where they buy meat, vegetables and etc.

Example:

There used to be a large food market near the street where my grandparents lived in Moscow. This “рынок” had almost anything— from black caviar to bananas to rabbits. But nothing too foreign for the Russian stomach like avocadoes, mango, or—God forbid—peanut butter. The “рынок” was split into an indoor and an outdoor section. All the meat, poultry, fish and dairy products were sold inside at bargain prices and all the produce, sweets and drinks outside.

Sanitary conditions were not superb, especially in the murky, foul-smelling meat department where butchers displayed expressionless pig heads on counters, often surrounded by flies. Nevertheless I don’t think I’ve ever got food poisoning, and for thousands of people it was the place for food shopping. Outside, old grandmothers stood at corners with sheaves of cilantro, parsley and lettuce, next to them all kinds of sweets were set out on tables. If it was the right season you could buy tasty strawberries real cheap, or pull out a few more rubles and get an Uzbek watermelon.

As time passed the “рынок” became smaller while the prices doubled. The old building was demolished, most of the vendors kicked out, and everything rebuilt in a strange kind of way. The new structure has a fresh look to it now, and you will certainly find peanut butter and limes. Мangos are still rare. Overall the change was for the better, but I miss the old place.

The Russian word for a letter, in the sense of letters you send in the mail, is письмо. Notice there is a stress shift in the plural, and note also that the soft sign is replaced by е in the genitive plural:

Sample sentences:

The word is sometimes also in the phrase «на письме», which means “in writing” as opposed to “in conversation”:

No one on the planet is as joyfully anal-retentive as copy editors, those people responsible for the proper positioning of commas and quotation marks in printed works. In English doubtless their greatest joy is knowing the difference between a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash. The Russians also are not bereft of this joy, and thus today we will discuss the differences between the дефис hyphen and the тире dash. The former is a perfectly regular masculine noun, and the latter is an indeclinable neuter noun.

Just as in English, in Russian the дефис hyphen is used to break words into syllables or to split a word at the end of a line. It is also used in words ending in -то and -нибудь, etc; words beginning with кое-; and adverbs beginning with по-:

The тире, called a dash by most English speakers and called an “em dash” by the typographically more sophisticated, is used quite a bit more in Russian than in English. First off, it is used to mark direct speech. In this case no quotation marks are used, and the тире occurs at the beginning of a new paragraph and is followed immediately by a space:

When used to indicate a range of numerical values, then the тире is used with no spaces on either side:

In all other uses of the тире it should have spaces on both sides. Note that this is different from English, where no spaces are to be used around an em dash. One use of this type of тире that takes some getting used to for American students is in sentences where English would use is, am, or are, which of course the Russians mostly leave out in the present tense. The Russians also use it when they are leaving out other implied words:

We should point out one picky detail: Russian typewriters don't have a key for the тире. The same is true for most standard Russian computer keyboards. For that reason in manually typed documents you will often find «два дефиса подряд» “two hyphens in a row” substituting for a тире. Yes, you type spaces on both sides. Of course in this day of slap-dash internet discourse, most people don't bother with the double hyphen for тире; instead they just write a single hyphen with spaces on either side.

Doubtless there is someone out there thinking, “I just won't be happy if I can't use both тире and дефисы in my e-mail and web compositions.” Ah, that kind of love of detail warms my heart. And I will warm your heart, dear reader, by pointing out that the “Russian for Gringos” keyboards allow you to use both with great ease; in Russian mode to get an em dash you simply hold down the ctrl key while simultaneously tapping the hyphen key. Without the ctrl key you get the regular hyphen.

Finally, if all this just feels way too complicated for you, you may simplify your life with a Russian computer keyboard for blondes.

Most qualitative adjectives that end in -ый can be turned into adverbs by dropping the last two letters of the nominative singular and then adding -о. The adjective интересный ‘interesting’ is no exception, thus интересно means ‘interestingly.’ Of course no one says ‘interestingly’ in English, but the Russians use интересно all the time:

What is really interesting is that Russians use this word where Americans use the phrase “I wonder?”

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.