The primary meaning of the verb садиться/сесть means “to sit down.” It is one of only four verbs in Russian that have a reflexive imperfective and a non-reflexive perfective:

When you sit down on a chair or couch, you express that with на and the accusative case. When you sit down at a table, or at an item placed on the table, you express that with за and the accusative case:

The verb has several other meanings which we will address in the next few entries.

The verb сидеть/посидеть means “to be sitting.”

Some examples:

The sitting meaning of this verb is sometimes de-emphasized quite a bit, and it ends being best translated simply with “to be”:

The verb has an additional meaning of "to be imprisoned" as well.

Сидеть/посидеть is never used in the sense of “to sit down.” For that see tomorrow's entry.

One common pet in Russia is the ёж or ёжик, which means hedgehog. Bear in mind that most Russians live in apartments, so small pets are eminently sensible. This little cutie was found in the region of Astrakhan:

The noun is an end-stressed noun, which means that when it has a grammatical ending, the stress shows up on the first syllable of the grammatical ending:

Americans aren't particularly well acquainted with hedgehogs, so here are a couple of remedial facts from Russian Wikipedia:

The animal is also used in the expression «Это и ежу понятно!» “Everybody knows that!” (Literally, “this even to a hedgehog is comprehensible.”) Those types of emotionally colored statements are often best translated with idiomatic equivalents instead of trying for a word for word translation. Sample sentences:

And of course we can't talk about such an adorable little animal without sharing at least one pet owner's video of a hedgehog eating… um… actually, I can't figure out what the heck it's eating, but it's still adorable.

The verb pair слушать/послушать means “to listen,” and it is completely regular in its formation:

In English the verb takes an object after the preposition “to,” but in Russian the thing you listen to appears in the accusative case with no preposition preceding it; that is, the verb takes a direct object:

The verb sometimes has the meaning “to obey,” just as the English verb also carries that shade of meaning:

Sometimes the verb is best translated “to attend” when a lecture or concert is involved:

There are also several stock phrases that make use of this verb, the most common of which is the telephone greeting «Слушаю!» or «Слушаю вас!», both of which are best translated as “Hello.” Last but not least is «Слушайте внимательно!» “Listen attentively!” This is a phrase used by every teacher in every Russian classroom when they want the children's attention.

A small restaurant where they sell кофе is called кофейня, and its genitive plural is кофеен. Doubtless the most well known coffee trademark is Starbucks, and sure enough you can even find their shops in Russia nowadays. Here's a sign from one of their outlets:

The sign reads: “The espresso you find in each Starbucks latte and cappucino is 100% responsibly grown and fairly traded.”

If you are up for a challenge, here are two linguistic tasks for you:

1. You will notice the English translation does not match word for word with the Russian original. See if you can come up with a translation that matches the original more closely word for word and yet still sounds good in English.
2. You will notice that the word еспрессо ends in an -о but shows masculine adjectival agreement. Present a hypothesis as to why that is.

Post your translations and hypotheses to the blog using the comment links.