The second important phrase in Russian that deals with visiting is «в гостях». It is a location phrase, which means it is used with location verbs, not motion verbs. In Russian when you are at someone's home or office, you express that idea with the preposition у followed by the genitive case. Thus:

Of course you can add other phrases that specify where the person was located when you visited them:

One of the important phrases in Russian that deals with visiting is «в гости». It is a motion phrase, which means it is used with motion verbs, not location verbs. In Russian when you go to someone's home or office, you express that idea with the preposition к followed by the dative case. Thus:

Now here is where it gets interesting. In English if you mention that place you are going to in addition to the person, that place is expressed as a location phrase. In Russian that place shows up after the preposition в/на + accusative, in other words in a motion phrase:

There is another phrase «в гостях» that treats visiting as a location instead of a motion. We'll discuss it in a day or two.

Some say that pigs make great house pets. They call them charming and intelligent with expressive personalities. However, for most of us pig pets are too exotic. I mean, would you like to be awakened by loud grunting noises?

In Russian a pig is свинья. It is a word of feminine gender; in conversational Russian свин can mean a male pig, but when people talk about pigs they usually just use the feminine form

Russian pigs don't go “oink-oink”; they go хрю-хрю, which, in my opinion, makes sense; it reminds me of grunting sounds.

Figuratively both свинья and свин can be used to describe a messy person, while свинарник, “pigpen” could describe the filthiness of their home.

Also, it serves as an insult following one’s shabby act. In that case this person’s actions can be called свинство “swinishness” or “rudeness.”

We have a rather well used expression, свинью подложить, which means to intentionally cause trouble or play a dirty trick on them.

There is a theory that this expression comes historically from the ban on eating pork, свинина in Judaism and Islam. You can imagine someone, intentionally slipping a religious Muslim some pork in order to get them in trouble or cause mischief (source).

In Russian the mumps also have something to do with pigs: we call it свинка. The name comes from the look of one’s swollen cheeks when the salivary glands get inflamed. Incidentally, свинка is the diminutive form for свинья.

Another use of the word свинья is piggy bank, свинья-копилка. I found a really cute cartoon from the 1960’s that was based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, Свинья-копилка, “The Piggy Bank”.

In English you might hear a sentence like “I introduced John to Mary a year ago, and last month they got married.” The equivalent sentence in Russian will not use “to introduce” but rather “to acquaint,” which is знакомить/познакомить, which is conjugated like this:

The verb takes two complements: a direct object and a prepositional phrase with the preposition с + instrumental:

I acquainted John with Mary.

Despite the fact that the verb literally means “to acquaint,” a good English translation will substitute the verb “to introduce”:

The Russian word for bus, as in public transport, is автобус. It is a perfectly regular first declension noun. Public transport is well developed in large Russian cities, so it's a perfectly normal of the Russian daily routine to ride a bus. To say you are riding “on a bus/by bus” most often they use the preposition на followed by the prepositional case, but occasionally you'll find a bare instrumental case used without a preposition:

If something happens inside the bus, then of course you use в + prepositional:

Although автобус is a fairly simple word, it's the verbs used with it they are sometimes surprising to English speakers. For instance, the most common way to say “to get on the bus” is “to sit into the bus” in Russian, using the verb pair садиться/сесть:

When you get off the bus, Russians either say “to step down from the bus” сходить/сойти or “to exit from the bus” выходить/выйти: