russian-grammar-examples

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⚠️ Sign on a hiking trail: Вы застряли - звоните If* you got stuck, call* *notes: the if here is implied. and the phone number is missing. Застрять can mean to get stuck or to be stuck. This sign probably refers to getting stuck in mud застрять в грязи. Here are some other situations you can застрять in: ▪️застрять в пробке - to get stuck in traffic ▪️застрять в лифте - to get stuck in an elevator ▪️застрять в круговороте негативных мыслей - to get stuck in a loop of negative thoughts ▪️застрять дома - to be stuck at home ▪️застрять в/на одном месте - to be stuck in one place. This could even be about reading, for example. Я пытаюсь прочитать [book], но застряла на одном месте I'm trying to read [book] but I got stuck in one part. The future first-person is застря́ну, as in я застряну здесь навсегда. I'll be stuck here forever. Here's a breakdown of the imperfective/perfective forms.

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Веер looks like the English word beep 😅 but it actually means a hand fan. Опахало refers to a bigger, fancier fan, like in the stereotype of servants waving giant ostrich plume fans to cool off a king. In our modern era, however, you're more likely to hear of веер/опахало для мангала a hand fan used when barbecuing 🔥🍗

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Two new things I learned about this week: ▫️ феня, a kind of prison slang that is still heard in casual speech but banned in Russian prisons ▫️ the Soviet idiom последнее китайское предупреждение China's final warning

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I saw this ad the other day, and it reminded me of something I didn't learn for a long time: how to turn grandfather and grandmother into adjectives. Grandfather Дедушка > Grandfather's Дедушкин Спасите дедушкино кафе от разрухи. Save Grandfather's cafe from ruin. Дедушкин here becomes the neuter form дедушкино to match the neuter noun кафе. You can do the same thing with grandma: Grandmother Бабушка > Grandmother's Бабушкин However, what I'm not quite sure of... why grandpa/grandma have these extra forms? After all, what we're taught in Russian lessons is simply grandma's car машина бабушки and grandpa's cafe кафе дедушки.

My theory is that the adjectives дедушкин/бабушкин are used more for marketing purposes, to make you think of something cozy or homemade. I'm basing this on the fact there's a brand of toilet paper called Бабушкин запас Grandma's stash, a tea called Бабушкин чай Grandma's tea, and some kind of first aid cream called Дедушкин секрет Grandpa's secret. Maybe the products sound more trustworthy that way, like they were handmade by some random kind grandparent. Do you know anything about how to use these adjectives? Update! Turns out you can also use this form with father, mother, and aunt. Maybe uncle too, but I'm not sure about that one. папины часы Father's watch мамина любимая чашечка Mom's favorite cup маменькин сынок a mama's boy тётин дом Aunt's house

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📝 More charades, more new vocab: царапина, а scratch. - царапина на машине, a scratch on a car. - царапина на коже, a scratch on the skin. - царапина на очках, a scratch on a pair of glasses. - царапина на экране телефона, a scratch on a phone screen. - царапина на роговице, a scratch on the cornea. The verb form is царапать, to scratch. ковёр-самолёт, a flying carpet. While you probably recognize самолёт as airplane, it actually breaks down into сам self + летать to fly, so ковёр-самолёт is like carpet-self-flying. искусственное дыхание, artificial breathing / CPR (as in mouth-to-mouth breathing). A ventilator, by the way, is called Аппарат ИВЛ or Аппарат искусственной вентиляции лёгких.

Кощей, the folk character Кощей Бессмертный, Koschei the Immortal.

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Videos of the week: 🍃 Why всё is pronounced as фсё, why в Москве and в Сочи have different в sounds, and a bunch of other cool rules: voicing in consonant clusters. (5 minutes) 🍃 Is Bulgarian the easiest Slavic language to learn? I'm not convinced. (14 minutes) 🍃 Funny, strange, and ridiculous names in the USSR. (6 minutes, in Russian)

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Resources of the week, medical edition: 🩺 Мэнерик aka Арктическая истерия: The creepy unexplained disease of the Russian north. There's also an extremely detailed article on it here. 🩺 The pretty amazing story of a Soviet physician who performed his own appendectomy in Antarctica.

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Translation: I hate it when they ask me "You had so much time, why didn't you manage to get ready?" My God, I was laying around almost this whole time, what a dumb question 😆

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Telling time in Russian... it's a nightmare. 😱 For example, my brain will only accept пятнадцать минуть шестово as 6:15 even though it actually means 5:15. I really think people are putting a шесть in it just to be mean. 😤 But enough about my personal time-telling struggles: here's a cool website that you might find useful! https://kotoryi-chas.ru/ Just type in a time and you'll get all the different ways it can be said in Russian. The picture above (5:50) is a screenshot from said site.

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Фасо́ванный is an adjective for foods that are sold like these bananas. The word comes from the verb фасова́ть to package up a quantity of something. My Russian friend said that fruits, vegetables, and candy are often sold as фасо́ванные products but you could also use this word for things like sugar and grains.

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Resources of the week: 🍃 How to talk about months in Russian with some helpful pronunciation tips (4 min). 🍃 A vocab goldmine: the answers to Ответы 100 к 1. In this game you need to guess the most common answers to questions like: Где в квартире можно спрятать заначку? Where can you hide something in an apartment? or У каких животных самый короткий хвост? Which animals have the shortest tails? The actual game is on Yandex and Google Play. What I linked is the database of answers, useful for improving your collocations and overall vocab. For example, here are the most common answers to Без чего нельзя пойти к врачу? What is something you can't go to the doctor without? And what's cool is that there's even a little context to the answers, like you can't go to the doctor без бахил (без данного предмета даже в здание поликлиники не пустят). 🍃 I came across a book called Новейшая история России в 14 бутылках водки The Modern History of Russian in 14 Bottles of Vodka. 📕 Might be interesting?

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Quick reminder of these 'x' loanwords that are spelled out in Russian with кс: xylophone ксилофон xenophobia ксенофобия xylitol ксилит xenon ксенон xerox ксерокс

One word that doesn't follow this pattern is the x-ray, which is called рентген after Wilhelm Röntgen, the German physicist who first discovered x-rays.

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Resources of the week: 🍃 The prepositional case, broken down into 6 categories. 🍃 Some common filler words слова-паразиты (9 min). 🍃 Collection: 50 Photos from Russia that will get stuck in your head. The photo from Vladikavkaz (#27) is so stunning that I looked it up to see if it was photoshopped together. It's legit. 🤯 A view of Столовая гора from Проспект Мира... bookmarking this for someday travels.

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An interesting word: макулатура. It's nearly identical in many other European languages, but English is the odd man out. Waste paper? Paper for recycling?

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👶🥣 Baby food with an unusual name! The phrase устами младенца translates as out of the mouths of babes. It seems to be mainly associated with a quote from the bible: устами младенца глаголет истина from the mouths of babes comes the truth.

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Have you ever encountered window as an adjective in Russian? оконный откос 🪟 a window jamb оконная рама 🪟 a window frame оконное стекло 🪟 window glass, windowpane оконная ручка 🪟 a window handle oконные решетки 🪟 window bars for decoration / to stop thieves Related nouns: окно 🪟 a window окна 🪟 windows подоконник 🪟 windowsill окошко 🪟 a small window форточка 🪟 which isn't related at all to окно but is the little window that can be opened at the top of old-fashioned Russian windows

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An interesting man's name that I had never heard before: Все́волод. Все- comes from the old Russian word вьсь, which means all весь. Волод- is from the old Russian word володѣти , which means to rule владеть. Все + волод... he who rules all.

Diminutive forms: Всеволодушка, Всева, Сева, Володя, Вова, Вава, Лодя.

While there have been several famous figures named Всеволод, this monument is to an early 1900s Всеволод who managed a munitions plant in Kazan. When the factory caught fire, he was able to prevent a major explosion, thus saving the entire city.