The verb быть is also used in sentences with predicate nouns. What is a predicate? In copular sentences (“to be” type sentences), the subject is the thing you are talking about. The predicate is everything else:

In Russian the most common verb for the “to be” concept is быть. It is imperfective in terms of meaning, but it is unique in that it is the only imperfective verb to have a simple future form:

Although быть has the present tense third person singular form есть and the present tense third person plural form суть, these are used only in specialized contexts. They aren't normally used to say things like “She is pretty” or “He was in Zvenigorod.” Instead you just leave the verb out in the present tense. Examples:

In English we have several words for a person who likes to go to bed early and get up early: morning person, early riser, early bird. People who like to go to bed late and get up late are night people or night owls. If you go to a Russian dating service like http://russianwives4u.net or http://russianstuds4u.net (not that I myself have ever been to such a site), you may find that you have to specify whether you are an early bird or a night owl. The Russian equivalent of an early bird is жаворонок, literally a skylark, and the Russian equivalent of a night owl is сова, literally an owl. So you can fill out those parts of your dating profile like this:

I have never had a conversation in Russia about Scottish music, so I have never actually heard a Russian use the Russian word for bagpipe, which is волынка. Imagine my surprise when I came across a Russian website dedicated to bagpipes. The only thing I could think of that would be stranger would be an American website devoted to сало. Sample sentences:

Last Saturday I was at a concert starring the famous Bulgarian musician Theodosii Spassov, and to my great surprise right in the middle of his band was a guy playing the bagpipe. Who knew the Bulgarians had bagpipes? And about an eighth of the time he played the bagpipe while standing on one leg, drawing the other up either to practice yoga or support the bag. If you have any idea why a piper stands on one leg while piping, please let me know in the comment section.

It turns out that the Turks also have bagpipes, which they call tulum. The Czechs have bagpipes. The Spanish and Galicians have bagpipes. The Hungarians have bagpipes. The Italians have bagpipes. Even the Poles have bagpipes! What's even odder is that the Poles have nearly half a dozen words for the instrument, depending just where you are in Poland.

Used by permission of Артемий Лебедев

One other verb that is used to express “to ask” is задавать/задать, literally “to pose.” It is used in conjunction with the noun вопрос, which means question. It is conjugated like this:

The verb combines with the noun вопрос in the accusative case, and the person being queried shows up in the dative case:

The quote by Berkeley is not very well known in Russia and does not yet have a generally accepted translation. It is so well known in the US that it spawns regular parodies, the most famous of which is “If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?” That one has become so iconic that it is reproduced on t-shirts regularly.

Note: the stress on the perfective past tense forms sometimes varies from the stress here indicated.