We previously discussed the word ночь, which means night in the sense of the time between midnight and roughly fourin the morning. To say something happens during that period, you put ночь into the instrumental case.

Since in English we usually call that period of time “early morning,” that leads to some curious translations. Notice how «поздно ночью», which literally means “late at night,” is best translated as “early in the morning”:

The Russian word for night is ночь. You may remember that the Spanish word for night is noche, which might lead you to wonder whether Spanish borrowed it from Russian or vice-versa. The answer is neither. Russian ночь and Spanish noche are cognates. In historical linguistics ‘cognates’ are words that descended from the same source many years ago, and due to the fact that they have a common ancestor, they still have a resemblance to each other.¹ Thus German nacht and English night are also cognates with Russian ночь because they are all descended from the same Proto-Indo-European word.

Ночь is a third-declension noun, which means it declines like this:

Many of the uses of ночь are similar to the use of night in English:

The most famous nights of Russia are the white nights белые ночи. Officially Moscow and Petersburg are too far south to have proper white nights, but during the two weeks on either side of the summer solstice Petersburg's nights are very white indeed, and the city hosts a world-famous celebration that attracts artists and celebrants from all over the world:

When discussing time by the clock, there is a difference between Russian and English. In English night is sometimes conceived of as the time between sundown and midnight. In Russian ‘night’ is the time between midnight and roughly 4:00 a.m. So instead of saying “3:00 in the morning” the Russians say “3:00 at night”:

Thus:

¹ Outside of historical linguistics sometimes people use ‘cognate’ to mean a word that is superficially similar to another word in both sound and meaning. In that sense English television and Spanish televisión may be called cognates, but that's a sloppy use of the word. In all likelihood the Spanish word is a direct borrowing from French or English.

² There is some variation here. Some people will say четыре часа ночи. I wouldn't be surprised if the time of year actually affects this as well, with more people saying утра in the summer when it gets light earlier, and ночи in the winter when it stays dark later. A quick Google search also shows variation with five a.m.

We are all different in so many ways with different desires and aspirations. However, we have one sure thing in common: we all dream. Sometimes our dreams are all that gets us by on a grueling school or monotonous work day. It is the thought that we’ll get what we want, that the world will change for the better and that with that change we will finally be happy.

A dream in Russian is мечта. It is a noun of feminine gender. At first glance, this word is simple and unpretentious. However, there are some things about it that are not so typical. Sometimes in classic literature мечта is used as ghost or vision, which is uncertain and unclear by its nature, just like a dream itself.

The second interesting thing about this word is that it seems to be missing its genitive plural form in modern Russian.

The only way to say it would be мечт. Even though it was previously used, it sounds wrong and archaic nowadays. It could still be used in speech but more often than not in a playful-ironic sense. Therefore, instead, we usually use мечтаний. This word, мечтание essentially means the same but has the missing genitive plural form.

Here is silly cartoon about мечта.

I believe there are always ways to make things better. We always get what we want sooner or later, this way or the other… as long as we never stop dreaming!

I don’t like most horror movies. There is always a naïve dummy being led into the hands of an evil master, who is driven by his utter insanity or various psychological issues. All this blood spill doesn’t do anything for me except for giving me an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Personally, I prefer suspense. I like that little chill and goose bumps you get when thinking “Can this really be possible?”

In Russian the goose bumps are called «гусиная кожа» “goose skin.” However, a more folksy word is мурашки.

The reason мурашки is used to describe this feeling is because this is also a word for ants or other little insects. Therefore, «мурашки по коже побежали», “ants ran on the skin” is probably one of the most used expressions to describe goose bumps along with the feeling causing them. (Insects running on your skin… mmmagical feeling… Gross!)

I am not sure what the context should be but I suppose you one could talk about a singular goose bump, мурашка, even though it is usually seen in its plural form. However, мурашка can definitely be used when talking about an ant.

Just like in English, you can get мурашки from being cold or overcome by feelings, either positive or negative.

The Russian word for mercury, the element, is ртуть, which is a feminine third-declension noun. The word mostly occurs in the singular:

Image from Wikipedia

The place most of us used to encounter mercury was in thermometers:

Nowadays mercury thermometers are being replaced by digital thermometers that have no mercury, so we mostly encounter the word in high school chemistry classes in the periodic table of the elements. Its symbol is Hg, which is taken from the Latin word Hydrargyrum, which is based on the Greek roots ὑδρ- ‘water’ and ἀργυρ- ‘silver’:

I remember allowing a small quantity of mercury to roll around in my hand as a kid. Despite how beautiful it was, that really wasn't a good idea:

By the way, if you are in the mood to explore the elements in Russian, there is a marvelous interactive periodic table of the elements available at chem.50webs.com