One of the greatest Russian writers, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, once said that Russian language is «великий и могучий», “great and mighty”. I believe that one of the reasons it is true is that some words in Russian encompass a few completely different meanings.

Previously I talked about the word «лист», meaning “leaf”, but «лист» can also mean a piece of paper or two pages in a book.

The diminutive for лист is «листик» or «листок». Both of them can be used interchangeably.

The plural form of the word «лист» in its current meaning is «листы».

The verb «листать», "to turn" or to "flip through" pages is also formed from the root «лист» as well as the word «листовка», which means “flyer”.

In English the word list sounds like «лист» but means «список», in Russian. Having lived in the United States for a few years now I sometimes add some altered English words to my Russian speech without even noticing. For example, I caught myself a few times using «лист» when I mean to say «список» partially because the pronunciation is so similar. While I work on improving my English, I also try to avoid little mistakes like that; thus, maintaining a very good level of Russian.

The word часы means a watch or a clock. It has no singular form, only plural; such nouns that lack singulars we label “pluralia tantum.” It declines likes this:

Since the word only has plural forms, the pronouns that refer to it must also by in the plural:

Since the word only occurs in the plural, you might wonder how to say “one watch.” Easy: you use the plural of the number one!

If you are talking about two, three, or four watches, then двое, трое and четверо can be used:

These collective numbers don't combine very well with the other ordinal numbers. That is, don't try to say something like:

In these circumstances it is best to add the word штука ‘unit’ to the phrase:

Some Russians allow the use of the word пара ‘pair’ in place of штука:

I say “some Russians” because to some other Russians that type of phrase sounds like просторечье “substandard speech” (see Rosenthal's commentary). If you want to be sure you sound okay, use the штука approach.

¹ Yes, yes, I know that one properly is supposed to say “no fewer than four,” but frankly “no less than four” is the way most Americans will say it nowadays, even educated ones. “No fewer than four” sounds forced and unnatural, as if someone with a mediocre education is trying to prove that he isn't ignorant.

The most generic verb for “to carry” in Russian is носить. Note the consonant mutation in the я form:

This is an indeterminate imperfective verb which means it can be used with the preposition по + dative to indicated carrying something here and there, all over the place:

Most indeterminate imperfective verbs can bear the meaning of “go there and back.” Носить is a bit odd in that it really isn't considered good style to use the verb that way. You will find it used conversationally, though, in that sense:

Notice that the translation of the last sentence doesn't contain the word “carry” in it. It is often the case that the Russian verbs of carrying (носить, нести, возить, везти, and the dozens of words derived from them) are best translate with “bring” or “take” in English.

Носить can also be used to take something to a particularly place on multiple occasions:

The most common verb pair for “to close” in Russian is закрывать/закрыть:

The person who closes something goes in the nominative case, and the thing closed goes in the accusative:

This very common verb can be used to illustrate some of the amazing flexibility of Russian grammar. Let's say I was supposed to buy bread at the store, but I got there too late. I might explain the situation like this:

All three sentences are grammatically correct and communicate essentially the same idea, but they are syntactically very different. Sentence 1 is a passive sentence where магазин is the subject and закрыт is a short-form past passive participle. Word for word it could be represented as “Store already was closed.”

In sentence 2 магазин is in the accusative case as the direct object of the verb закрыли. The verb is in the plural past tense with an implied “they” as the subject. Word for word it can be represented as “Store already (they) had closed.” Sentences with an unexpressed “they” are very common in Russian, and they are called indefinite personal sentences. They are used when they actual doer of the sentence is not particularly important in the context in which the sentence is uttered.

In sentence 3 магазин is in the nominative case as the subject of the reflexive verb закрылся. We call this use of a reflexive verb the medio-passive meaning, where the subject of the verb undergoes a change of state but the people who cause the change are not significant to the context. Word for word the sentence can be represented as “Store already had closed.”

The medio-passive use of the reflexive is common in other verbs like октрываться-открыться, начинаться-начаться, заканчиваться-закончиться, and пролжаться-продолжиться. We will discuss the medio-passive use of закрываться/закрыться in the near future.

One way to say “to wear” in Russian in the sense of “to wear clothing” is носить/поносить. Note the consonant mutation in the я form:

The imperfective verb can mean either “to wear regularly” or “to wear over a long period of time”; it is not usually used to ask about what someone is wearing today or at the moment.

The perfective verb means “to wear something for a while”:

¹ From Иностранка by Sergei Dovlatov. I love Dovlatov. He was one of the few writers of the Soviet era who wrote with humor. I actually wrote a paper about him once—not a very good one—and delivered it at a conference which he was attending. He stuck his head in the door… but he left when he realized I was speaking in English. We chatted afterwards for a few minutes. Alas, he died before I had another opportunity to get to know him better.