Learn about the diminutive form and what Russian night life is all about
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Yura: Всем привет, с Вами Yura, welcome to RussianPod101. Intermediate series Season 1, lesson 3 - A Tough Russian Customer. |
| Svetlana: I’m Svetlana, hey, everyone. So what are we going to learn this lesson? |
| Yura: In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to use diminutive stems for adjectives. |
| Svetlana: This lesson will take place at a bar. |
| Yura: The conversation takes place between девушка и парень. |
| Svetlana: The speakers are friends, so the conversation will basically informal. |
| Yura: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| A: Вот, это наш новый бар. Как тебе? |
| B: По-моему, шумноват... |
| A: Да ладно! Посмотри, какой оригинальный интерьер, какие экзотические блюда в меню... |
| B: Меню маловато... |
| A: Послушай, какая музыка! |
| B: Музыка немного странновата... |
| A: Ну ты зануда! |
| Yura: Let’s listen to the conversation one time slowly. |
| A: Вот, это наш новый бар. Как тебе? |
| B: По-моему, шумноват... |
| A: Да ладно! Посмотри, какой оригинальный интерьер, какие экзотические блюда в меню... |
| B: Меню маловато... |
| A: Послушай, какая музыка! |
| B: Музыка немного странновата... |
| A: Ну ты зануда! |
| Yura: Let’s listen to the conversation with English translation. |
| A: Вот, это наш новый бар. Как тебе? |
| A: Here, this is our new bar. What do you think? |
| B: По-моему, шумноват... |
| B: As for me, it's a bit too noisy... |
| A: Да ладно! Посмотри, какой оригинальный интерьер, какие экзотические блюда в меню... |
| A: Oh come on! Look how original the interior is, how exotic the dishes in the menu are! |
| B: Меню маловато... |
| B: The menu is a bit too small... |
| A: Послушай, какая музыка! |
| A: Listen to the music they have here! |
| B: Музыка немного странновата... |
| B: The music is kind of weird... |
| A: Ну ты зануда! |
| A: You are such a bore! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Yura: The guy is not fun to hang out with. |
| Svetlana: That’s for sure. By the way, how old do you have to be to be able to get into a bar and actually have a drink? |
| Yura: Just as in most countries in the world, the legal drinking age in Russia is 18 years old, as well as for buying cigarettes. |
| Svetlana: So they are strict about IDs there, right? |
| Yura: It’s definitely stricter now than it was before, especially if you are in a good club or a liquor store. |
| Svetlana: And what kind of ID are people asked for when buying those things? |
| Yura: I know that the last time we checked, the list of identification documents was still being developed. But I’m sure that for foreigners it would only be their international passport, and for Russians, it might also be their driver’s licence, military ID, or even permanent or temporary resident ID. |
| Svetlana: Yeah, and as any foreigner should carry their passport around anywhere they go anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem. |
| Yura: Right. So let’s take a look at the vocabulary we have in this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Yura: The first word we have is... |
| Svetlana: оригинальный [natural native speed] |
| Yura: original, authentic, interesting |
| Svetlana: оригинальный [slowly - broken down by syllable] оригинальный [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: интерьер [natural native speed] |
| Yura: interior |
| Svetlana: интерьер [slowly - broken down by syllable] интерьер [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: экзотический [natural native speed] |
| Yura: exotic |
| Svetlana: экзотический [slowly - broken down by syllable] экзотический [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: блюдо [natural native speed] |
| Yura: dish |
| Svetlana: блюдо [slowly - broken down by syllable] блюдо [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: зануда [natural native speed] |
| Yura: a bore, a drag |
| Svetlana: зануда [slowly - broken down by syllable] зануда [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: ладно [natural native speed] |
| Yura: ok, all right, come on |
| Svetlana: ладно [slowly - broken down by syllable] ладно [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: шумноватый [natural native speed] |
| Yura: a little loud |
| Svetlana: шумноватый [slowly - broken down by syllable] шумноватый [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: послушать [natural native speed] |
| Yura: listen |
| Svetlana: послушать [slowly - broken down by syllable] послушать [natural native speed] |
| Yura: Next |
| Svetlana: посмотреть [natural native speed] |
| Yura: look |
| Svetlana: посмотреть [slowly - broken down by syllable] посмотреть [natural native speed] |
| Yura: And last... |
| Svetlana: по-моему [natural native speed] |
| Yura: in my opinion, as for me |
| Svetlana: по-моему [slowly - broken down by syllable] по-моему [natural native speed] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Yura: Ok, let’s have a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. The first one will be оригинальный. |
| Svetlana: I’m guessing you figured the meaning of it, it means “original, authentic.” But in Russian, this word is often used in the meaning of “interesting” or “extraordinary.” |
| Yura: Like, орининальный танец would mean “an interesting dance,” one different from a lot of others. |
| Svetlana: In the dialogue it was оригинальный интерьер, where интерьер is obviously “interior.” |
| Yura: The next word also sounds very similar to its English translation – экзотический (“exotic”). |
| Svetlana: In the dialogue we had экзотические блюда. Even though the words like оригинальный and экзотический are of a foreign origin, we still have to apply the rules of Russian grammar to them. As they are both adjectives, they must agree with the nouns they describe in gender and number. |
| Yura: Right, so if интерьер is masculine, and it is, then оригинальный is also masculine. |
| Svetlana: And блюда (“dishes”) is plural, so экзотические must also be plural. |
| Yura: By the way, the word блюдо is a dish, but it’s mostly used in the sense of a cooked dish. We don’t really use it in the context of washing the dishes, for example, unless these are really big and fancy dishes we’re talking about. |
| Svetlana: Right. Dishes in general, like china, we call посуда. And the last word for today is зануда. |
| Yura: It’s a noun to describe a really boring, phlegmatic, grumpy, cranky person that annoys and irritates everyone. What would be a good example? |
| Svetlana: I don’t know, probably my friend Vadim. Nothing is ever good for him, nothing makes him happy, and it’s just so boring to talk to him. Did I say he was my friend? I don’t think he is anymore! |
| Yura: Haha. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Yura: In this lesson, we’re going to look at diminutive forms. |
| Svetlana: You’ve probably noticed we had a bunch of weird-sounding adjectives in the dialogue. |
| Yura: They were шумноват, маловато, and странновата, and as you might have guessed from the stems, they come from the words шумный (“noisy, loud”), “мало” (“little, few”), and странный (“strange, odd, weird”). |
| Svetlana: The forms you heard them in are the diminutive forms. |
| Yura: So yes, in this lesson, we will learn the diminutive forms of the adjectives and adverbs. |
| Svetlana: In Russian they are formed with the help of suffixes, when in English they can be translated as “a little too…,” “kind of…” |
| Yura: Of course you can just use the word немного (“a little”) and add simple adjectives or adverbs to describe quantities and degrees in Russian. For example, |
| Svetlana: немного шумный |
| Yura: “a little loud, noisy” |
| Svetlana: немного маленький |
| Yura: “a little small” |
| Svetlana: немного странно |
| Yura: “(It’s) a little strange” |
| Svetlana: But the diminutive forms of the adjectives and adverbs we will learn today contain some nuances; they usually imply that something is “not enough” or “a bit too much” for a certain purpose. They convey a personal attitude about what is described. |
| Yura: Let’s take 2 phrases to compare. |
| Svetlana: он немного странный человек. |
| Yura: “He is a rather strange person.” |
| Svetlana: он странноватый человек. |
| Yura: “He is kind of a weird person.” |
| Svetlana: The difference is not significant, although in the second phrase it’s clear that it’s your personal opinion of a person, and it implies that you disapprove of that; by contrast, the first one can be just a general statement everyone agrees on, not necessarily a bad one. |
| Yura: Right. There are certain rules for forming these diminutive forms, but in order to do that we have to be familiar with the differences among adjectives, short adjectives, and adverbs, as well as when and where to use them. |
| Svetlana: And to be on the safe side, we’ll just give you a quick reminder about them. First, what are adverbs? |
| Yura: Adverbs are the words we use to describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They usually answer the question “How?” and end in -o. For example, |
| идти быстро – “to go fast” (быстро is an adverb) |
| здесь тихо. – “It’s quiet here.” (тихо is an adverb) |
| Svetlana: OK, good. What are normal adjectives? |
| Yura: They are the words we use to describe nouns – people and objects. They come before nouns and their endings vary with the gender and number of the noun. |
| Svetlana: For example, |
| милый щенок – a cute puppy |
| милая девочка – a cute girl |
| милое создание – a cute creature |
| милые люди – nice people |
| Yura: And last, short adjectives. We use short adjectives to make statements about things, like “He is busy.” |
| Svetlana: Unlike normal adjectives, the short ones are put after the nouns, but they still have to agree with nouns in gender and number. The endings of the short adjectives are kind of “cut short.” |
| Yura: For example, |
| щенок мил. – “The puppy is cute.” |
| девочка мила. – “The girl is cute.” |
| создание мило. – “The creature is cute” |
| люди милы. – “The people are cute (nice).” |
| Svetlana: Great, now back to the diminutives. |
| Yura: Most normal and short adjectives, as well as adverbs, can have diminutive forms. |
| They all have the same endings as if they weren’t diminutive – the difference is in the suffixes we put before them. |
| Svetlana: Let’s get back to the words from our dialogue. They were |
| шумноват – маловато – странновата |
| Yura: Шумноват (“a bit too noisy”) comes from the adjective шумный. |
| What we did was drop the ending ый and add the masculine suffix -оват. We got a short adjective in masculine gender. If we wanted to get a normal adjective, we would stick ый back on the end of the word to get шумноватый. |
| Svetlana: Right. Compare бар шумноват (“The bar is a bit too noisy”) and шумноватый бар (“a bit-too-noisy bar”). |
| Yura: Next, Странновата (“kind of weird”) comes from странный. |
| Svetlana: We dropped the ending ый and added the feminine suffix -овата. We got a short adjective in the feminine gender. For the normal adjective, we would have to add the feminine ending for normal adjectives, -ая. |
| Yura: Compare these two examples, |
| музыка странновата. – “The music is a bit weird.” |
| странноватая музыка – “rather weird music” |
| Svetlana: And last, we have an adverb, маловато. |
| Yura: With adverbs, all we have to do is add the suffix -вато to the adverb and forget about gender and number. |
| Svetlana: мало (“little”) + вато = маловато (“a bit too little,” “kind of small”) |
| быстро (“fast”) + вато = быстровато (“a bit too fast,” “kind of fast”) |
| Yura: Great! In the PDF file you can find a table of adjectives’ and adverbs’ diminutives. Take a look; it will really help you understand! |
Outro |
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