Russian Word of the Day

The other day we discussed the usage of число to mean date in the sense of the first of the month, the second, etc. That's pretty straight-forward as far as discussing today/tomorrow/yesterday's date is concerned. But if you want to talk about the date on which something takes place, that's trickier. In that context the date goes into the genitive case, and despite the use of ‘on’ in an English context, no preposition is used in Russian:

In Russian if you want to clarify the date on which something occurs, you can ask the question «Какого числа?» For instance:

Although the «какого числа» question is perfectly grammatical, it's a bit more common to simply use когда. Both approaches are perfectly grammatical. I have the impression that Russian say «какого числа» more frequently than English speakers say “on what date”:

In English we say things like “Christmas is December 25th.” In Russian you always put the date in the genitive, you never leave it simply in the nominative:

For the sake of thoroughness, here is a sample sentence with all thirty-one dates:

Some words in Russian have an interesting quality to them: they can express both positive and negative feelings. «Ужасно» ‘terribly’ is one of these words. It is important to note, though, that in either case the feeling is very strong. Therefore, it will most likely be followed by an exclamation mark.

Ужасно comes from the noun «ужас», which means “horror.” The root produces other words like «ужастик» “horror movie,” so called, of course, because it horrifies you. For example:

Also, «ужас» can express one’s reaction to a misfortune of some sort.

In English the adverb ‘awfully’ can be used to mean ‘very’ in both positive and negative contexts. For instance, you can say “She's awfully pretty” in the sense of “She is very pretty,” or you can say “He's awfully stupid” in the sense of “He is very stupid.” Similarly in Russian the adverb «ужасно» ‘horribly’ can mean “very much” or ‘absolutely’ or ‘really’ in both positive and negative contexts:

Even though the meanings are quite different, it is usually easy to understand which one is being used according to the situation. However, I hope you all will only need to use this word's positive meaning!

The other day we discussed how to say things like “Today is the first.” Sometimes we want to include the month as well, and in Russian when we do that, the month must be put in the genitive case, but the date itself stays in the nominative:

Putting the month in the genitive is tricky at first because some of the months are end-stressed nouns; that is, when you put them in an oblique case, the stress shifts to the first syllable of the grammatical ending:

A couple more examples:

One of the meanings of the word число is date in the sense of the first of the month, the second, and so forth. Probably the most common usage is this:

Since число is a neuter noun, and since words like first and second are adjectives in Russian, the adjective must show up in the neuter singular form when answering the question:

An English speaker will never say “Today is the first date,” but Russians sometimes do include the word число in the response. Of course, when translating that response into English you must leave the word ‘date’ out:

It is also possible to ask about future and past dates:

Back when I first started studying Russian, it irritated me that no textbook ever gave a complete set of examples of how to say today's date. Instead they gave a general instruction with a few examples and just assumed the student could get the rest right. That's awful teaching methodology. A non-Russian student has to deal with the quirks of Russian stress, plus he has to correctly generate the neuter form of the adjective. That seems very easy after you have worked on Russian for several years, but at first it's tricky. Rejoice, therefore, ye Russian novices: here I present a complete table of all 31 dates marked for stress so you may double check your work.

Notice particularly that третье ‘third’ has a soft-sign as the next-to-the-last letter, not an o. Notice also that одиннадцатое has not just one н but two in a row as the fourth and fifth letters.

Чудесно is one of the words in Russian language that reflects a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure. It comes from the word «чудо», which means wonder or miracle. It is close in meaning to «очень хорошо», "very well/good" and «отлично», "excellent." It is also used as an expression of consent. (source)

Although people still say it fairly often, it was more commonly used in classic literature. I can imagine «барышня», a "young lady" from one of Pushkin's works, exclaim:

A slightly distorted version of «чудесно» also appears in Lewis Carroll's «Алиса в Стране Чудес», "Alice in Wonderland". Russian translation of "curiouser and curiouser" is «всё чудесатее и чудесатее». Just as in English, it is an incorrect use of the word. The writer made it up to show that Alice was so surprised that she forgot the proper way of saying it.

When I was little, I would listen to "Alice in Wonderland" on our old vinyl record player and imagine how it would be to find myself there, meet the Cheshire cat or follow the white rabbit... Oh, how nice would it be to escape into Страна Чудес “Wonderland”!

In the light of recent holidays I've decided to talk about something that gives our ёлка (New Year's tree) its holiday beauty. Ёлочные игрушки (ornaments) come in different shapes, forms, and colors to satisfy any picky decorator.

In Russian an ornament is more often called игрушка ‘toy’ rather than украшение ‘decoration.’ It turns out that the name came about historically. First игрушки were made out of metal, wood or fabrics, and kids could play with them without breaking them and worrying their parents. Later people started making very thin glass ornaments that could only serve for decorative purposes. (source)

For most Russians New Year's is the most important holiday of the year. We even have a saying «Как встретишь Новый год, так его и проведёшь». It means “The way you celebrate the New Year is the way you will spend the rest of it.” That is why we try to make the best of this holiday to ensure our success in the year to come.

I remember being a little girl and waiting for the New Year. It seemed that even the air outside smelled different, especially festive and solemn. I would help prepare a delicious dinner, decorate «нашу ёлку ёлочными игрушками» “our fir tree with ornaments” and wait for Дед Мороз “Santa Claus” to bring me my presents. What a magical time that was!

The primary meaning of the verb иметь is “to own, possess.” It's a fairly straightforward first conjugation verb:

The owner goes in the nominative case, and the thing owned goes in the accusative case:

Although all the sentences above are perfectly grammatical, I should point out that using иметь for “to own/have” is stylistically marked. It's more formal, higher style, and sometimes more emphatic, than the “у кого есть” construction, so don't automatically assume it's the best way to say “to own.” Soon we'll discuss the overlap between иметь sentences and «у кого есть» sentences.

The second meaning of что is “that” in the sense of “Mama said that she's going to whup your ass.” In other words, it is a conjunction that joins an introductory sentence to a bit of indirect speech:

At Christmas my niece played a tune by Owl City called “Fireflies.” I'm not into synthpop, but it touched me for some reason, and as my heart was bathing in the song's disconnected melancholy, I suddenly realized that I didn't know the word for firefly in any language but English. I didn't even know whether fireflies existed in Russia. It turns out that they do, and the formal word is светляк.

A quick trip to Russian Wikipedia gives us this:

Although the formal word is светляк, when Russians casually discuss the insects, they use the diminutive form светлячок:

I think fireflies were put in the world for just one purpose: to teach us wonder. “Wonder” is one of those words that doesn't translate well into Russian. It is the feeling of surprise and admiration that stuns the soul when encountering unexpected beauty, that leaves our hearts momentarily still and simple and ready to know joy.

¹ The word десятки actually means “sets of ten,” not “dozens.” Since the purpose of the word in this context is to indicate approximate quantities, “dozens” is the best equivalent.

The Russian word for ‘what’ is что. Although it is written with the letter ч, the nominative/accusative form of the word is most commonly pronounced [што]; in the other cases we do pronounce ч as ч. It occurs in all six cases:

Notice that the only difference between the prepositional and instrumental forms is the двоеточие “double dots” over the prepositional form.¹ Remember that the Russians usually do not usually write the double dots, so context will have to tell you how to pronounce those forms. Some sample sentences:

Somewhere in school every American is taught the rule “never end a sentence with a preposition.” For English it's an assinine rule that has no reasonable justification in the living language.² However, for Russian the rule is real and alive. It's not an artificial rule, as in English, but rather a subconscious part of the living language: no Russian will ever end a sentence with a preposition, not even accidentally. So whenever you are translating a question from English to Russian, and the question ends with a preposition, you need to move that preposition to before its object and then translate. Thus:

Other examples:

Notice in the last example we can leave the preposition out of the response in English, but in Russian you must retain the preposition to justify the case of памятник.

¹ The double dots symbol is often called a diaeresis or an umlaut. The former is theoretically used to indicate that a vowel is pronounced as a complete vowel (not a diphthong) when preceded by another vowel with which it might blend. The latter is theoretically used to indicate that vowel is fronted. Since neither of those instances prevails in the е/ё distinction, “double dots” is a sensible name for the symbol.

² Of course, one can't mention this rule of English without mentioning Winston Churchill's famous definition: “A preposition is a word you can't end a sentence with.” I actually doubt that Churchill said it, but it's too fun not to mention.

Heaven knows why, but the other day I took an online Russian test and was dismayed to discover that I didn't know the Russian word for hairpin. You may wonder why I was dismayed. After all, why does a foreign man need to know that word when he is never going to wear one in his hair? But the way I figure it, some day I might be thrown into a Russian prison and have to macgyver my way out of there. Who knows what tools I might have to use in the process? So “hairpin” is a perfectly sensible word for me to know. By the way, it turns out to be шпилька, and the genitive plural is шпилек.

Sample sentences:

Types of шпильки

Шпилька actually has a dozen other meanings as well. For instance, it is sometimes used to mean cotter pins, which is not too surprising considering their shape, as well as other cylindrical items that hold metalwork together. It also means stiletto in the sense of a tall thin heel on a high-heeled show. From that it's not surprising that a girl-band took on the name Шпильки “The Stilettoes.” And it can also be used to mean a jibe/dig/snide comment:

Бежать is the determinate (unidirectional) form of the verb бегать “to run.” It is one of the four most irregular verb stems in the Russian language:

Бежать is more specialized than бегать in that it usually talks about motion in progress at a particular time:

Although the verb does mean “to run,” it's actually used in conversation more often to mean “to take a quick trip” or “to be moving quickly” instead of literally running. The same is true for the English verb “to run” as well, of course.

The verb is also used in the sense of “to precede prematurely”:

And of course the verb is also used in the sense of “to flee”. Although in English the thing you flee from can be a direct object (“We fled Cuba in 1965”) or the object of the preposition ‘from’ (“We fled from Cuba in 1965”), in Russian the thing you flee from cannot be a direct object; it must be the object of the prepositions из/с/от followed by the genitive case:

The Russian word for mushroom is гриб, a perfectly regular end-stressed noun:

There is a huge cultural difference between Russians and Americans in regards to mushrooms. An American looks at a mushroom in the forest and thinks, “Careful! It might be poisonous!” A Russian looks at a mushroom in the forest and thinks, “My little forest friend! I shall pickle you in oil and spices and consume you with friends in the company of vodka and bliny!”

Белый гриб — porcini
Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

I never used to eat mushrooms. After all, why would a sane human being deliberately put a fungus that grows in the dirt into his mouth? But then I was served home-preserved mushrooms in Russia. Heaven! The Russians know how to spice, bake, can, wrap, and fry mushrooms better than anyone else on the planet. Now it's a rare day that I don't eat mushrooms, or at least do a little interpretive dance in honor of mushrooms after my morning shower.

In English everbody knows the phrase “mushroom cloud.” The Russian equivalent is «ядерный гриб» “nuclear mushroom.” That's not particularly surprising. What would surprise an English speaker is that the phrase is used in Russian phrases that mean “really ugly”:

Бегать is the most generic word in Russian that means “to run.”

Running… nowadays in the lazy West we often run in order to lose weight. That actually makes sense:

It's not usual for a person to regularly run from one place to another, but in such atypical circumstances it is possible to conceive of someone doing such a thing:

The verb is also used to describe the motion of someone running around a place with no set goal or direction, e.g. walking around a neighborhood for pleasure:

Last but not least, the verb is used to indicate a single round-trip in the past. It's not typical in this usage, but still grammatically possible:

When you enter a Russian apartment, often one of the first things you encounter is an item of furniture on which to hang your coat, and that item is called a вешалка. It's a mostly regular noun, but do notice the fill-vowel in the genitive plural:

The stem of the word is вес-, which means ‘hang.’ It can apply to a thousand items that are used to hang things: a free-standing coat rack, a peg-board that holds coats, a wire hanger, a hook on a wall, a loop on a shirt, or even a towel-rack:

Various types of вешалки

Sample sentences:

Поехать is the most generic perfective verb that means “to go by vehicle.” Note especially its irregular future and imperative forms.

Поехать is more specialized than ездить in that it always talks about motion in one particular direction; since it is perfective it also focuses on some result of the action:

In that sentence, the result is that I arrived at the square and thus could view the body.

Поехать can also be used to describe each leg of a multileg journey:

Of course you can do the same thing in the future tense:

Now here's something amusing... let's think about this English dialog:

Does the second sentence imply that Mom got to the farmers market? No, it doesn't. Here it emphasizes absence from the point of departure while mentioning her intended destination. Likewise in Russian a perfective verb of motion can be used with meaning of “absence from point of departure”:

The sentence does not say where Mom has necessarily reached the market, just that she is no longer here.

¹ All three of those places are suburbs of Moscow that you can reach on the электричка on the way to Tula.

Неделя is a word that comes from the stem дел- ‘do’ and the negative particle не ‘not.’ It used to mean the day of the week on which you do nothing, in other words Sunday. Bearing that meaning in mind, if you say something happens через неделю “(having passed) through Sunday,” that is in effect saying that it happens the following week. That, I think, is how the old word for Sunday became the modern word for week and now is never used in the meaning of Sunday. It's a regular second declension, soft stem noun:

When saying that something happened this/last/next week, the preposition на is used with неделя in the prepositional case:

To say something happened a week ago, you use the postposition назад with неделя in the accusative case:

To say something will happen in a week, use the preposition через with неделя in the accusative case:

Ехать is the determinate (unidirectional) form of the verb ездить “to go by vehicle.” Note especially the odd д that shows up in the present tense forms, as well as its curious command form.

Ехать is more specialized than ездить in that it always talks about motion in progress toward a particular place. Let's say you bump into a friend on the subway. Because you are in a vehicle, you can say:

Although normally adverbs of frequency and phrases of frequency (like часто and каждый день) usually trigger an indeterminate verb, if the situation describes something that happens regularly on the way to a place, then you use the determinate verb ехать:

One of the curious uses of determinate verbs is that they can be used to say how long it takes to get to a place. From the English-speaking point of view that is rather odd. After all, getting to the place implies a completed action, so we should use a perfective verb, right? But from the Russian point of view in these sentences they are indicating how long the process takes, so the imperfective works:

The word нуль sometimes occurs in fixed phrases like «начать с нуля» “to start from zero,” which catches the idea of beginning a process with zero previous knowledge or experience or resources:

Just as in English you can refer to someone as being a complete zero (i.e., being a worthless human being), so also the Russian word can be used in that sense:

The word is also used to describe a certain haircut «под нуль», that is, “down to zero” or bald. It's the haircut that every draftee receives when joining the Russian army.

Как только пойдёшь в солдаты, тебя остригут под нуль.
As soon as you become a soldier, they shave you bald.

The haircut has become so popular among tough young men that sometimes they are called нули, which is probably best translated as ‘thugs.’ (You can hear the word used that way in the elusively connected song «Главное» “The important thing” by the singer Земфира.)

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: