Russian Word of the Day

My favorite letter of the Russian alphabet has always been Ж. When I was younger I called it "the bug letter" because it kind of looks like a bug. Conveniently, it is also the first letter of the Russian word for bug, жук. The plural of our word is, жуки. To be precise, the word means beetle, a type of insect that has hardened wing-coverings:

Жук полетел прямо на меня!
The beetle flew right at me!

If the context does not demand scientific precision, then one might use the word ‘bugs’ in English translation:

Ещё три жука влетели в комнату.
Three bugs flew into the room.

Since I am terrified of bugs, if the above examples were in real life, I would be running out of that room. Especially if the жук were a cockroach. Blech!

The diminutive form of the word is жучок in the singular and жучки in plural. You can use this form if the bug is tiny or if the context is informal. Diminutives of animal words are also often used when talking to children or when children are talking about animals.

Дима смеялся над Машей, потому что она убежала от жучков.
Dima laughed at Masha because she ran away from the bugs.

Это всего лишь маленький  жучок!
It's just a little bug!

In American slang we often refer to a minor sickness as a bug; Russians don't do this. So if you say “У меня жук в желудке” to mean “I have a stomach bug,” then Russian people will think that you literally you swallowed a beetle.

Today my second-year Russian students encountered the word надолго, which means ‘for a long time.’ Despite knowing what the word meant, the students had a difficult time translating it well in actual sentences. It turns out not only human beings have trouble with these sentences. I typed the question «Таня надолго пришла в библиотеку?» into a couple of online translation apps, and this is what they came up with:

babelfish.yahoo.com: Tanya is for a long time alien into the library?

translate.google.com: Tanya came in for a long time library?

When I finally stopped laughing, I understood it was time discuss approaches to translating it. Let's start by glossing the sentence word for word:

The context of the sentence is that Tanya is now at the library and someone else at the library is asking a third party a question. The sentence means “Has Tanya come to the library for [the purpose of spending] a long time [here]?” There are a couple ways to put this in English that more or less corresponds to the Russian original, and they are:

Sentences A and B probably sound normal to some speakers of English. They sound slightly awkward to me, and they also have the potential of being misinterpreted as meaning “How long has Tanya been coming to the library?” But the main problem with them is this: when we want to ask in English how much time someone intends to spend in the place they have just arrived at or just departed for, we most commonly phrase the question quite differently. The most normal way to ask these questions is not to use a motion verb at all, but instead use a plain verb "be" or the verb "stay":

Let's say you are a translator. These sentences will put you in a bit of a pickle, and to resolve it, you will have to consider your target audience. If your target audience for the translation consists of people who have the regrettable desire of getting translations that maximally reflect the wording of the original, then you want to choose translations modeled on A or B. But remember this: the purpose of a professional translation is to accurately reflect the communicative goals of the original text/speech, and a professional one should always flow decently in the target language. The best professional translation will choose C, D or E. Sad to say, there are times when a really professional translation is rejected by an unsophisticated purchaser, and to get paid we translators have to dumb it down to a more awkward translation. Such is life. Not much you can do about it.

Let's take a look at five more sentences from our textbook. First we will give a word for word gloss and then a good translation.

Сок is the Russian word for juice.

This week I bought myself a juicer. Not just any juicer, but the one from the infomercials- Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer Deluxe!

Я купилa соковыжималку высшего класса.
I bought a high quality juicer.

It was very exciting! Ok, I admit it, I love gadgets. But this one is going to change my life, I just know it. From now on, I will drink healthy. Just think of the vitamins!

Всё, с сегодняшнего дня я сажусь на соковою диету.*
That's it, I am going on an all-juice diet, starting today.

Now it was time to try out my wonderful, new, health-making juicer. So I made a vegetable juice and a fruit juice. Unfortunately, the veggie was a failed experiment. It just wasn't yummy. The fruit juice on the other hand, was a complete success!

Я сделала очень вкусный сок из яблок, апельсинов, и сливы.
I made a delicious juice out of apples, oranges, and plums.

Having completed my juicer tests, it was time to clean up. This meant taking the machine apart and doing my least favorite chore: washing dishes.

Hmmm, I think it's time to take a short break from the Juicer Deluxe. Maybe I'll change my life and get healthy next year.

За неделю все соки мне надоели.
Within a week, I was sick of all juices.

*As you may have noticed, when speaking of "going on a diet," Russians will say that they are "sitting on a diet." Almost as though they will sit down and not budge from said diet.

I love driving. Especially in Arizona. I often joke and say that I would drive to the mailbox if it weren't attached to the house. But in New York, it's a whole other story. I absolutely, most definitely will not drive in the city. Aside from the lousy traffic, parking is nearly impossible.

Трудно найти парковку в Нью- Йорке.
It's hard to find parking in New York.

Even worse, when you do finally find a spot, it's always about three blocks away and parallel. Here in my sunny state, you learn to parallel park pretty much just to pass the drivers test. I know, I know; I'm spoiled by the abundant spaces and easy parking.

Я не люблю параллельную парковку.
I don't like parallel parking.

Another comparison between New York City and Phoenix is the cost. Most parking is metered in New York. Whereas in Phoenix…

Парковка всегда бесплатная.
Parking is always free.

Ok, almost always free. But still, it is cheaper. Sometimes though, parking can still be a pain. Because no matter where you go, there is always someone who is terrible at parking.

Он паркует Хаммер, как будто он владеет всем миром.
He parks his Hummer as if he owns the world.

One of the words in Russian for a plan, like the plans you have for the evening or the weekend, is план. It's a perfectly regular masculine noun, and when asking someone about their plans, it is usually used in the plural:

The answer to the question will often contain a perfective motion verb in по- to indicate where the person wants to go:

Враг is the Russian word for enemy. Try it out loud, it even sounds tough!

Правда ли, что кошка и собака враги?
Is it true that cats and dogs are enemies?

Вот видишь, они враги.
See? They are enemies.

Both Russian and English have plenty of sayings about enemies. One that comes to my mind is “Man is his own worst enemy.”

There is a similar Russian saying: Тот дурак, кто сам себе враг. How foolish it is to be your own enemy.

Peter Parker was his own enemy in Spiderman 3; the caption reads “Spider Man, the enemy in the reflection”:

A couple of plural uses for our word are:

Вам нужно прощать врагов.
You need to forgive your enemies.

Не трать своё время на врагов.
Don't waste your time on enemies.

As I was looking through pictures with the theme "enemy," I came across this old Russian poster. The slogan reads: "Our cause is just, the enemy will be broken."

The word for juice is сок. Usually when we talk about juice, we specify the type of juice, thus we have phrases like:

In English the phrase “apple juice” is made up of two nouns where the first noun modifies the second noun. In Russian you don't normally use a first noun to modify a second noun. Instead you change the first noun into an adjective and then use it with the second word, thus:

Here are some sample sentences:

Many liquids sometimes appear in the genitive case to indicate ‘a quantity of,’ and juice is one of them. We call that usage the partitive genitive. Note the contrast in these sentences:

Сок is interesting because it has an alternative partitive genitive case form соку in addition to the regular genitive; sometimes we call those forms ‘second genitives.’ Thus you might come across:

Those second genitives are becoming less and less common. They are more conversational in style, less formal. You are very likely to hear them out of the mouth of someone's grandmother. A younger person with a big-city education will use them less often.

There are three words that native speakers of English often confuse at first in their studies of Russian:

1. The first one of those is дома, which is an adverb that means “at home.” It never changes its endings.
2. The second is домой, which is an adverb that means “home” in the sense of “homeward/to home.” It never changes its endings.
3. The third is дом, which is a noun that means “house” or “building” and occurs in the singular and plural of all six cases. The genitive singular of this nouns is дома, which is spelled the same as #1 above, but means something different. The nominative/accusative plural is дома “houses/buildings,” which again is spelled the same as #1 above, but obviously the meanings and stress don't match.

Today we are focusing on дома in the meaning “at home.” As an adverb it cannot be used with a preposition:

Whenever you go on a plane, the person who makes it a safe and pleasant flight is the flight attendant. In Russian you would call her стюардесса. The literal translation is stewardess,but that hasn't been politically correct in the U.S. since the late 70s.

As you may have noticed, стюардесса is a feminine term. The proper word for a male flight attendant is, бортпроводник But sometimes you might hear, стюард.

Since I became a stewardess some 6 years ago, a friend of my mother's likes to quote a line from a song by Vladimir Vysotsky's Moscow to Odessa. whenever he sees me:

«А вот прошла вся в синем стюардесса, как принцесса...»
“There goes the blue-clad stewardess, like a princess...”

There are three words that native speakers of English often confuse at first in their studies of Russian:

1. The first one of those is дома, which is an adverb that means “at home.” It never changes its endings.
2. The second is домой, which is an adverb that means “home” in the sense of “homeward/to home.” It never changes its endings.
3. The third is дом, which is a noun that means “house” or “building” and occurs in the singular and plural of all six cases.

Today we are focusing on дом, which means “home/building.” As a noun it occurs in all six cases in the singular and plural:

Since it is a noun, it can be used with prepositions:

Of course, the noun can also be used without prepositions:

Свобода is the Russian word for freedom or liberty. When my family immigrated to America over 20 years ago, it was in search of exactly that; and when we moved to New York, we got to see one of the biggest symbols dedicated to being free.

The adjectival form of свобода is свободный. It is often used in the sense of “available/free.” When you are asking whether someone is free/avaialable for consultation, you usually use the short forms of the adjective, namely свободен, свободна, свободно and свободны:

Just remember that even though the English translation for свободный is "free" it's not to be confused with бесплатно, meaning "free of charge.

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend. The Russian word for this girl's multifaceted best friend is бриллиант or in the plural бриллианты. Doesn't the word just sound so shiny and, well, brilliant?

As with many Russian words, there is a way to refer to small diamonds — бриллиантик or бриллиантики.

For example:

Over the course of history there have been many beautiful and revered diamonds. My favorite is The Shah. It is originally from India and weighs 88.7 carats. The first three owners of the rock engraved their signatures on it. Eventually, as a show of diplomacy, Persia gifted it to Tsar Nicholas I.

The Russian word for city is город. It has one of the many nominative plurals that end in a stressed -а, which means all the rest of the plural forms will also be end-stressed:

The writer Толстой had an axe to grind against cities. I believe he thought that when people lived in cities, relationships decayed and moral issues became compromised. When they lived outside of the city, relationships had the potential to be healthy. Let's continue that thought with our example sentences:

If you look up the word котлета in some Russian-English dictionaries, you will find the word cutlet as a translation. If you do, take your black pen and cross that line of the dictionary out. In modern American English a cutlet is a piece of meat, but it is NEVER ground meat.¹ In Russian котлета means a patty of ground meat.

You can have all sorts of ground meat patties, of course, from all sorts of animals:

Ground meat patties are very common in Russian cafeterias and on the table in Russian homes. Here are some sample sentences:

¹ If you look at certain dictionaries, e.g. the current definition of cutlet at dictionary.com (mirror) includes something like “a flat croquette.” That is not a current meaning of the word in the US.

² Although “fish patties” is a perfectly grammatical phrase in English, I don't think I've ever had a fish patty in the US in my entire life. The phrase sounds bizarre to the average American ear.

The Russian word for first is первый. From the ending it's obvious that the word is an adjective. It is also a number, in a certain sense, and since it tells what order things occur in, we call it an ordinal number. Here are its endings:

Russians use ordinal numbers much more than Americans do. For instance, instead of saying “Here comes bus number one,” Russians say “Here comes the first bus.” Instead of saying “I live in apartment number one,” Russians say “I live in the first apartment.” For instance:

I don't mean to say that Russian always use ordinal numbers. It's also possible to say the same thing using the word номер, just less common:

Of course, other uses of первый are also possible:

Another meaning of выходить/выйти is “to turn out” in the sense of “to end up” or “to come of” or “to work out.” In this sense it is usually used in the perfective, and you encounter it particularly in the negative sense:

You can find this meaning in the future tense as well:

Previously we discussed how the verb нравиться/понравиться works, but we didn't mention when to use the perfective form. The perfective is especially used when you are asking about someone's first impressions of something:

The future form is also used:

Who doesn't love a good deal? And the best deal is when you get something for free or "бесплатно." The adverb бесплатно means "free of charge"; the adjectival version is бесплатный. Here is how the word breaks down: the prefix без- means "without" (and here takes the form бес-) and the stem -плат- means "pay." I love it when words make simple sense like that! But remember, just because we can translate the word as "free" doesn't mean it can be used in any other context. There is a different word for "free" as in "independent" or" available." I doubt many companies want to think of 4th of July as "Free of Charge Day!"

Here are a few examples on how to use "бесплатно:"

When I go to New York, one of my favorite places to eat is this Chinese restaurant where they have my favorite kind of deal on wine: "Вы платите за ужин, и вино бесплатно!" "You pay for dinner, and the wine is free!"

In English we often say things like “I like tomatoes.” To express the same idea in Russian we use the verb нравиться/понравиться, but the verb does not mean ‘like’. Before we discuss its usage, let's look at its conjugation. Note that it is a reflexive verb:

Нравиться literally means “to please/be pleasing,” so to communicate the ‘like’ idea, you have to mentally rephrase “I like tomatoes” as “Tomatoes please me”. Notice this is grammatically quite different than the analogous English sentence. In English the person experiencing the pleasure is the subject of the sentence, and the source of the pleasure is the direct object:

In Russian the source of the pleasure is the subject of the sentence, which means it appears in the nominative case. The verb, of course, agrees with the subject. The person experiencing the pleasure is the indirect object and appears in the dative case:

Thus when one person likes another, we can have sentences like these:

There is one last quirk. In the Russian sentence, the source of pleasure often (though not always) shows up in final position, just as in the English sentence, even though grammatically it is the subject. Notice that the verb agrees with the subject in the Russian sentence, even though the subject is at the end of the sentence:

Here are some present tense sentences. Notice carefully the case of each subject and object, and how the verb agrees with the subject:

Now let's look at those same sentences in the past tense. Note how the verb agrees with the subject:

The other day we mentioned that the words два/две ‘two’ are followed by a noun in a form that resembles the genitive singular. What's really freaky, though, is that if you put an adjective between the number and the noun, you don't use the genitive singular. So what for do you use? Well, that depends...

If you are dealing with masculine or neuter nouns, then you have to use an adjectival form that copies the genitive plural:

If you are dealing with feminine nouns, it is usually best to use an adjectival form that copies the nominative plural:

Here are some sample sentences:

¹ You will sometimes also encounter две новых машины, аlthough новые is better style these days.

If you want to talk about your brother, the most likely word you will use in Russian is брат. It has an irregular plural form:

Very often брат is used with the words старший older/oldest and младший younger/youngest. Since those words are ambiguous, I like to fudge in non-professional work and translate them as big and little. In professional translation, of course, you should determine whether the superlative meaning (oldest/youngest) or comparative meaning (older/younger) is the correct one:

About the most convenient way these days to move files from one laptop to another is to use a USB flash drive. There are several phrases associated with that concept in Russian, among which are флеш-накопитель "flash storage" and флеш-память "flash memory", but in common usage you will mostly hear флешка or флэшка. It looks odd to Russians to see the letter э anywhere aside from the first letter of a word, so I'm guessing in the long run the флешка spelling will win out. In either case, be sure to pronounce the л hard, not soft, no matter which spelling you use.

Probably the most common question about flash drives is how much data they can hold. The way to ask the question properly is:

It's also possible to say things like:

I was amused to find out that sometimes geekoids will substitute the word гектар hectare for гигабайт gigabyte:

Last but not least, you might also hear something like:

Those versions look awful in print. Don't ever write them in an official document or course paper, but don't surprised if you hear them when friends are talking among themselves.

The word она is a personal pronoun that declines like this:

The «н» versions of the pronoun occur when the pronoun is the object of a preposition.

Она refers to feminine singular nouns, which can be either people or things, so sometimes it is translated as she/her, and sometimes it is translated as it. In other words, if you are refering to an учительница "school teacher," then the sentence must be translated with she/her, and if you are refering to a машина car, the same sentence must be translated with it:

In casual conversation it's common in America to say things like “Me and Sally went to the store,” especially when we are children. Schoolteachers then try to beat us out of that habit and make us say “She and I went to the store.” Because of that influence, English speakers may be tempted to say things like «Она и я ездили в магазин» in Russian. While theoretically one can say that in Russian, no one ever does. Instead it gets rephrased as “we with her” «мы с ней». Of course, it would be ridiculous to translate that as “we with her” in English; you still want “she and I” or just plain old ‘we.’