Learn about how to give compliments by using a Russian verb in the dative case
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Natalia: Здравствуйте, с Вами |
| Yura: I’m Yura and you’re listening to Absolute Beginner Season 1, Lesson 20; Use Compliments to Get Ahead in Russia. |
| Natalia: Yura, what is this lesson about? |
| Yura: In this lesson, you’ll learn about dative case and how to make compliments in Russian. |
| Natalia: The conversation takes place in a bowling center. |
| Yura: The conversation is between Nika and Katia. |
| Natalia: The speakers are close friends, so they will be speaking informal Russian. |
| Yura: Let’s listen in. |
| DIALOGUES |
| Natalia: Катя, у тебя новая причёска! |
| Natalia: Да, я вчера была в парикмахерской. |
| Natalia: Тебе очень идёт! Я тоже хочу постричься. И покраситься. |
| Natalia: В какой цвет? |
| Natalia: Я хочу сделать мелирование. |
| Natalia: Я могу посоветовать тебе хорошего мастера. |
| Yura: Okay, let’s do that one more time slowly. |
| Natalia: Катя, у тебя новая причёска! |
| Natalia: Да, я вчера была в парикмахерской. |
| Natalia: Тебе очень идёт! Я тоже хочу постричься. И покраситься. |
| Natalia: В какой цвет? |
| Natalia: Я хочу сделать мелирование. |
| Natalia: Я могу посоветовать тебе хорошего мастера. |
| Yura: Okay, one more time with natural native speed with the translation. |
| Natalia: Катя, у тебя новая причёска! |
| Yura: Katia, you got a new hairstyle. |
| Natalia: Да, я вчера была в парикмахерской. |
| Yura: Yeah, I went to a hair salon yesterday. |
| Natalia: Тебе очень идёт! Я тоже хочу постричься. И покраситься. |
| Yura: It suits you a lot. I also want to cut my hair and dye it. |
| Natalia: В какой цвет? |
| Yura: What color? |
| Natalia: Я хочу сделать мелирование. |
| Yura: I want to do highlights. |
| Natalia: Я могу посоветовать тебе хорошего мастера. |
| Yura: I can recommend you a good hairdresser. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Yura: Hair, never a dying topic for girls. By the way, are most Russian girls blonde anyway? |
| Natalia: Well, that’s a common stereotype. But no, we come in all shapes and colors. Have you been to Moscow? There you can find the biggest variety as it has people from all over the post- USSR. |
| Yura: I see. I guess I’ll have to learn compliments of all sorts before I go there. Okay, let’s listen to the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| The first word is? |
| Natalia: новый |
| Yura: New. |
| Natalia: новый |
| Yura: And the next? |
| Natalia: причёска |
| Yura: Hairstyle. |
| Natalia: причёска |
| Yura: And next? |
| Natalia: вчера |
| Yura: Yesterday. |
| Natalia: вчера |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: парикмахерская |
| Yura: Hairdressers, barbers. |
| Natalia: парикмахерская |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: постричься |
| Yura: To get a haircut. |
| Natalia: постричься |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: идти |
| Yura: To go. |
| Natalia: идти |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: покраситься |
| Yura: To dye ones hair. |
| Natalia: покраситься |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: цвет |
| Yura: Color. |
| Natalia: цвет |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: мелирование |
| Yura: Highlights. |
| Natalia: мелирование |
| Yura: Okay, and the next word? |
| Natalia: мочь |
| Yura: To be able to, can. |
| Natalia: мочь |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: посоветовать |
| Yura: To advise. |
| Natalia: посоветовать |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: хороший |
| Yura: Good. |
| Natalia: хороший |
| Yura: And the last word in our list? |
| Natalia: мастер |
| Yura: Specialist. |
| Natalia: мастер |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Yura: Okay, let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. The first pair of words we’ll take a look at is? |
| Natalia: новая причёска. "Новая" is a feminine form of the adjective "новый", which means, “new”. And "причёска" means, “a hairstyle”. |
| Yura: Is there a word for haircut? |
| Natalia: Sure. It’s "стрижка", but I think it’s not as commonly used as "причёска", especially in compliments. |
| Yura: So when did Katia give this "новая причёска"? |
| Natalia: Вчера, “yesterday”. She says, "вчера я была", which literally means, “yesterday, I was” where the verb "быть", “to be” is put into the past tense and feminine gender. |
| Yura: Can you say, yesterday I went instead of yesterday I was? |
| Natalia: Yeah, but I guess when the process is going to a place is not important, it’s more natural to say, “I was” or “I’ve been to” plus the destination itself. Я была в парикмахерской. |
| Yura: Парикмахерской comes from the word "парикмахерская", which is an adjective grammatically. Therefore it has to be modified as an adjective, even though it’s used as a noun. In our dialogue, we had to put it in the prepositional case because it goes after the preposition в". |
| Natalia: Right. As you might know, adjectives also have to be modified according to genders and cases. Therefore, "прихмахерская" underwent such modification but it’s not that important right now. The focus is on the vocabulary, not the grammar here. |
| Yura: Right. And the next word is? |
| Natalia: It’s a phrase that we have to stop at, Тебе очень идёт. |
| Yura: Literally, it means, “it goes you very much” but should be translated as, “it suits you a lot.” Let’s start with the key word, "идёт". "Идёт" comes from the word, "идти", “to go” conjugated to the third person and added to the noun or pronoun in the dative case. It takes on the meaning, “to suit”. So the pronoun is the key to the meaning here. |
| Natalia: Right. Let’s compare two sentences. он идёт “he goes”, ему идёт “it suits him.” |
| Yura: As you can hear the difference is in the pronoun. In the first phrase, we use "он", which is “he” in the nominative case. And in the second phrase, we use "ему", which is “he” in the dative case. |
| Natalia: So, the formula for the phrase, something suits somebody, is the noun or pronoun in the dative case plus идёт plus the object, Эдди, тебе идёт этот цвет! |
| Yura: This color suits me? Yeah, pink is my favorite color. |
| Natalia: Okay, let’s move on. The next two words, we’ll take a look at are "покраситься" and "постричься". |
| Yura: Which are, “to dye ones hair” and “to cut ones hair.” As you can hear, both verbs are reflexive which means, if we drop the ending "ся", we will need an object to perform these actions on. For example, покрасить Катю, “to dye, cut his hair”. |
| Natalia: Right. But the ending "ся" indicates that the action is performed on oneself rather than on somebody else. So, if you said, "постричь", you would need an object like "постричь волосы", which is “to cut ones hair”, where hair is the object. But "постричься" literally means, “to give oneself a haircut” or simply, “get a haircut”. |
| Yura: Next, we have a word for highlights which is? |
| Natalia: мелирование. It’s a noun in the neuter gender which is used with a verb "сделать", “to do.” "сделать мелирование". |
| Yura: And then we have a very important word, "мочь", which means, “can” or “to be able to.” This word conjugates in a pre-irregular way. Why don’t we go through the conjugations together? |
| Natalia: All right. я могу |
| Yura: I can. |
| Natalia: ты можешь |
| Yura: You can. |
| Natalia: он, она может |
| Yura: He can |
| Natalia: он, она может |
| Yura: She can. |
| Natalia: мы можем |
| Yura: We can |
| Natalia: вы можете |
| Yura: You can. |
| Natalia: они могут |
| Yura: They can. Great. So what exactly does Katia "может"? |
| Natalia: Она может посоветовать She can recommend. And then we had a pronoun in the dative case, тебе. |
| Yura: Dative again? |
| Natalia: Yes, when you’re doing something to somebody, you need to put that somebody in the dative case. |
| Yura: Since we have so many datives today, we should talk about it more in our grammar part. |
| Natalia: Okay, we will but we have two more words left. "хороший мастер". "Хороший" means, “good” and it’s an adjective. |
| Yura: We’ve learned the word, "хорошо", “good” in its adverb form which is used in simple answers like, "хорошо", or “okay, I agree” for example, but to modify a noun, when needed in its adjective form, хороший. |
| Natalia: Right. And the last word we have is, "мастер",which is easy to remember because it does mean, “a master” or “a specialist”. |
| Yura: Is that the word for hairdresser? |
| Natalia: A hairdresser is a profession with sound "парикмахер", similar to the hairdressers "парикмахерская".But in service industry, it’s very common to call "мастер", a hairdresser and aesthetician, a cobbler and other people that give you a good service. You won’t call a waitress, "мастер", only those people that are actually specialist in their sphere. |
| Yura: Right. Anyone can be a waiter but not everyone is a hairdresser without a special training. Okay, enough with the words for this lesson. We’ll talk about the dative case for this lesson. Can you tell us what the dative case is about? |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Natalia: The dative case indicates the receiver of the action and usually corresponds to the English word, “to”. It will be easier to understand it through the examples. Listen. Я дала книгу другу, “I gave a book to my friend.’ |
| Yura: A friend is the person who receives your book, therefore, it’s used in a dative case. |
| Natalia: Он помогает отцу - He helps his father |
| Yura: Here, the father is the one who receives help. Therefore he should be in a dative case. In both examples, we have the givers of the action, “I” and “he” and the receivers, friend, father. The receivers are those who are put into the dative case. Let’s take a sentence from the dialogue which has a dative case representative in it. |
| Natalia: Я могу посоветовать тебе хорошего мастера, I can recommend a good hairdresser to you. |
| Yura: Here, the giver is "Я", “I” and the receiver is you, "тебе", which is used in a dative case. |
| Natalia: Great. So, we defined what is or what should be the dative case. Now, let’s talk a little about how to form it. |
| Yura: To create nouns in the dative case, we’ll start with a nominative dictionary form. Masculine nouns usually end in "у"or "ю". So to put the word "друг", “friend” into the dative case, all you need to do is add "у" to the ending and get "другу", “to a friend”. |
| Natalia: Right, and feminine nouns usually end in "е" or "и". So the word "подруга" for example, a Natalia friend will sound as "подруге" in the dative case. You simply change the last letter into "e". |
| Yura: Yes. And now open the PDF file for this lesson and take a look at the more detailed explanation of how the dative case works, as well as how to put neuter and plural nouns into it. What I would like to mention though is that dative case is also used with the verb "нравиться", “to like”. Can you give us a couple of examples please? |
| Natalia: Sure. мне нравится Берлин |
| Yura: I like Berlin. |
| Natalia: брату нравится Лена |
| Yura: My brother likes Lianna. So basically, "нравиться" is translated as, “to somebody’s liking” where that somebody has to be put into the dative case. Natalia, тебе нравится моя причёска? |
| Natalia: You hairstyle, Очень, Эдди! |
| Yura: О, спасибо! So that’s just about does it for this lesson. |
| Natalia: Attention, iPhone, iPod or iPad users. |
| Yura: Listen, tap and swipe your way to fluency with our Russian language apps. |
| Natalia: Grow your vocabulary and practice on the go with our Russian language applications. |
| Yura: Fun and easy to use Russian apps are available on iTunes. |
| Natalia: Visit our iPhone page on russianpod101.com/iPhone now to learn more. |
Outro |
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| Yura:Bye. |
| Natalia:Bye. |
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