Ездить is the most generic word in Russian that means “to go by vehicle.”

Although we often say the verb addresses motion by vehicle, it's actually broader that that. It covers travel on animals (horse, donkey, camel, etc.), bicycle or motorcycle or scooter, and by the typical wheeled conveyances like train, bus, car and truck. In addition to the “go” translations, words like “ride” and “drive” are also suitable:

The verb is also used to describe the driving around a locale with no set direction, e.g., driving around an area for sight-seeing, or going here and there to shop. In this meaning the verb is complemented by the preposition по with the dative case:

Last but not least, the verb is used to indicate a single completed trip in the past. In this usage it implies that the person is no longer at the place mentioned.

Ah, pity the poor foreigner who has to come to the US and offer his congratulations to someone. If it's December 25th, he must say “Merry Christmas,” whereas “Happy Christmas” just sounds weird. If it's January first, he must say “Happy New Year,” whereas “Merry New Year” sounds freakish. If it's a wedding or birth or a graduation, then he must say “congratulations.” It's enough to drive a foreigner back home.

The Russians, on the other hand, have a verb that works for absolutely every holiday and well-wishing event, and that is the verb поздравлять/поздравить “to congratulate.” It is conjugated like this:

The person you congratulate goes in the accusative case:

If you mention the event triggering the congratulations, it goes in the instrumental case after the preposition с:

The Russians also sometimes simply skip the person and the verb, leaving only the prepositonal phrase:

Although the event may be the name of a holiday, it could also be a good grade, or a new car, or pretty well anything else:

Russian has two words for zero, and they are ноль and нуль. For most purposes they are completely interchangeable and decline like this:

You will most encounter these words is when reading phone numbers out loud. In the US one usually reads phone numbers out loud digit by digit:

In Russia they usually break up a seven-digit number into groups of 3-2-2, and you say ноль only when the zero is the first unit in a group of two or three digits, thus:

(The first zero is pronounced as ноль, and the second zero is understood as part of девяносто.)

In the US most people do not refer to the time of day using the twenty-four hour clock (“military time”) unless they have served in the military or are engaged in precise time-keeping functions, but in Russia all official schedules are posted in twenty-four time, so the phrase «ноль часов ноль минут», which means literally “zero hours zero minutes” and can be translated “oh zero hundred” in military parlance, sounds perfectly normal to an average Russian. You can even hear the phrase in the song «В ноль часов и ноль минут» “At midnight,” which is a cute little tune about how hard it is as a child to stay awake all the way till midnight on New Year's Eve. Click the title of the song just above to hear it. Do listen to it. It's charming.

After two weeks of studying Russian every student knows that не means not. Thus «Я не говорю по-русски» means “I do not speak Russian.” Seems pretty simple. Nonetheless, не can sometimes be misleading because Russians often use не in offers/suggestions to make them softer, more polite, less pushy. Consider the following sentences and translations:

Notice that none of the English translations have ‘not’ in them. The не in the Russian sentence simply makes the request a bit more polite, and therefore the best translation of such sentences often contains could or would in them.

Notice that a beginner might be tempted to translate «Не хочешь чая?» as “Don't you want some tea?” That would be a bad translation. When an English speaker asks “Don't you want some tea?”, he is asking because he is surprised that the other person doesn't seem to want tea.

The verb стоять means “to stand”:

In the “stand” meaning it's used pretty much like one would expect:

The Russians use the verb стоять much more than English speakers use the word “to stand.” Very often if an object is stationed somewhere in a vertical position, the Russians will use it where an English speaker will simply use the verb “to be”:

The command form is often used in the sense of “stop” or “don't move”: