Russian Word of the Day

The word for animal in Russian is животное. You will notice that it resembles the word живу ‘I live,’ and indeed the root жив- means ‘live.’ In fact in Old Russian the word живот meant life, although nowadays it means stomach. You'll note that животное has a neuter adjectival ending. I suspect that it originally was part of the phrase «животное существо» ‘living being,’ although that's just a guess. In any case, the word is now used as a noun, even though its endings are adjectival, and for that reason we can call it a deadjectival noun. It declines like this:

Notice particularly that since the word is neuter, the accusative singular does NOT copy the genitive singular.

The verb pair привозить/привезти is usually translate as ‘to bring.’ It conjugates like this:

The bringer appears in the nominative case, and the thing brought appears in the accusative:

When you bring something to a person, the person appears in the dative case.

When you bring something to a place, you usually use в/на + accusative:

The verb pair приносить/принести is usually translated as ‘to bring.’ It conjugates like this:

The bringer appears in the nominative case, and the thing brought appears in the accusative:

When you bring something to a person, the person appears in the dative case.

When you bring something to a place, you usually use в/на + accusative:

For English speakers we must keep in mind a couple caveats about this verb pair. First of fall, since the verb implies taking something somewhere in your own arms, you can't use it to say you brought a person to a place unless the person you bring is a baby. Secondly, if you bring something from another city or country, you should use the verb привозить/привезти, which implies motion by vehicle.

Привет is a friendly greeting that is usually transated into English as ‘hi.’ It is a friendly greeting used among people who are already on good terms:

The word is often used with передавать/передать to mean “say hi to so-and-so” or “give regards to”:

My favorite use of привет is in the phrase «с приветом», which means that the person you're talking about has some quirks or is crazy or abnormal.

С миру по нитке — голому рубаха.
Just a thread from everyone in the world, provides a man a shirt.
Literal translation: A thread each in the whole world- a shirt for the naked.

I like this quote. It's very Russian to take a sentimental concept like unity or charity and put it into practical terms. This proverb came up while I was searching for interesting uses for the word нитка-the singular for "thread."

*Please note that in the genitive case you would not say "нитк" but "ниток." A lot of times when there is a genitive for a word with a hard consonant followed by "ка" the letter о will appear and divide the consonant and the к.

Here are some sentences:

Мама, где мои нитки?
Mom, where is all my thread?

Мне нужна красная нитка, пуговица оторвалась.
A button came off, I need the red thread.

Мы все нитки потеряли?! Как я буду шить без ниток?
We lost all the thread?! How am I supposed to sew with no thread?

Держи нитку с иголкой.
Keep the thread with the needle.

The word жаль has several meanings, and today we will discuss its use in the sense of “to feel sorry for” a person. We English speakers have to do a grammatical backflip when dealing with the construction. In English the person who experiences the emotion is the subject of the verb, and the person pitied is the object of the preposition ‘for.’ In Russian the person who experiences the emotion appears in the dative case, and the person pitied appears in the accusative case:

Жаль sentences can be translated into English several ways:

You will notice there is no verb in the sentences. To put them into the past tense, you add было; for the future, add будет:

Here you can see the phrase in more complicated sentences:

The busiest place the house I grew up in was always the kitchen. My mother is an amazing cook and I always spent a lot of time trying to learn and help. Today's word is кухня, kitchen.

Whenever we had gatherings,

Мама звала меня на кухню помочь.
Mom would call me into the kitchen to help.

My father also liked to take his turn at cooking.

Где папа? Он на кухне.
Where is dad? He is in the kitchen.

And now that I have my own house,

Самая большая комната в моём доме — кухня.
The biggest room in my house is the kitchen.

Which is exciting because I get to design it any way I want.
However, it is also overwhelming.

Существует огромное количество вариантов оформления кухонь!
There are a huge number of options for designing kitchens!

The verb pair приезжать/приехать is usually translated as “to arrive, come,” and it implies movement by vehicle. It conjugates like this:

In English we often use the preposition “at” with the verb “arrive,” so we have to bear in mind that for Russians arrival is a motion; that is, you complement the verb with either в/на + accusative or with к + dative:

One point of translation: in English if you see a vehicle approaching, you may say “Here comes the bus/train/taxi.” In Russian you will never use приезжать/приехать in that context. Instead you most commonly use the verb идти.

M.C. Escher-one of my favorites

Today's word of the day is the verb рисовать. This means to draw. As in a picture, not а lottery. I grew up loving to draw and doodle. So much, that I was often in trouble for drawing during all my classes.

Here are some examples using our word:

Он рисует красивый цветок.
He is drawing a beautiful flower.

Я учусь рисовать.
I am learning to draw.

Я собираюсь наказать всех моих детей. Они рисовали на стене!
I am getting ready to punish all my kids. They drew all over the wall!

Катя, пожалуйста, нарисуй мне что-нибудь.
Katya, please draw me something.

Sometimes in life you're just bummed out about something, and one of the words that expresses that idea in Russian is жаль. Жаль expresses an idea of sadness or regret or irritation; it can form an entire sentence unto itself:

If want to add the “what a” idea to it, you use как:

Very often жаль is followed by a clause beginning with что:

Жаль, что она не пришла.

It's a shame that she didn't come. or
It's a pity that she didn't come.

Жаль, что ты так мало зарабатываешь.

It's a pity that you earn so little. or
It's a shame that you earn so little.

If you want to incorporate the idea of who is experiencing the pity, then the person goes into the dative case. Once the person is added, though, it flows best if you don't use the words pity and shame in Engish translation. Instead other versions sound better:

Мне жаль, что она не пришла.

I'm disappointed that she didn't come. or
I'm sad that she didn't come. or
I'm bummed that she didn't come. or
I feel bad that she didn't come.

Лене жаль, что ты так мало зарабатываешь.

Lena's sad that you earn so little. or
Lena's disappointed that you earn so little. or
Lena's bummed that you earn so little. or
Lena feels bad that you earn so little.

To put the жаль phrase into the past or future tense, use было and будет respectively:

The most common word for three in Russian is три. If три occurs in the nominative case, then it is followed by the genitive singular form of the noun:

However, if you put an adjective between the number and the noun, you don't use the genitive singular. So what form 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 три красивых дочери, аlthough красивые is better style these days.

In most Russian apartments the bathtub is located in a room next to, but separate from, the room that has the toilet. Since bathtub in Russian is ванна, the room that contains it is called a ванная. Ванная is a deadjectival noun; that is, it is an adjective in form, but a noun in meaning, so it declines like this:

Now, we are going to have a bit of a translation problem here. In the US the word bathroom means the room that contains the toilet. (It might be different in the UK...) I just asked a buddy of mine “What do you call a room in America that has a bathtub but not a toilet?” He looked at me with incredulity, as if I were an American manqué, and said “I don't know. I have never encountered the situation.” ‘Washroom’ doesn't work, because it, too, implies a toilet, as do john, head, wc, powder room, restroom and lavatory. So for the purposes of this blog entry I will call it the “bathtub room.” That sounds odd in American English, so if you are a Russian reading this blog, don't use the phrase yourself; just understand that we are making do. That said, here are some sample sentences:

Did you hear about the great new restaurant on the луна? The food is delicious, but there's no atmosphere! Hahahaha!

The word луна means moon. Is the joke funnier now?

Где луна? Я ничего не вижу!
Where is the moon? I can't see a thing!

Сколько лун вокруг Сатурна?
How many moons are around Saturn?

In Arizona all I have to do is drive for about a half an hour out of Phoenix on any given night to get a great view of the sky. It's really convenient since:

Я люблю смотреть на луну.
I love to look at the moon.

При солнечном затмении Луна частично или полностью закрывает Солнце. (adapted from this source)
During a solar eclipse the moon partially or completely covers the sun.

Мы стояли под яркой луной.
We stood under the bright moon.

Когда следующее полнолуние?*
When is the next full moon?

* The roots полн- ‘full’ and лун- ‘moon’ combine as «полнолуние» to mean a full moon.

When you learn a foreign language, one of the things that causes problems are false cognates, which are words that sound similar but can have quite different meanings. The classic example for Spanish students is ‘embarazada’ which sounds like the English word ‘embarrassed’ but actually means ‘pregnant.’ If an American woman tries to say that she is embarrassed using ‘embarazada,’ the reaction of her cohorts will teach her her error promptly. She won't make that mistake a second time.

It's a little trickier when the meanings of the false cognates are much closer in the two languages. In that case there is much more likely to be continuing confusion and cross-cultural mis­com­munication, and that miscommunication can be both on the dictionary-meaning level and on the emotional level. A case in point are the words туалет and toilet. In American English toilet means the actual device one sits upon, and in Russian туалет means the room in which the toilet (but usually not the bathtub) is located. Since the Russian word is so similar to the English word, American students of Russian only have to hear it once to remember it forever, and they promptly start producing sentences like:

In terms of grammatical communication it is a perfectly adequate sentence, but the student hasn't said quite what he thinks he has said, and there is a very good chance he has just committed a cultural faux pas. The sentence is a little too direct for polite company, and simply saying you want to go to the toilet summons up unpleasant images of... well, you get the idea. In American English we avoid those images because the word “bathroom” focuses on the ‘bath’ idea; that is, there is a subtle association with cleanliness, not urination or defecation. So to avoid being quite so direct, the Russians have several ways of euphemistically expressing the idea. The one I use most is «помыть руки», which word-for-word means “to wash the hands”:

If you say it that way, there will be a bit of ambiguity to the Russian, who won't necessarily be sure if you need the toilet or the sink, but since in a Russian apartment the room with the toilet is usually right next to the room with the bathtub and sink, they will lead you right to where you need to go for either purpose. Of course, if you are not directly discussing bodily functions, it's perfectly fine to use the word туалет:

The social contexts that affect the direct use of the word туалет are complex. My friend Tanya assures me that if she is at a restaurant with a mixed group of men and women, she never uses the word туалет. Instead she would just stand up, say «Я сейчас приду» “I’ll be right back,” and then leave. But if she is with just her female friends at the restaurant, she might well say «Я пойду в туалет» “I'm going to the bathroom,” and since she is with her friends she might add to one of them «Ты хочешь со мной?» “Do you want to come with me?” Similarly a Russian man in mixed company will use euphemistic phrases like the ones mentioned before or «Я отойду на минутку» “I'll step away for a moment.” (But unlike Russian women, a Russian man won't ask a buddy to go to the bathroom with him.)

Hello readers! I'll be honest with you. Last week was a frustrating and stressful week. Nothing went as planned and that left me grumpy. I even found myself throwing down an expletive or three.

Warning! The following paragraphs contain Russian and English vulgarity.

Pages: 1 · 2

Ok readers, guess today's word!

The Russian word for bottle is бутылка. As far as I can tell there is, thankfully, no equivalent of the “99 bottles” song in Russian. If you want to describe a smaller bottle without saying “small bottle,” say бутылочка. It sounds so small and cute!

Here is how бутылка declines:

And some sentence examples:
Ты куда сунул бутылку шампуня?
Where did you stuff the shampoo bottle?
Что, слепой? Бутылка перед тобой. На полке!
What, are you blind? The bottle is in front of you. On the shelf!

Эти бутылки водки проданы.
These bottles of vodka are sold.

Пожалуйста, передайте мне бутылочку Пепси.
Please pass me the little bottle of Pepsi.

This morning I was reading about the Korean drink hwachae and realized “Hey, this is basically the same thing as компот!”

What is компот? It is a beverage made, essentially, by boiling fruit in water with some sugar and then letting the liquid cool down. You can make компот out of all sorts of fruit, fresh or dried. When you put a pitcher of it on the table, you leave the marvelous chunks of fruit in, not straining it out. The Grandma's Advice website lists the following versions:

It's a great summer drink of course, but the Russians will drink it in winter, too. Here are some sample sentences:

Soon we are coming up on November 2nd, that means Voting Day. The Russian word голосовать means to vote. Тhe root of the word is голос, which means voice. This captures the idea behind having the right to vote so well! The whole point is to make your voice heard.

Я собираюсь голосовать во вторник.
I am going to vote on Tuesday.

While there is no presidential election this year, I still think it's pretty important to go to the polls. Just from watching a bit of the news (it's usually so negative that I can only watch so much) we can tell that quite a few senators, governors, and other local politicians are up for election this year.

В Аризоне мы голосуем за сенатора.*
In Arizona we are voting for a senator.

Of course, there are plenty of rules to follow to try to keep the voting fair and square. For example, you must be 18 years old.

Машенька ещё не может голосовать — ей семнадцать.*
Masha is seventeen, so she can't vote yet.

Nowadays we don't just vote in the political arena. Many reality shows feature polls as a kind of gimmick to get the viewers really committed. And it works too. Some of these shows gеt so many votes that phone lines are overloaded.

Миллион американцeв проголосовали за того парня, который пел так хорошо.
А million Americans voted for that guy who can sang so well.

So whatever the situation, make your votes count. And remember...

*Notice how in the present tense you would not say "голосовает" or "голосоваем." Instead you take off the "овать" end of the word and replace it with "у" and then conjugate it per the rules.

If you want to know where someone has arrived from, the word you use is the interrogative adverb откуда “from where”:

Of course answering the question is quite complex since there are at least three different words that mean ‘from’ in Russian. (If you would like a thorough overview to the to/from/at words and their use, click here.) Very often people will use the word without including a verb of motion. If they have just met you, they usually mean it in the sense of “What is your national or local origin?”

Откуда is often used in sentences talking about the source of someone's information. In that context it is best translated as ‘how’:

Выбирать is the Russian word for "to choose," "to select" or "to pick." Here is how you conjugate the verb:

So let's look at some examples using my favorite dessert, ice cream.

Мама с детьми пошли за мороженым.
Mom took the kids out for ice cream.

Она сказала: «Выбирайте для себя по два сорта.»
Pick out two flavors for yourselves.

Нина выбрала клубничное и ванильное мороженое.
Nina chose strawberry and a vanilla ice cream.

A Костя выбрал шоколадное и малиновое мороженое.
And Kostya picked chocolate and raspberry ice cream.

Я всегда выбираю эскимо.
I always choose the chocolate-covered ice cream bar.

The verb pair приходить/прийти is usually translated as “to arrive, come.” First, a quick reminder of how the verb conjugates. Note that the -й occurs only in the perfective infinitive:

Previously we discussed how to say one arrived at a place, but how do you say you arrived from a place? That depends. You will recall that there are three different words for ‘to’ in Russian, and they are в, на and к. The default word is в. If you go to a place using в, you come back from it using из + genitive:

If you go to a place using на, then you come from it using с + genitive:

If you have returned from seeing a particular individual, then you use от + genitive:

Beware of one potential problem when translating from English to Russian. Let's say you are walking across campus and spot your friend. In English you might say “Where are you coming from?” A Russian will never use the verb приходить/прийти in this context. Instead they just use идти: