The spring semester is about to end; many are about to graduate. This time I am amongst these “many” (Yay! ). After years of hard studying, staying up till the wee hours, trying to cram for a test, I will finally have my degree! I will move on from solving math problems to completing other important tasks and objectives posed in life.

Conveniently enough, in Russian a math problem and any sort of task or objective is just one word, задача. It is a noun of feminine gender; its diminutive is задачка.

Because in English “problem” both means math exercise and trouble, I would imagine that English speakers might confuse the meanings of these words in Russian. For example, when talking about solving a physics problem, you don’t want to use “решить проблему” because in Russian проблема has only one meaning – trouble; so your question would mean to "resolve a problem". Therefore, if you want to ask your classmates if they finished their assigned math problems, you should use the word задача.

The standard Russian word for yes is да and for no — нет. For the most part they work pretty much like we would expect:

Russian sometimes doesn't work quite the way we would expect, though, when answering a question that has не in it. Remember that не is often including in Russian questions to make the question softer, more polite. But if the question is in the negative in Russian, there must be a negative somewhere in the answer as well. Let's say you are in Russia waiting outside the subway station for a woman named Tanya. You've never met Tanya; your friends have arranged the meeting, and you have only a general description of her. You spot someone who sort of matches the description, so you walk up to her and say:

In such a case, when the woman says нет, she is negating the idea of being Tanya. That interchange makes perfect sense to the American ear. Now consider this version:

In this case when the woman answers да, she is confirming your spoken negative supposition that she is not Tanya. Notice that despite the да in the original, it sounds better to have no in the English translation. (An English speaker would never say “Yes, I'm not Tanya” in this context.)

If the woman turns to be Tanya, then the question can be answered like this:

In this case Tanya is denying your stated assumption that she is not Tanya, so she answers нет and then corrects you. Notice once again that word for word translation “No, I am Tanya” simply doesn't work in English.

Let's see a few more examples and note their translations carefully. Let's say you need to ask a Russian whether she speaks English. It may turn out like these examples:

Notice this carefully: although very often да and нет correspond to English yes and no, sometimes the grammar of responding to a question requires a negative in Russian where it makes no sense in English. A professional translation in such a context requires replacing нет with yes in English. People with limited language experience might think “That's a bad translation or a dishonest translation because it says the opposite of what the words actually say.” They would be mistaken. Sometimes what appears to be an opposite translation is in fact the best translation, as long as it communicates the original intent and informational content of the source sentence.

The word вот means ‘here’ in the sense of “here it is” or “here they are.” Very often you find it used in very short sentences:

Of course, it's possible to add modifiers and clauses to make the sentences longer:

Beginners are sometimes confused about when to use вот and when to use здесь/тут. The primary difference is that вот is only used when you are actively pointing out something or someone; in other words, you are usually either gesturing with your hand or nodding toward the item with your head or glancing toward it with your eyes. Тут and здесь can be used without actually pointing out the item. Thus if you are asking the question whether an item is currently present, you use тут/здесь, not вот:

Of course, if you point out the person in your answer, you can use вот in the answer, but you still won't use it in the question:

The Russian word for every is каждый. In terms of its endings it is a simple adjective that agrees with its noun in case, number, and gender:

The word каждый is often used in time phrases like every day, every month, every year. If it modifies a masculine noun, you might think that it is used in the nominative case, but once you see it with a feminine noun, you realize that those time phrases are in the accusative case:

If the accusative number phrase has a number in it, then каждый comes before it in the plural:

Weakness, cough and stuffed nose - we all have experienced these symptoms of the common cold. It ruins your plans and makes it so hard to get out of bed in the morning. Unfortunately, I feel very closely connected to today’s word right now. I cannot wait to get over it!

In Russian, the common cold is called простуда. It is a noun of feminine gender.

The adjective formed from простуда is простуженный.

There are different methods of treating a cold. I can think of a few now that I remember from my childhood. I think the worst one had to do with garlic and onions. First, naturally, you had to eat a lot of garlic and then hold your head above a pot with fresh cut onions and breathe it in. After that the cold would most likely still be there for a few days, but all self-respecting people and/or vampires would choose to stay away...

Here's a cute cartoon that shows other methods we treat the common cold with.