The word секрет means, surprise-surprise, secret. On that score it's not interesting at all. What is interesting is that the Russians use this phrase all the time in the phrase "if it's not a secret." They use the phrase to soften what might otherwise be a rude question:

The word for river in Russian is река. Note how the stress shifts. For the most part in the singular it is end-stressed, with the exception of the accusative, and in the plural it is stem-stressed:

Growing up in Arizona, I was used to orderly and well organized rivers that had no water in them. I mean, why would they have water? Imagine my shock when I got to Russia and discovered that Russian rivers have water in them. I mean, sure, I knew that it was a theoretical possibility, but why? So very strange. Reader, you'll just have to get used to that idea. Here are some example sentences:

Bodies of water are generally на words:

Можно is a great Russian word that means “it is allowed”. In that sense it is always complemented by an imperfective verb:

If you want to specify that a particular person is allowed to do something, then the person appears in the dative case:

Last summer I lived in Russia in my own apartment for the first time, so I learned all sorts of new skills... how to pay for the phone, how to pay for the internet, how to add money to my World of Warcraft account... Anyhoo, not too surprisingly, I also cooked. I love to cook. The mix of vegetables and meat and spices... it's simply a joy. But the Russians and the Tatars are really not into spices, so I ended up eventually buying консервы “canned food.” I brought it home, and to my shock, my otherwise well-outfitted kitchen had no can opener. To my greater shock, I realized that I didn't even know the Russian word for can opener. Such ignorance was insupportable! Particularly since it would lead to my personal hunger.

I traipsed over to the nearest department store, waltzed into the kitchen section and said to the clerk:

He looked at me as if I were a retard, the retardedest of retards, and said:

Ah. Excellent. I am now somewhat less retarded. Of course, although the phrase word-for-word means “canned-food knife”, the proper translation is simply “can opener”.

Hm... what kind of sentences can we come up with for that lexical item...

Those were all kind of boring. Have to come up with something more amusing. Here goes...

The word консервы means “canned food”. It is a word that only occurs in the plural in Russian, never the singular. Such nouns we call “pluralia tantum”. It declines like this:

Here are some example sentences:

That last line, by the way, is a hint about tomorrow's word of the day...