Learn how to talk about something that is possible or prohibited
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Oxana: [Привет всем, я Оксана!] |
| Eddie: Eddie here. Gengo Russian Season 1, Lesson 20. You’d better ask before you do this in Russia. |
| Oxana: Today our traveler has decided to get himself a little culture. |
| Eddie: Yes. John took the advice and is checking out the gallery in Moscow, which is something I'm ashamed to say I never did during my entire time living there. |
| Oxana: What? |
| Eddie: Yes, so I get to hear about it today for the first time too. Let’s listen. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Джон: [Скажите, во сколько открывается галерея?] |
| John: Skazhite, vo skol’ko otkryvaetsya galereya? |
| Женщина: [В 11.] |
| Woman: V odinadtsat’. |
| Джон: [А сейчас который час?] |
| John: A seichas kotoryi chas? |
| Женщина: [Сейчас 10:45.] |
| Woman: Seichas desyat’ sorokpyat’. |
| Джон: [Хорош, я подожду. Извините, здесь можно курить?] |
| John: Horosho, ya podozhdu. Izvinite, zdes’ mozhno kurit’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, к сожалению нельзя.] |
| Woman: Net, k sozhaleniyu nel’zya. |
| Джон: [Один билет и буклет, пожалуйста.] |
| John: Odin bilet i buklet, pozhaluista. |
| Женщина: [300 рублей.] |
| Woman: Trista rublei. |
| Джон: [А внутри мижно фотографировать?] |
| John: A vnutri mozhno fotografirovat’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, фотогтафировать нельзя. Но вы можете приобтести у нас книгу о галерее на английском языке.] |
| Woman: Net, fotografirovat’ nel’zya. No vy mozhete priobresti u nas knigu o galeree na angliiskom yazyke. |
| Джон: [Спасибо.] |
| John: Spasibo |
| Eddie: Once again, more slowly. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз. медленнее. |
| Джон: [Скажите, во сколько открывается галерея?] |
| John: Skazhite, vo skol’ko otkryvaetsya galereya? |
| Женщина: [В 11.] |
| Woman: V odinadtsat’. |
| Джон: [А сейчас который час?] |
| John: A seichas kotoryi chas? |
| Женщина: [Сейчас 10:45.] |
| Woman: Seichas desyat’ sorokpyat’. |
| Джон: [Хорош, я подожду. Извините, здесь можно курить?] |
| John: Horosho, ya podozhdu. Izvinite, zdes’ mozhno kurit’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, к сожалению нельзя.] |
| Woman: Net, k sozhaleniyu nel’zya. |
| Джон: [Один билет и буклет, пожалуйста.] |
| John: Odin bilet i buklet, pozhaluista. |
| Женщина: [300 рублей.] |
| Woman: Trista rublei. |
| Джон: [А внутри мижно фотографировать?] |
| John: A vnutri mozhno fotografirovat’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, фотогтафировать нельзя. Но вы можете приобтести у нас книгу о галерее на английском языке.] |
| Woman: Net, fotografirovat’ nel’zya. No vy mozhete priobresti u nas knigu o galeree na angliiskom yazyke. |
| Джон: [Спасибо.] |
| John: Spasibo |
| Eddie: Once again, with the translation. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз, с переводом. |
| Oxana: [Скажите, во сколько открывается галерея?] |
| Eddie: Excuse me, what time does the gallery open? |
| Oxana: [В 11.] |
| Eddie: At 11 o’clock. |
| Oxana: [А сейчас который час?] |
| Eddie: And what time is it now? |
| Oxana: [Сейчас 10:45.] |
| Eddie: It’s 10.45 now. |
| Oxana: [Хорош, я подожду. Извините, здесь можно курить?] |
| Eddie: Ok, I’ll wait. I'm sorry, can I smoke here? |
| Oxana: [Нет, к сожалению нельзя.] |
| Eddie: No, unfortunately you can’t. |
| Oxana:[Один билет и буклет, пожалуйста.] |
| Eddie: One ticket and a booklet, please. |
| Oxana: [300 рублей.] |
| Eddie: 300 rubles. |
| Oxana:[А внутри мижно фотографировать?] |
| Eddie: Can I take pictures inside? |
| Oxana: [Нет, фотогтафировать нельзя. Но вы можете приобтести у нас книгу о галерее на английском языке.] |
| Eddie: No, you can’t take pictures. But you can purchase a book about the gallery in English here. |
| Oxana: [Спасибо.] |
| Eddie: Thank you. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Eddie: Ok. Well, it sounds like they’re on a tight ship at the Moscow museum. |
| Oxana: Yeah, they’re a little strict. |
| Eddie: Well, they do have all those paintings and sculptures to protect. Ok, let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Oxana: [Скажите] |
| Eddie: Excuse me. Tell me, please. |
| Oxana: [Скажите] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Во сколько] |
| Eddie: At what time. |
| Oxana:[Во сколько] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Открываться] |
| Eddie: To open. |
| Oxana:[Открываться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Галерея] |
| Eddie: Gallery. |
| Oxana: [Галерея] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Который час] |
| Eddie: What time is it? |
| Oxana: [Который час] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Подождать] |
| Eddie: Wait (perfective aspect). |
| Oxana: [Подождать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Здесь] |
| Eddie: Here. |
| Oxana: [Здесь] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Можно] |
| Eddie: It’s ok to, be allowed to, possible to. |
| Oxana:[Можно] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Курить] |
| Eddie:Smoke. |
| Oxana: [Курить] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[К сожалению] |
| Eddie: Unfortunately. |
| Oxana:[К сожалению] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Нельзя] |
| Eddie: Forbidden to, not allowed to, impossible. |
| Oxana:[Нельзя] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Буклет] |
| Eddie: Booklet. |
| Oxana:[Буклет] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Внутри] |
| Eddie: Inside. |
| Oxana:[Внутри] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Фотографировать] |
| Eddie: Take pictures. |
| Oxana:[Фотографировать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[Приобрести] |
| Eddie: Purchase (perfective aspect). |
| Oxana: [Приобрести] |
| Eddie:Next. |
| Oxana: [Книга] |
| Eddie:Book. |
| Oxana: [Книга] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [О] |
| Eddie: About. |
| Oxana: [О] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Английский язык] |
| Eddie: English language. |
| Oxana: [Английский язык] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Eddie: Let’s take a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Oxana: We start out with John arriving at the museum bright and early. |
| Eddie: Yes, so he finds the doors closed. Of course, he wants to know whether he has time to grab a coffee so he asks… |
| Oxana: [Во сколько открывается галерея?] |
| Eddie: In today’s lesson we have two time-related phrases. [Во сколько] would be the first one. |
| Oxana: It means “what time” but only in the context of “at what time”. |
| Eddie: Yes, it’s a question phrase used in questions like “what does the train leave” or “what time does something open” and so on, but never in the question “what time is it now”. |
| Oxana: Yes, we have another phrase for that. [Который час] which literally means “what hour”. You can add [сейчас] and get [Сейчас который час?] meaning “what time is it now”. |
| Eddie: But we’ve just skipped forward and missed the word for “open”. |
| Oxana: Right, [открываться]. Actually, we’ll talk about this word more in our grammar point part. |
| Eddie: Ok, so the staff tells John the time. |
| Oxana:10.45, [Десять - соро кпять.] |
| Eddie: And he realizes he has to wait, so he says… |
| Oxana: [Хорошо, я подожду] |
| Eddie: “Ok, I’ll wait.” [Подожду] literally means “I will wait” and is used in the perfective aspect. Well, it’s logical to use the perfective aspect in this case, isn’t it? His waiting will be successfully finished in 15 minutes, therefore we turn a simple verb [ждать] into the perfective aspect of the future tense and get [подожду]. |
| Oxana:That’s right. But he has to kill those 15 minutes somehow. They’re obviously not enough for coffee, and it turns out John is a smoker. |
| Eddie:Oh, I wonder whether he picked it up in Russia. Was the business there so stressful? But before lighting his cigarette, he asks a staff member whether he’s allowed to do that by the door of the gallery. |
| Oxana: [Здесь можно курить?] |
| Eddie: “Is it ok to smoke here?” So the word for “to smoke” is [курить] and the word [можно] needs some extra attention. |
| Oxana: Yes, it’s a very interesting word that can substitute for a lot of different words in English. There are two main meanings this word has, “allowed” and “possible”. |
| Eddie: Yes, we can express both permission and possibility through this word. |
| Oxana: And also, in most cases, this word doesn’t need any pronouns. |
| Eddie:Yes, so even if John were there with his friends and all of them wanted to smoke, they would still ask [можно курить?]. |
| Oxana: This word is very impersonal and it expresses the general rules or state of affairs. So the English “Can I smoke here”, “Can they smoke here” and “Is it ok to smoke here” are expressed with only one word - [можно]. |
| Eddie: The verb that goes after [можно] is an infinitive. |
| Oxana:[Можно войти?/ Можно взять?] |
| Eddie: Another meaning of this word expresses the possibility. For example… |
| Oxana:[Можно войти?] |
| Eddie: May I come in? |
| Oxana: [Можно взять?] |
| Eddie: “May I take one?” Another meaning of this word expresses possibility. For example… |
| Oxana:[Там можно купить билеты.] |
| Eddie:“It’s possible to buy tickets there.” But in English it can be translated as “You can buy tickets there” or “We can buy tickets there” depending on the person and the context. So can John smoke at the door of the gallery? |
| Oxana: [Нет, к сожалению нельзя.] |
| Eddie: Unfortunately, no. And we have another word we should stop on. The exact opposite of [можно]. |
| Oxana: [нельзя] It’s also an impersonal adverb and it also has two meanings. One expresses prohibition and the other expresses impossibility. For example, [мне нельзя курить] means “I'm not allowed to” or “I can’t, I shouldn’t smoke”. |
| Eddie: Of course, if we want to specify the person we can add a pronoun to make sure it’s you that is not allowed to smoke, but the pronoun should be put into the dative case. |
| Oxana: Like [Ему нельзя сюда] meaning “He’s not allowed in here”. |
| Eddie: Also, give us an example where [нельзя] expresses impossibility. |
| Oxana: [Здесь нельзя найти англоговорящего человека.] |
| Eddie: “It’s impossible to” or “I can’t, we can’t, you can’t etc. find an English speaking person here.” |
| Oxana: And it seems like it’s a day of disappointments because later we hear another disappointment for John. |
| Eddie: Yes, but before we know what it was we have first to learn what John wanted to do. Well, he wanted to buy a ticket first but after he did that… |
| Oxana: He wanted to [фотографировать]. |
| Eddie: Which means “take a picture”. |
| Oxana: Such a useful vocabulary word for a tourist. |
| Eddie:Ok, so some tourists apparently want to take photos in a museum, but maybe some of us may want to take photos of other things. |
| Oxana: :Yes, so you could use this phrase to ask permission to take a photo anywhere. You just say [можно фотографитовать?]. |
| Eddie: But actually [фотографировать] means “to take pictures” in general because it’s an imperfective verb, but if you have something specific you want to snap, you should add one little letter [с] to the beginning of the word, like this. |
| Oxana: [Сфотографировать] For example, [Можно вас сфотографировать] meaning “Can I take a picture of you?” |
| Eddie: Or you can just follow my policy that it’s better to beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. |
| Oxana: You’re such a rebel, Eddie. |
| Eddie: I'm not like our well-behaved tourist, John, obviously. By the way, he’s not allowed to take pictures inside, but he’s advised to purchase a book with pictures and English descriptions. |
| Oxana: [Вы можете приобрести у нас книгу о галерее на ангкийском языке.] |
| Eddie: “You can purchase a book about the gallery in English here.” [Вы можете] literally means “you can” but it can easily be replaced by the word we already know - [можно]. Here, the seller needs to sell those books so she’s trying to be more personal and persuasive. |
| Oxana: Right. The word [приобрести] means “to purchase” but can be replaced with [купить] meaning “buy”. It’s just a more formal version of “to buy”. |
| Eddie: Then we had a word for “a book”, [книга], which we had to put into the accusative case which is [книгу]. |
| Oxana: And the book is [о галерее] meaning “about the gallery”. “The gallery” is put into the prepositional case. Do you remember why? |
| Eddie: In Russian, the prepositional case is used after the prepositions [о], “about”, [в], “in”, and [на], “at”. |
| Oxana: Right. And if you forgot how to form this case, take a look at the PDF notes because there is a reminder for you there. |
| Eddie: The last new phrase we had was “in English”. Before, we learned how to talk about speaking a language. |
| Oxana: [По-английски, по-русски.] |
| Eddie: And today we have a new context. When we are talking about something written in the language, we usually say that with the preposition [на] meaning “on”. |
| Oxana: [На русском, на английском.] |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Eddie: Today’s grammar will not be difficult if you’ve been studying the previous lessons carefully”. |
| Oxana:That’s true. We’ll need all your knowledge about the verbs now. |
| Eddie: There’s another thing that can happen to the Russian verbs, they can suddenly get endings [ся] or [сь] which will turn them into reflexive verbs. What are reflexive verbs, Axanna? |
| Oxana: Reflexive verbs in Russian are used to indicate the concept of “self”. For example, “I wash myself”. In this sentence, the subject and the object are actually the same person. |
| Eddie: When this happens in English, we use a word ending with “self” or simply omit the object. In Russian, you simply add [ся] or [сь] to the verb. |
| Oxana: Right, and apart from these endings, reflexive verbs are formed almost the same way as all other Russian verbs. |
| Eddie: Let’s compare the reflexive verbs with the normal ones so we can get a clear idea of what they are. Let’s pick a verb first. For example, let’s look at the word for “hit”. |
| Oxana: [Ударить] As example let’s take [Он ударил Ивана] meaning “He hurt Ivan”. And [Он ударился] meaning “He hurt himself”. |
| Eddie: To conjugate a reflexive verb you need to drop [ся] or [сь], then conjugate it according to the usual rules. We gave you some examples in the PDF materials, but let’s listen to some here. |
| Oxana: [Магазин открывается в 9 утра.] |
| Eddie: The store opens at 9 AM. |
| Oxana: [Дверь не закрывается] |
| Eddie: The door isn’t closing. |
| Oxana: [Когда начинается концер.] |
| Eddie: When does the concert begin? |
| Oxana: [Фильм уже кончился.] |
| Eddie: “The movie has already finished.” So, as you can see, we use reflexive verbs to show that the subject performs an action on itself and not on someone else. |
| Oxana:Right. In our dialogue it was [Когда талерея открывается.] meaning “When does the gallery open?” Even in English you don’t ask “When will you open this gallery,” right? It’s always like the gallery is kind of supposed to be open at some point without anyone’s help. |
Outro |
| Eddie: That just about does it for today. See you soon. |
| Oxana: [Пока!] |
| -- |
| Джон: [Скажите, во сколько открывается галерея?] |
| John: Skazhite, vo skol’ko otkryvaetsya galereya? |
| Женщина: [В 11.] |
| Woman: V odinadtsat’. |
| Джон: [А сейчас который час?] |
| John: A seichas kotoryi chas? |
| Женщина: [Сейчас 10:45.] |
| Woman: Seichas desyat’ sorokpyat’. |
| Джон: [Хорош, я подожду. Извините, здесь можно курить?] |
| John: Horosho, ya podozhdu. Izvinite, zdes’ mozhno kurit’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, к сожалению нельзя.] |
| Woman: Net, k sozhaleniyu nel’zya. |
| Джон: [Один билет и буклет, пожалуйста.] |
| John: Odin bilet i buklet, pozhaluista. |
| Женщина: [300 рублей.] |
| Woman: Trista rublei. |
| Джон: [А внутри мижно фотографировать?] |
| John: A vnutri mozhno fotografirovat’? |
| Женщина: [Нет, фотогтафировать нельзя. Но вы можете приобтести у нас книгу о галерее на английском языке.] |
| Woman: Net, fotografirovat’ nel’zya. No vy mozhete priobresti u nas knigu o galeree na angliiskom yazyke. |
| Джон: [Спасибо.] |
| John: Spasibo |
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