Comments on: What does здравствуйте & спасибо actually mean in Russian?

By: Valeria

Valeria — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:51:17 +0000

Oh, what a discussion! As a native speaker of the Russian language I was very excited when reading comments. I’d say people here expressed their need for stereotypes… which is not good I believe because stereotypes don’t let you think independently.
A lot of conclusions that don’t have actual worth as they are ungrounded.

By: Pavel

Pavel — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:59:18 +0000

As far as I know (could be a bit off), the Russian “спасибо” (thank you) is a relatively new word. People used to say (still do, but increasingly rarely) “Благодарю”, which is clearly derived from “Благо” and “дарить”, meaning “the well/good” and “to gift/give”, respectively. It can be thought of as saying “I gift/give[whish?] you well”. Incidentally, the word “Благо” has nothing to do with “health” directly. It carries a rather sublime meaning to it that relates to the overall well-being of a person.

In my opinion, this is a word that reveals a grander emotion of expressing your thanks to someone, compared to “спасибо”. Most Russians nowadays do not use it in conversations, however, they all know of the words’ existence and meaning. So, it won’t be actually awkward to say it today.

I believe that the word was very popular (almost exclusively used to say thank you) before the dawn of the XXth century. What’s interesting and hard to find out, is what triggered it to be substituted with “спасибо”, which, at least in my opinion, is less appropriate when thanking someone.

By: denis

denis — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:16:46 +0000

the word “привет” is only used among friends and relatives but not strangers who you would see face to face. Chatrooms are acceptable because i could might as well curse and call some one names and unfortunately that would be ok in the U.S.

Im fluent in russian although i was born in Ukraine =]

By: pessoa

pessoa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:13:30 +0000

sorry, but but the health-thing is likely to be wrong.
dozen of languages have the same word for “health” and “greet”.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:16:34 +0000

To the esteemed inidvidual who wrote, “I dont know who you are but you must be rather young or have very little knowledge of language
and History…”:

I strongly believe that this comment is inappropriate here. The author of this blog presented a plausible answer to the questions posed, as many others here have already noted. Furthermore, the author was not suggesting that Russia lacks formal correctness or polite convention; she was merely stating that здравствуйте, спасибо and пожалуйста are the most basic units of civil discourse.
I urge you to read posts carefully before responding with such a polemic. With all due respect, your criticism is unfounded, since it has nothing to do with the author’s argument.