Posts tagged w/ russian word of the week

Russian Word of the Week: «Халява» [Freebie]

Posted by Josefina
Sep
26
2009

Looking through pictures from a couple of absolutely lovely and lazy summer days spent with my friend Marina’s family «в Кургане» [in Kurgan] in July, I came across this one: «Кафе Старая Прага. 20 июля в 18.00. Вход бесплатно (ХАЛЯВА) :-)» [Café Old Prague. July 20th at 18-00. Entrance free of charge (FREEBIE) :-)]. And that’s when I realized that this word - «халява» - is perfect for Word of the Week this week! I have also seen almost the same thing written «на маршрутках» [on those special, most typical Russian mini-buses; on ‘marshrtukas'] since the beginning of the «кризис» [crisis] last fall and they had to lower the price of a ticket from 20 rubles to 10 rubles: «Халява, господа!» [Freebie, good people!]

After opening up the old faithful «Этимологический словарь русского языка М. Фасмера» [M. Fasmer's Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language] it became clear to me that the etymology of the highly useful Russian word «халява» [freebie] is unclear. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t use it! Of course we must use it. «Халява» might not be in all Russian-English dictionaries, and I’m not sure that I’m completely content with the translation of it as ‘freebie’. Therefore I think we should take a look at some of its synonyms in Russian:

«Бесплатно» - [free of charge; free; gratis]. This one is the most obvious one and a word that you probably already knew! (And if you didn’t know it before, then make a note of it now because it will surely come in handy!) There’s nothing wrong with repeating since after all there is a famous Russian proverb that proudly proclaims: «Повторение - мать учения!» ["Repetition is the mother of learning!"].

«Даром» (also «задаром») - [free; gratis; free of charge; for nought]. If we in this adverb can find the noun «дар» [gift; donation; grant] it will start to make a lot more sense.

«Дармовщина» - I couldn’t find in my Russian-English dictionary, but I know that it also a synonym and that it translates into Russian as «то, что получено бесплатно или за чужой счёт» [that which is received for free or paid for by someone else].

If you notice that they’re handing out samples of «шоколад» [chocolate] or «конфеты» [candy] at your local «супермаркет» [supermarket], all you need to do to make the one you’re shopping with understand what’s going on is to point in the correct direction and say: «халява!» If you receive something for free, like for example «поездка на двоих в Турцию» [a trip for two to Turkey (why not? It could happen!)], you should use the following construction when bragging about it in front of your Russian friends: «Я получил/а эту поездку на халяву!» [I received this trip for free!].

And there’s of course a piece of Russian phraseology using this most valuable word, since everybody - including Russians, «конечно!» [of course!] - love to get something for free (or to have it paid by someone else for that matter…):

«На халяву и уксус сладкий» - ["Anything that's free is good"; lit. "Even vinegar is sweet if it's free"].

But «халява» doesn’t just mean something that’s a ‘freebie’, it can also mean that something is just ‘easy’, something that one doesn’t have to work much for - effortless, in other words. «Халява» is used in this meaning in the phrase «Учёба здесь - халява!» [‘it's really easy to study here'; or ‘it doesn't take much brains to study here']. And don’t forget that this noun also has an adjective - «халявный»! So now you can say «халявный ужин» [free dinner] if you didn’t have to pay for dinner, and «халявная работа» [easy job] if you didn’t have to put any effort into it at all. Very practical, isn’t it?

Going through pictures from my visit to beautiful Kurgan in July, I came across this one of a very special place - «Музыкальный киоск Высоцкого» [Vysotsky's Musical Kiosk]. What is it? It is a kiosk that plays the music of Vladimir Vysotsky 24/7! Definitely a place not to be missed «в столице Зауралья» [in the capital of ‘Behind the Urals']!

 
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Word of the Week: «Время» [Time]

Posted by Josefina
Sep
4
2009

Sometimes Russian Blog’s Word of the Week is solely grammatically interesting, sometimes purely culturally or historically fascinating. Seldom can our Russian word of the week be both. But this week’s word is actually both! The Russian word «время» [time] is grammatically interesting because it is a neuter noun despite ending on «я» [ya] (which is usually the marker for feminine nouns) and has a highly intriguing declension in the six cases (just wait for it!) that might confuse you the first time but is well worth learning by heart. The Russian concept «время» [time] is culturally and historically fascinating since Russia is an enormous country with a total of eleven time zones. And that’s even though the entire «европейская часть России» [European part of Russia (that's all of Russia in front of the Ural Mountains)] has one and the same time - colloquially as well as officially known as «московское время» [Moscow time]. Historically the time in Moscow has been more important than the time in the rest of the ten Russian time zones; for example, all train times are according to «московское время». Though on your train tickets you’ll see that this is written as «время московское» [the change would make it correct to translate as ‘the time is Moscow time']. On plane tickets, however, the time marked for take-off and landing is always «время местное» [local time]. In Russia one often meets Moscow time on TV (news are often broadcast according to the capital), and also on the radio - yet after a while you will have learned to ignore it and apprehend that the popular provincial saying from the Soviet times: «Что Москва? Москва далеко» [What about Moscow? Moscow's far away], is very true indeed.

If you don’t live in Moscow and listen to the radio «в провинции» [in the province] you might hear the following: «Сейчас два часа дня по Москве». Probably you understand the part about ‘now it is two o’clock [p.m.]‘ but what does «по Москве» mean? Clearly not “on Moscow”. It is actually short for «по московскому времени» [according to Moscow time].

When talking about «время» [time] in Russian language and culture we could also bring up the Russian approach to time. What makes the Russian approach different from our own (now I mean to compare mostly with European or Western approach to time, since that’s closest to home for me)? Is it simply prejudice to say that «русские всегда опаздывают» [Russians are always late] or is there some truth to it? Speaking from my own personal experience I have to admit that it’s more than just a little bit true; even though one should always keep in mind that «все русские разные» [all Russians are different]. During five years in Russia I’ve learned that it is best to tell Russians to be somewhere at 11.30, for example, if you want to be sure that they’ll have arrived in time for 12.00. I don’t know why a majority of Russians can never be on time - is it because their lives are so full of stress? That they have too much to do? Or is it due to those «бесконечные пробки на улицах» [endless trafficjams on the streets] which we cannot even imagine before we’ve seen them (not to speak of getting stuck in one of them!)? When I discussed this with one of my professors in Yekaterinburg she said that before, «в советские времена» [in Soviet times], people weren’t at all late as often as they are now. She said it’s mostly «молодёжь» [young people; youth] that is never on time in Russia today. I couldn’t argue with her, obviously, since I’ve never lived in the Soviet Union due to being born in the beginning of «перестройка» ['perestroika' - or, more correctly translated as reconstruction; conversion; realignment; alteration]. That’s why I don’t know what kind of approach the average «гражданин Советского союза» [citizen of the Soviet Union] had. Maybe someone of you readers know more about this? Maybe someone has seen ‘time’ in both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation?

Okay, enough with the cultural ponderings - let’s decline this noun!

A good way of showing what happens to «время» [time] in the six cases depending on whether it’s SINGULAR or PLURAL («времена» [times] - did you see how the stress just jumped from being on the first vowel in singular to the last in plural? Now that’s confusing to me!) is to give twelve sentences in which this word is portrayed in all of its twelve forms. Okay? Let’s do it then!

«ЕДИНСТВЕННОЕ ЧИСЛО» [SINGULAR]:

Nominative: «Время - деньги» - [Time is money].

Genitive: «У меня нет времени» - [I don't have the time].

Dative: «Поезд придёт в Иркутск в пять часов утра по местному времени» - [The train arrives in Irkutsk at five in the morning according to local time].

Accusative: «Какое время года ты любишь?» - [What time of the year do you love?]

Locative: «Он не ориентируется во времени и пространстве» - [He doesn't orientate himself in time and space].

Instrumental: «Со временем ты меня поймёшь» - [With time you'll understand me].

«МНОЖЕСТВЕННОЕ ЧИСЛО» [PLURAL]:

Nominative: «Что за новые времена!» - [What kind of new times are these!]

Genitive: «Кто сейчас помнит нравы старых времён?» - [Who remembers the manners of old times now?]

Dative: «А ты скучаешь по старым временам?» - [(But) do you miss the old times?]

Accusative: «Я-то стараюсь забыть старые времена!» - [I for one try to forget the old times!]

Locative: «Не будем говорить о старых временах тогда» - [Let's not talk about the old times then].

Instrumental: «Всё изменится с новыми временами» - [Everything will change with the new times].

I hope that you found these twelve sentences to be helpful and that you’ll be able to forgive me for only using the word combinations «новые времена» [new times] and «старые времена» [old times] in plural. Suddenly, while writing this post, I came to suffer from instant brain freeze and couldn’t come up with any other combinations in which you use the word ‘time’ in plural in Russian. If anyone else out there has a clue, please leave it in a comment! I love to read your comments; they help me make this blog better. And I really want this blog to be the best - the best for learning Russian and keeping one’s affectionate feelings for Russian culture in the best of shapes.

 
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Word of the Week: «блаженство» [bliss]

Posted by Josefina
Mar
29
2009

In Russia there’s a ‘candy company’ called «Россия: щедрая душа» [Russia: The Generous Soul] that makes a lot of yummy chocolate products with astonishing names. The one above is named after today’s word (or perhaps it’s the other way around?) - «блаженство» [bliss]. This kind contains «молочный шоколад» [milk chocolate] and is delicious, just like Russian chocolate in general. Among other lovely names for chocolate there are, for example, «совершенство» [perfection] and «путешествие» [trip; journey; voyage] to choose from.

Today’s Word of the Week was chosen because a) there’s a milk chocolate bar named after it, and b) there’s a wonderful verb derived from it: «блаженствовать» [to be blissfully happy; to be in a state of bliss]. People don’t use it enough, even though there are plenty of moments during which one can ‘be in a state of bliss’, even in times of crisis like these. Perhaps it’s a spring thing - after almost five months of eternal snow I suppose anyone would feel «хоть немножко блаженства» [at least a little bit of bliss] from walking the streets without wearing enough layers of clothes to be able to get called on a polar expedition any given day… I’ve tried using the verb from time to time during the week in every day conversation, even though it’s tricky to know what kind of nouns to use it with, and which case to put them in. This has to do with the fact that I have not heard this word that much in common day speech. But you shouldn’t let a tiny detail like native speakers or their usage of their language when you like a word - and I like this word because of the combination «а» and «ж» with a stressed «е». In general, as soon as I mastered the difficult Russian sound «ж» I began pronouncing it everywhere, even where it’s not correct, just because I liked it so much (the story is similar with «з», which it took me two whole years to master, since there’s no ‘z’ sound in Swedish, and then for a couple of months I replaced all «с» with it. This led to some confusion. Now, fortunately, I have grown out of it). On Wednesday I said: «я блаженствую от того, что снег тает на улицах» [I'm blissfully happy because the snow is melting on the streets] and I think I got the message across. Then today, on Sunday, I asked a friend when we were taking a walk: «разве ты не блаженствуешь от того, что солнце светит и почти десять градусов на улице?» [aren't you in a state of bliss because the sun is shining and it's almost ten degrees Celsius outside?]. She nodded and then, a couple of sentences later, used the verb out of her own free will.

So where does «блаженство» [bliss] come from? What’s the history behind this word, how did it end up in the Russian language? To find out I got to use ‘my previous’ - «Этимологический словарь русского языка М. Фасмера» [M. Fasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian Language]. This dictionary contains whole four volumes and tries to explain the etymology of most words in the Russian language. (Even in Russia this dictionary is rather hard to come by, but if you’re ready to lower you’re standards a little bit - who needs four volumes, anyway? - there are plenty of smaller etymological dictionaries sold in all book stores in Russia. I suppose they’re also sold in Russian book stores around the world. If you want one, then be brave and ask! Or go to www.gramota.ru and use it online there for free.) Even though the dictionary doesn’t have any seperate article for «блаженство» or the verb «блаженствовать», it’s easy to figure out that it must have the same roots as the adjective «блаженный» [blissfully; blessed; colloq. wacky]. In the dictionary it says that this adjective comes from the «церковнославянский» [Old Church Slavonic] verb «блажити», which means «нарицать блаженным», something that can be translated into to modern day Russian with «делать благим, хорошим» [to make good, nice]. After this much investigation I realized that the root of all of these words must be the noun «благо» [good; pl. benefits; blessings] (by the way, the dictionary says it comes from the old Russian word «болого», something I think anyone who took a course in Old Church Slavonic could’ve guessed by now. Anyone else who still remembers all of the rules on how the first «о» disappears with time and the second «о» turns into an «а»? I only remember it when I see it, like just now, but wake me up in the middle of the night and try me - I won’t be able to make an Old Slavonic word into a modern day Russian one for the life of me!).

«Благо» is a good word. Here are a couple of phrases with it:

«На благо человечества» - [for the good of mankind].

«Желаю вам всех благ!» - [I wish you all the best!].

«Ни за какие блага!» - [Not for anything in the world!]. 

«Считаю за благо (+inf.)» - [I think it's best/wise to...]

 
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