One of the most useful words in the English language is whatchamacallit. We use it to indicate an object whose name we've forgotten. For instance, let's say you and your sister are in the kitchen and you can't remember the word collander but you need it. You could say to her “Hand me that whatchamacallit. You know, that thing to drain the pasta with.” Or you are working on your car with your brother and you can't remember “feeler gauge,” then gesturing toward the toolbox you might have this conversation:

There are a lot of variations on that word. For instance,

The phrase that the Russians use for whatchamacallit is «вот это самое». Let's say two Russians are in the kitchen and can't remember the word дуршлаг. They might have this conversation:

Or two Russians are working on the car:

The verb выступать/выступить gets a lot of use in Russian. One of its meanings is “to appear in a public place for the purpose of performing or making a public statement”. It conjugates like this:

Although its forms are regular, the verb itself causes some difficulty in translation because of the noun that often accompanies it after the preposition ‘с’ in the instrumental case. For instance «выступить с речью» word for word means “to appear with a speech,” which sounds quite unnatural in English. Instead we will usually say “to deliver a speech” or “to give a speech.” At a circus performance «выступить с номером» means “to perform an act.” At a kindergarten show “выступить с песней” would be translated “to perform a song” or “to sing a song.”

We previously noted the use of the word чтобы in sentences like this where someone in the first clause wants someone else in the second clause to do something.

The translation of such sentences into English is fairly straightforward. But sometimes a person in the first clause wants someone else in the first clause to get a third person in the second clause to do something. Hm. That was not the clearest statement, was it? An example is in order:

Пётр говорит Тане, чтобы её подруга позвонила вечером.

Here Pyotr is talking to Tanya with the purpose of getting Tanya's friend to call in the evening. Now just how are we supposed to translate that? We are going to have to add some words in the English translation to get it to flow better. After some reflection I have decided that you need either a “to have” construction or a “should” construction:

Pyotr is telling Tanya to have her friend call in the evening.
Pyotr is telling Tanya that her friend should call in the evening.

Here are five more examples:

On the whole I like the “to have” translations better than the “should” translations. In either case there is a bit of ambiguity. The “to have” construction in such contexts can express either a suggestion or a command. In other words “Misha told Pyotr to have Arkadi give him a call” can mean either that Misha is making a suggestion for Pyotr to call Arkdai, or it can be taken as a command, i.e., Misha is telling Pyotr to do it.

The “should” construction in such contexts can express either a suggestion or a statement of moral obligation. In other words “Misha told Pyotr that Arkadi should give him a call” can mean either that Misha is making a suggestion or that Misha is saying Arkadi has a moral obligation to call.

The Russian чтобы clauses in these context better match the “to have” range of meaning than the “should” range of meaning.

All the Russian examples here are from p. 140 of “Russian Stage 2: Welcome Back!” by Irina Dolgova and Cynthia Martin. The suggestions for English translations are my own, so any errors must be blamed on me, not them.

The Russian word for a verse in a poem is стих, but it gets a lot more use in Russian than in English. First we'll look at its forms, and then we'll discuss why it is used so much in Russia. It is an end-stressed noun, which means whenever you add a grammatical ending to it, the first syllable of the grammatical ending gets the stress.

The word can mean either a verse in a poem or a verse in the Bible:

The word стих doubles as meaning a poem, so a parent might a Russian schoolchild to recite a poem like this:

Every American child knows the poem/riddle “Humpty-Dumpty,” and every Russian child knows this poem (which is also sung as a New Year's song):

The plural стихи is used to mean poetry in general:

* Notice the atypical stress. Normally it should be родилась.

We previously noted the use of the word чтобы in sentences like:

In the Russian version of that sentence the чтобы clause contains a perfective verb to express a one-time action with result to the point of discourse:

That's all well and good, but what happens if the opposite is the case? In other words, we want to say:

In this case the verb in the чтобы clause must be expressed in the imperfective:

Alternatively, one could put the не right in front of писала instead of in front of хочу:

For beginners the rule of thumb is this: a negated verb will be expressed in the imperfective. In these sentences the scope of negation seems to include not only хочу but also the complement of хочу, i.e. the чтобы clause. Here are some other examples. Notice all the sentences in blue have a perfective чтобы clause. All the sentences in yellow are negative and thus must have an imperfective чтобы clause: