24 votes
Accepted

Equivalent letter for H in Russian?

Russian has no special letter for the Latin letter H; in other words, it's rendered differently. You have to consult a dictionary every time a proper name has an H in it. The most common ways to ...
Yellow Sky's user avatar
  • 26.1k
18 votes

The word подарок - abstract meaning?

Подарок means 'gift' in the sense of 'present'. It's usually a physical object indeed, but can be used in a sense of 'gift' in other cases as well - for example, something like "that back-pass ...
AR.'s user avatar
  • 1,750
17 votes

Why has the word Жид (Jew) become a taboo in Russian?

As a rule you just can not ask question like "why some words has changed their meaning". Well, you can but quite often we just can not say why. Just like phonetic changes, semantical shifts ...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 38k
16 votes
Accepted

Why do some people pronounce "о" as "a" and some just pronounce "o" as "o"?

This is a phenomenon called vowel reduction. A good starting point would be the Wikipedia article on Russian phonology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#Vowel_mergers In a nutshell, ...
Quassnoi's user avatar
  • 53.3k
15 votes
Accepted

"She wants him to like her." - Where is "her"?

"Her" isn't implied, there's just no need for it. Она хочет ему нравиться literally translates to "She wants to be liked by him". Hyper-literally, something like "she wants to disposition herself to ...
Nikolay Ershov's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

Is there a Russian equivalent of "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk?

The classic works on the topic are Rosenthal's books, namely Справочник по правописанию и стилистике. It covers orthography, punctuation, word usage and sentence composition. It's available online ...
Quassnoi's user avatar
  • 53.3k
11 votes
Accepted

What are the rules of the locative case?

But just today, I notice that the locative case isn't used once it is modified by an adjective? Not quite, it's totally correct to say На белом/рыхломadj. снегУ На крутомadj. валУ В ...
Баян Купи-ка's user avatar
10 votes

Does "Zzz" (sleep) have the same meaning in Russian?

No, it can not be used to symbolize sleep. Instead of it, we sometimes use "Хррр" to denote sleep.
dimanne's user avatar
  • 296
10 votes

What does "так и есть" and "ну что ж" mean?

Так и есть means "that's right," "that's true." It's used to agree with someone: Жизнь не проста. - Так и есть (= действительно, и правда, верно, согласен/согласна). In English it's not always ...
Enguroo's user avatar
  • 1,685
10 votes

The word подарок - abstract meaning?

Подарок has got a figurative meaning in Russian, when we mention something causing great pleasure. Ваш приход - большой подарок для меня. Такая хорошая погода — просто подарок! Его приезд — настоящий ...
V.V.'s user avatar
  • 21.6k
9 votes

Очередь на Серова (=выставку Серова): A specific type of metonymy?

You are right. It's a metonymy. Here's an extract from the dictionary МЕТОНИМИЯ (переименование) (троп)– перенос названия с одного предмета на другой на основании их смежности. Переименование может ...
V.V.'s user avatar
  • 21.6k
8 votes
Accepted

Communicate to Russians with only Latin alphabet

What you are searching for is translit: Translit is a method of encoding Cyrillic letters with Latin ones. [...] The translit system arose when Russian speakers first needed to write their ...
8 votes

Can ппц word use for a good manner?

This ппц is an abbreviated way to write the word пипéц (pee-PETS) which is in its turn a euphemism for the word пиздéц (peez-DETS), an obscene way to say "God damn!" or "Fucking shit!" It's an ...
Yellow Sky's user avatar
  • 26.1k
8 votes
Accepted

Which это? Particle or Special Adjective/Pronoun

Э́то is the subject in this case, it does not need to agree with пра́вда. Э́то ма́льчик. It's / that's / this is a boy. Э́то де́вочка. It's / that's / this is a girl. Э́то молоко́. It's / that's / ...
Sergey Slepov's user avatar
8 votes

Difference between царь and король?

The difference is mainly in word origin. Царь comes from Caesar and король comes from the name Карл, and its derivatives are used in Eastern Europe (however, it's цар in Bulgaria). The word king ...
Alex_ander's user avatar
  • 11.9k
7 votes
Accepted

"У папы есть вопросы" or "у папы вопросы"?

In the majority of cases it's actually not wrong to omit word "есть" and your particular example it is indeed completely acceptable to say just "У папы всегда вопросы". In Russian whenever you can ...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 38k
7 votes

Выставка фотографов, или Выставка фотографий?

Выставка фотографов — это выставка, на которой представлены фотографии определенных фотографов. Это выражение используется с каким-нибудь определением (например "выставка молодых фотографов" или "...
Alissa's user avatar
  • 2,809
7 votes
Accepted

City name change when used in sentence?

Well, "is it possible" heavily depends on what you actually want to achieve. If you intention is to have some sort of summary data, something like report, then you can go with: Лиман — Казымяк, ...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 38k
7 votes

Kamchadalskii dialect

Eh, that's pretty outdated. I'm from Kamchatka. Grew up there and lived there until I moved to California at 25. There aren't that many native people in Kamchatka percentage-wise, but certainly there ...
AR.'s user avatar
  • 1,750
7 votes
Accepted

How to type "@" symbol in Russian keyboard layout?

We do not use it in the Russian layout, as all the email addresses are typed in Latin letters.
Elena's user avatar
  • 4,384
7 votes

Can стакан сока be used here instead of сок?

My Russian is at the A2 level, at best, and I don't know your teacher, so I don't know what reason he or she may have had for telling you that сок cannot be replaced by стакан сока, but I know why I ...
Lisa Beck's user avatar
  • 2,215
7 votes
Accepted

Strange use of 'и': для этого и делается

The "и" in Russian apart from its main function also serves as - very roughly - as a counterpart of English so, like in phrase "so what"? - this is translated like "и что"...
shabunc's user avatar
  • 38k
7 votes

Russian slang: "the letter Х"

It's a cliché joke. — Как дела? — На букву "х", но не "хорошо" // "How are you?" "It's an f-word... and I don't mean 'fine.'" In Russian, we have the slang ...
Quassnoi's user avatar
  • 53.3k
6 votes

Difference between "пиар", "реклама" and "пропаганда"

Пропаганда is about view-of-life, it's not about a person or a company. This could be about something like 'our country is the greatest' or 'to be healthy you need to run 5 miles every day' etc. ...
Artemix's user avatar
  • 11.3k
6 votes
Accepted

"В ночном небе нет комет, Вся планета в мире снов."

В мире снов means "in the world of dreams". Снов from сны is a noun in the genitive. Вся планета в мире снов (The whole planet is in the world of dreams= The planet is sleeping).Комет is also in the ...
V.V.'s user avatar
  • 21.6k
6 votes
Accepted

Знаешь его брата - is 'его' in genitive and 'брата' in accusative?

No, it is incorrect. «Брата» is indeed in the accusative case. But «его», as a third person possessive pronoun, is ever the same and does not change by case. That's a nice quirk in the Russian ...
Evgeniy's user avatar
  • 554
6 votes

"She wants him to like her." - Where is "her"?

This sentence is quite tricky to translate into Russian indeed because Russian words for "to want" and "to like" don't work like their English counterparts. If we consider several other English ...
Quassnoi's user avatar
  • 53.3k
6 votes
Accepted

Phrase meaning “ты мой золотой”

This phrase can have a wide range of meanings, in general it has an old-fashioned connotation and is often used by women of older generation as they speak to a younger collocutor and want to say how ...
schmidt9's user avatar
  • 262
6 votes

What are the rules of the locative case?

Locative is pretty much arbitrary indeed. To further complicate things, some of the words which technically have locative only use it in set phrases or in certain senses. Дом is one of such words. ...
Quassnoi's user avatar
  • 53.3k
6 votes
Accepted

I need help working out someone's first name and last name

SEIDOV looks like a surname due to the ending -ov. CHARY must then be his first name. However neither of them sound ethnically Russian. It could belong to an Azeri or to someone from one of the ...
Баян Купи-ка's user avatar

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