Ходить is the most generic word in Russian that means “to go.”

Because it implies travelling under one's own power (that is, not using some device or animal for transportation), we often translate it “to walk”:

The verb is also used in sentences where someone regularly goes somewhere.

The verb is also used to describe the motion of someone walking around a place with no set goal or direction, e.g. walking around a park for pleasure, walking around the city, or going here and there among shops:

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

Russian verbs of motion have the reputation of being quite difficult. Certainly they take some practice, but if you just calmly, slowly, and methodically work on them, particularly identifying what contexts they are used in as we did here, then you can certainly master them.

Here is a list of the fifteen verbs of motion. They are usually taught in verb triplets, not pairs. If you want to work on these verbs, I suggest Muravyova's “Verbs of Motion in Russian” if you can still get it, and also William Mahota's “Russian Motion Verbs for Intermediate Students.”

The word xлеб is translated as bread. In Russia, the two most popular types of bread that can be found at any real supermarket or bakery are the regular white bread and the dark rye bread.

When you’re buying bread at a store or a kiosk, a courteous clerk is likely to ask you if you would like a буханка (loaf), полбуханки (half a loaf), a батон (long loaf of bread) or полбатона. To a foreigner, the shape of the xлеб might not be such a big deal, but to some Russians, батон and буханка make all the difference. Don’t know why, it’s just one of those random things that have been embedded into the culture since before Ivan the Terrible.

Russian bread tastes delicious, especially the dark rye bread. Rye bread is usually very filling, like zucchini bread or a bagel, and has a strong, distinct aroma about it that often reminds people of pines. But even though the bread is tasty, it’s not always fresh; Russians aren’t exactly like the French. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays fresh-baked bread was a guarantee, as for other days of the week... only if you lived next to a bakery. Fortunately now, many big-chain supermarket stores deliver their own bread every day, although they charge significantly more. Maybe that is one of the reasons many Russians keep a xлебница (breadbox) in the kitchen.

Image from ru.wikipedia.org

Буханка, полбуханки и два батона lying on a table.

Some example sentences with the word xлеб:

The next use of the word на with the accusative case is equivalent to the English word “by” in contexts where you are comparing one thing to another.

That last example brings us to an interesting point. When you are counting differences in numbers of people, you get the following quirk with the numbers two, three, and four:

If this were the true accusative after на in this meaning, we would expect «на двух человек» or «на двоих людей», not «на два человека». Other examples:

This shows us one of two things: either a) the accusative case is not entirely stable in modern Russian, or b) на in this meaning actually uses a separate case that is minimally distinct from the accusative. I argued for the latter in my doctoral dissertation, although the former is probably true as well.

¹ Yes, I know that the “correct” way to say it is “I'm older than he,” but any normal American is going to say “I'm older than him.” It's time for the pedants to catch up to the living language: “than” has become a preposition in such contexts.
² Yes, I know that the “correct” way to say it is “eleven wives fewer,” but normal people don't talk that way. It's time for the pedants to catch up to the living language: “less” is perfectly normal these days when dealing with count nouns.

The word for bus in Russian is автобус. Public transport is well developed in major Russian cities, much better than its counterpart in the sprawling cities of the American West. Russians regularly ride buses all over the country, and Russians visiting the US expect the same services to be available here. After all, a bus is fairly low-tech, so the Americans must have them all over the place, right? Imagine the surprise of my acquaintance Natasha, then, when she wanted help getting from Los Angeles to Denver. She figured that buses were cheap, so she could probably make the trip quickly and cheaply. Alas, that was cross-cultural ignorance. The trip from LA to Denver would have taken twenty-two hours, and it would have been more expensive than a plane ticket. I told her to grab a plane flight. Sure enough, for -less than- a bus ticket, she got to Denver by plane.

In America people smile to indicate that they are not currently hostile toward the person they are talking to. So a cashier in a grocery store smiles at the customer she talks to. A security guard smiles at a person he doesn't intend to be rude to. An IRS agent smiles when you walk up to him to ask a question because he is trying to make you feel comfortable.

Russia is not like that. Former students of mine have gotten on the bus in Russia, laughing and chatting, only to have one of the бабушки old ladies say:

Despite the lack of smiles the buses in Russia are überconvenient. They, along with the streetcars, electric buses, and subway, will take you wherever you need to go. You simply don't need a car to get around in Russia. So what are the phrases you need to describe your bus activity? Here we go:

¹ In this context the они form of the verb is used without the actual pronoun они to be functionally equivalent to a “you shouldn't” sentence.

Two words that I continually confuse in Russian are пыль dust and пыл heat/passion. Time to blog about them so I can get them straight! Пыль is a third declension feminine noun used only in the singular:

¹ The phrase “you are really strange” literally means “you have cockroaches in your head.”