Russian Word of the Day

In English the word time has several meanings: a) it means a repetition, as in “She kissed me three times,” and b) it means time in the sense of “I don't have time to clean the kitchen today.” Russian distinguishes those meanings. The former is раз, and the latter is время, which we will discuss today. Время is one of the ten neuter nouns in modern Russian that ends in -мя in the nominative singular. It is declined like this:

Probably the first place we encounter this word is when discussing whether we have time to do something:

When you are talking about having the time to do something, you use the infinitive of the verb:

When you are talking about time for something, you use the preposition на followed by the accusative case:

We previously discussed the use of the preposition по in the sense of “on the subject of.” Another common meaning of по is to indicate the means by which information is communicated, in which case it is usually translated as “on” or “via” in English; in that meaning по governs the dative case:

Don's rant of the day: the idea that we are supposed to capitalize the word Интернет is completely assinine. I refuse to do it in English, no matter what the current stylistic guides say. Nowadays the internet is a generic means of communication, not a capitalizable company like MCI. Lower-case makes sense. But if you are someone trying to get a job somewhere and not get rejected because of ignorami professing current political correctness, then capitalize the word.

But in Russian I'll capitalize it cuz I don't wanna seem like an ignant furriner.

The word но means but. In grammatical terms it is a conjunction which usually introduces a clause that is contrary to previously established expectiations. For instance:

The word но rarely produces confusion for English speakers. Bummer. That means I have to think of some clever example sentences.

Crud. I guess my sentences weren't so clever after all.

There's a quirk to spoken human languages: the shorter the word, the more meanings it has, and the longer a word the fewer meanings it has. For instance, “jack” has dozens of meanings, whereas “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” really only has one (or perhaps none, if one assumes the word is never really used in anything but lists of long words). The same is true for Russian. The long preposition накануне has only two meanings, whereas the short preposition по has dozens. Today we will discuss по in the meaning of “on the subject of.” With that meaning по is used with the dative case. First of all, it can be used with nouns that indicate written content, e.g. books and magazines:

The preposition is also used for lots of things associated with academics, e.g. exams, textbooks, handbooks:

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 домой in the meaning “home/to home/homeword.” Here is a subtlety. In English we can say “She is home right now” and “She is heading home now.” The former indicates location, and the latter indicates motion. In Russian you have to use дома in the former sense because it is a location phrase, and you have to use домой in the latter phrase since it indicates motion. Note also that as an adverb домой cannot be used with a preposition:

That last example is particular interesting. When you want to specify that you are going to someone's home, the word домой can be made more specific by adding a prepositional phrase using к followed by the dative case:

Actually in the previous three examples it's more natural to leave домой out, but it's perfectly grammatical to include it.

The word куда means where in the sense of “where to?” This word give us English speakers problems at first because in English we use the same “where” word for both location and motion. That is, in English you can say both “Where are you going?” (motion to) and “Where do you work?” (location at). Куда can only be used in “motion to” contexts. So if you meet a friend while walking across campus, and you want to know where he is going, then куда is the only option:

If you are chatting with someone on the train or bus or plane or boat, then again куда is the only option when asking where your collocutor is going:

Куда can also be used as a relative pronoun, assuming again that you are talking about a place someone is going to:

Now here is a subtlety that lots of foreigners never get. It is possible to use где with verbs of motion, but it doesn't mean “where to.” Instead it identifies the location at which the motion is currently occuring. For instance, let's say you are a foreigner in a Russian city, riding a bus with your friend. You don't recognize what street you are riding on so you say:

That said, most of the time when you have a verb of motion, you will used куда instead of где.

In Russian you can often take a noun stem, say one like стол-, which means table, and add a suffix (often -ск-, -ов-, -н-, or -ин-), and then add adjectival flexions to form an adjective. In this case one adjective from стол is столовый. The phrase столовая комната, literally “table room” is a room where there are tables, in other words, it is the dining room. Nowadays in Russian they just use the adjective part of the phrase, skipping the noun entirely, so the word for “dining room” now declines like this:

Since it is nearly always used as a noun itself, and since its endings match normal adjectival endings, we call this a deadjectival noun.

There is another meaning of столовая, which is “cafeteria,” that is a big public dining room. Most Russian homes don't have a separate dining room, so the cafeteria meaning is the one most commonly encountered inside Russia.

The word где means where in the sense of “where at?” or “in what location?” When used as a question word it rarely causes English speakers difficulties:

Где can also be used as a relative pronoun, assuming again that you are talking about a place something happens at:

The trickey thing about где is that it cannot be used when translating phrases that indicating motion to or from a place. That is, you cannot use it in translating sentences like:

For those meanings you need куда “where to?” and откуда “where from?”, which we will explore over the weeks to come.

We previously mentioned that 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 a couple quirks of дом, which means “home/building.” The standard endings of the noun are:

It turns out that there are actually two possible endings for the genitive singular after prepositions. One can say either «из дома» and «из дому», but they don't mean the same thing. The former means “(from) the building,” and the latter means “(from) home,” i.e., “from one's own home.” Notice particularly that when saying «из дому» the preposition is stressed, but both syllables of дому are unstressed. Here are some examples of the contrast:

The distinction works as well with the preposition до:

That last use of до дому is a bit old fashioned, but it lends a bit of elegance to one's conversation.

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

However, just as with the numbers два/две and три, 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 четыре красивых дочери, аlthough красивые is better style these days.

The word for corner in Russian is угол. It means corner both in the sense of a street corner and the corner of a box or a pointy hat or a polygon. The о is a fleeting vowel, so it only shows up in the nominative singular:

Notice that there are two separate forms for the prepositional case. If you are using the preposition в or на to indicate location, then use the углу form, which is sometimes called the locative case since it indicates locations. If you are using the preposition о, use the угле form.

That last example shows a cultural difference. In the US we usually tell kids, “Go sit in the corner,” not “Go stand in the corner.” Russians usually tell their kids to go to the corner or go stand in the corner. In the old days the Russians even “ставили детей на колени в угол” sent kids to kneel in the corner, and sometimes they even had the kids kneel on gravelly stuff to increase the misery:

<sigh> I miss those days.

Although normally in Russian you refer to the days of the week using nouns like понедельник and среда, there is an alternate way to do it. You make an adjective out of the day of the week and then combine it with the word день ‘day’. It is not as common as simply using the nouns, but it is still possible. Here is a list of the nouns and their corresponding adjectives:

Note carefully that there is no adjectival equivalent for среда, and notice also that the adjective from суббота is soft. When translating the phrases into English, simply use the noun. Here are a few examples:

It would be a mistake to think that all the adjectives are equally acceptable. The phrase «воскресный день» is very common. The next most common is «субботний день». The others you will find in good dictionaries, but they are encountered very rarely. And why is there no adjective from среда? Hard to say. Sometimes in language you have to give up and say, “That's just the way it is.”

Previously we discussed день ‘day’ in the nominative/accusative singular. What about the other forms? Here's where it gets tricky. The -е- is a fleeting vowel, which means any time you add a grammatical ending to the stem, the -е- drops out. The -ь at the end makes the stem soft, but it also drops out when endings are added, and the endings are always soft, so the declension turns out like this:

Notice that except in the nominative/accusative singular, the д is immediately followed by н, which is tricky for us Americans to pronounce. It is a nasally-released soft [d]. In other words, you make the soft [d] sound, but then you let no breath out through the mouth, releasing the breath through the nose as you say the [n]. Here are a few sample sentences.

The Russian word for day is день. Since it is an incredibly common word, we are going to talk about it quite a few times. Today we will start with something simply. День is an inanimate masculine noun, so it's accusative case form is the same as its nominative form. That's fortunate because we mostly use the word in the nominative and accusative case. Here are some examples of it in the nominative:

You will remember that to say “on Monday” or “on Tuesday”, you have to use the preposition в + accusative in Russian. Similarly, to say “on that day” in Russian you say «в тот день» or «в этот день». Oddly enough, in English we usually leave out the “on” when combining it with “that day,” so in translation you will have to remember to add it in:

Previously we discussed the particle ли in its function of making yes-no questions. It has another function as the equivalent of the English word ‘whether.’ In English ‘whether’ always occurs as the first word in its subordinate clause; ли must always be the second item in its clause:

If the subordinate clause contains words like должен, надо or нужно, they usually come before ли. The next most likely word to come before ли is a conjugated verb:

Any other word/phrase can occur before ли if it bears the focus of the question:

Clever students will have noticed that this use of ли is a part of what we call “indirect speech.” Indirect speech in Russian and English behave somewhat differently. In English, when changing from direct speech to indirect speech, the tense of the subordinate clause undergoes fairly complex changes. For instance, considering the following sentences.

Note the tense of the verbs in the subordinate clause in the corresponding indirect speech sentences:

This change is called “sequence of tenses” by linguists. Russian does not have a sequence of tenses rule like that. Whatever the tense of a verb is in the original direct speech is the same tense that occurs in the indirect speech. In other words, in direct speech we will have:

Rule of thumb: when switching from direct speech to indirect speech in Russian, keep the tense of the original verb.