Learn everything you need to know about the imperative form of Russian reflective verbs
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Eddie: Eddie here. Beginner Series Season 2, Lesson 23 – Could you take your clothes off? |
| Oksana: Like it wasn’t enough for our dear friend to deal with the Russian police. Now he got poisoned with fish and is heading to the doctor. |
| Eddie: Yes, the guy has gone through all possible misfortunes in Russia. |
| Oksana: We hope you can learn from his experience, and if not, now you at least know how to deal with these troubles. |
| Eddie: I hope you remember not to keep your wallet in a back pocket and not to eat suspicious foods. |
| Oksana: If something smells wrong to you, trust your nose, not a waitress. |
| Eddie: Let’s listen to the conversation and find out whether a doctor could help Kevin or not. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Oksana: [Что Вас беспокоит?] |
| Eddie: [У меня болит живот и меня тошнит. Я думаю, я отравился.] |
| Oksana: [Разденьтесь, пожалуйста, я Вас осмотрю. ] |
| Eddie: Once again, slowly. |
| Oksana: [Еще раз, медленнее. Что Вас беспокоит?] |
| Eddie: [У меня болит живот и меня тошнит. Я думаю, я отравился.] |
| Oksana: [Разденьтесь, пожалуйста, я Вас осмотрю.] |
| Eddie: Once again, with the translation. |
| Oksana: Еще раз, с переводом. Что Вас беспокоит? |
| Eddie: What seems to be the problem? |
| Oksana: У меня болит живот и меня тошнит. Я думаю, я отравился. |
| Eddie: I have a stomach ache and I feel sick. I think it’s food poisoning. |
| Oksana: Разденьтесь, пожалуйста, я Вас осмотрю. |
| Eddie: Could you take your clothes off, please? I’ll examine you. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Oksana: Why does he have to take his clothes off if he has a stomach ache. |
| Eddie: Oksana, you’re obviously not experienced in health problems, which is great, but I used to have stomach aches all the time when I was little. The first thing a doctor does is need some creases and taps your stomach to find out the sore point. |
| Oksana: So the louder you scream, the more clear it becomes for a doctor? |
| Eddie: He also can feel if you have any swelling inside. Anyway, you don’t have to know that. You look like a girl who can digest nails to me. Let’s take a look at the vocabulary already. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Oksana: [Беспокоить] |
| Eddie: To bother, to worry, to ale. |
| Oksana: [Беспокоить] |
| Eddie: Next one. |
| Oksana: [Болеть] |
| Eddie: To hurt. |
| Oksana: [Болеть] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Живот] |
| Eddie: Stomach. |
| Oksana: [Живот] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Меня тошнит] |
| Eddie: I feel sick, I feel nauseous. |
| Oksana: [Меня тошнит] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Раздеться] |
| Eddie: To get undressed, to take off one’s clothes. |
| Oksana: [Раздеться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Отравиться] |
| Eddie: To get food poisoning. |
| Oksana: [Отравиться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Осмотреть] |
| Eddie: To examine. |
| Oksana: [Осмотреть] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Eddie: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Oksana: The first word we’ll look at is [беспокоить], which means “to bother” or “to worry”. |
| Eddie: You can use it both regarding your aching body parts and people that bother you. How would you say “Don’t bother him”? |
| Oksana: [Не беспокой его.] But if you say [Я беспокоюсь о нем], it will mean “I’m worried about him”. There is also a useful phrase you can remember with this word. [Не беспокойся] |
| Eddie: Which is “don’t worry”. The next word we had was the word for “hurt”. |
| Oksana: [Болеть] |
| Eddie: Which is used in two cases. First, when you talk about the hurting part of your body. |
| Oksana: [У меня болит живот.] |
| Eddie: “I have a stomach ache.” And second, when you talk about being sick in general. |
| Oksana: [Я болею.] |
| Eddie: Literally, it can be translated as “I’m hurting”, but the meaning is “I’m sick” or “I’m ill”. We mentioned Kevin’s problems already, right? The stomach. |
| Oksana: [Живот] .[ Живот] can mean any organ in your abdominal area. |
| Eddie: He also says that he feels sick. |
| Oksana: [Меня тошнит] . [Тошнить] means “to be sick of” but the pronoun before it should be used in the genitive case, [Меня тошнит. Его тошнит. Ее тошнит.] and so on. |
| Eddie: Does this word have a meaning similar to the English “I’m sick of something”. |
| Oksana: It does. The exact same meaning. Just instead of the English “of” you should put Russian [от]. [Меня тошнит от тебя.] |
| Eddie: You’re sick of me? |
| Oksana: No, no, no. There’s one other guy I just thought of. [Не беспокойся] |
| Eddie: Ok, well, the next phrase we had was… |
| Oksana: [Я думаю] which is the literal “I think”. Before we also learned [по-моему]. These two phrases are interchangeable. [Я думаю] is a tiny bit more formal than [по-моему]. Besides, [по-моему] also has a meaning of “I guess” and “it seems” when [я думаю] is nothing but “I think”. |
| Eddie: Kevin thinks he’s got food poisoning. |
| Oksana: [Я отравился] |
| Eddie: The infinitive will be [отравиться], “to get”, “to be poisoned”. And if you drop the ending [ся], you’ll get the verb for “to poison”, [отравить]. |
| Oksana: [Официантка отравила Кэвина.] |
| Eddie: Yes, a waitress poisoned Kevin. What does the doctor tell him to do? |
| Oksana: [Раздеться] |
| Eddie: “To undress”, “to take your clothes off”. I'm sure you’d like to know the command form for this. |
| Oksana: [Разденьтесь], that would be the formal. The informal “take off your clothes” command sounds as [разденься]. |
| Eddie: And seeing a surprise Kevin’s face, a doctor feels like explaining his intentions. |
| Oksana: [Я Вас осмотрю] . [ Осмотреть] means “to examine”. And the examination as a noun would sound as [осмотр]. |
| Eddie: But you can use this verb in a context other than medical. You can use [осмотреть] in the meaning of “take a look from all sides and all corners”, something like that. |
| Oksana: Right. If you want to [осмотреть] a museum, it means you want to take a look into every pavilion. As in English, it would probably sound as just “to visit”, right? |
| Eddie: Well, you can say that. Can we [осмотреть] some particular object, let’s say a monument? |
| Oksana: Sure, but it will mean that you are looking at it from all sides and from all angles. So we can say there’s a slight note of examining in the word. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Eddie: Today, we’ll focus on the verbs. I'm sure you’ll like today’s grammar, as who doesn’t like to command and give orders once in a while. |
| Oksana: Yes, today we’ll learn formal and informal forms of the imperative verbs. Imperative verbs are not always bossy in Russian if you add polite endings to them and say “please”. |
| Eddie: In an informal situation, if you use [ты] with someone, the imperative form usually ends in [и], “I” or [soft sign]. |
| Oksana: Here are some examples. [Скажи!] |
| Eddie: Tell! |
| Oksana: [Повтори!] |
| Eddie: Repeat! |
| Oksana: [Дай!] |
| Eddie: Give! |
| Oksana: [Слушай!] |
| Eddie: Listen! |
| Oksana: [Встань!] |
| Eddie: “Stand up”. The verbs ending in [at] in an infinitive form mainly take the ending [I] in the command forms, and the verbs ending in [ит] mainly take [и]. However, it isn’t always true, and the best way to know which ending you should use is to learn it. |
| Oksana: Unfortunately, that’s how it is. |
| Eddie: In a formal situation or when we speak to more than one person, we take the informal imperative form and add [те]. Listen to the same examples, Oksana gave us a second ago, but now in the polite imperative forms. |
| Oksana: [Скажите!] |
| Eddie: Tell! |
| Oksana: [Повторите!] |
| Eddie: Repeat! |
| Oksana: [Дайте!] |
| Eddie: Give! |
| Oksana: [Слушайте!] |
| Eddie: Listen! |
| Oksana: [Встаньте!] |
| Eddie: “Stand up!” Also, let’s remind you about the reflexive verbs in the Russian language. |
| Oksana: Reflexive verbs in Russian are used to indicate the concept of self, for example “I dressed myself”. “He shaved himself”. |
| Eddie: It’s just that, in English, you can go without mentioning the direct object. For instance, “I shaved”. You don’t need to say “I shaved myself”, but in Russian you can’t make that expression without inserting the “myself” the Russian way. |
| Oksana: Yes, so when this happens in English, you use the word [self] or simply omit the object. In Russian, you simply add [ся] or [сь] to the verb. [Садитесь] |
| Eddie: “Sit down.” Literally, “Sit yourself down”. |
| Oksana: [Разденьтесь] |
| Eddie: “Undress”, or literally, “undress yourself”. Forming the imperative form of reflexive verbs is similar, you just need to follow some simple steps to do it correctly. Let’s take [садиться], “to sit down”, as an example. To form the imperative form of [садиться], you should drop the suffix [ся]. |
| Oksana: So you get [садить]. |
| Eddie: Put [садить] in its imperative form. |
| Oksana: And it will be [сади] if it’s informal or [садите] if it’s formal. |
| Eddie: Then, if the result ends in a vowel, add [с]. If the result ends in a consonant, add [ся]. In our case, both forms end in a vowel so we add [с]. |
| Oksana: So finally we get [садись], which is informal, or [садитесь] which is formal. |
| Eddie: Give us a couple more examples of the reflexive command verbs,Oksana. |
| Oksana: Here are some nice ones.[ Просыпайся!] |
| Eddie: “Wake up!” - informal. |
| Oksana: [Улыбнитесь, пожалуйста!] |
| Eddie: “Smile, please!” - formal or plural. That just about does it for today. Ok, some of our listeners already know about the most powerful tool on RussianPod101.com. |
Outro |
| Oksana: Line by line audio. |
| Eddie: The perfect tool for rapidly improving listening comprehension. |
| Oksana: By listening to lines of the conversation again and again. |
| Eddie: Listen until every word and syllable becomes clear. Basically, we break down the dialogue into comprehensible, bite-sized sentences. |
| Oksana: You can try the line by line audio in the Premium Learning Center at RussianPod101.com. |
| Eddie: So thanks for being with us today. See you soon. |
| Oksana: [Пока!] |
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