Learn the Russian verbs "to pay" and "to have"
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Oksana: [Привет всем!] |
| Eddie: Eddie here. Lower Intermediate Series Season 1, Lesson 15. How to replenish your money while in Russia. Welcome to the final scene of the delicate situation a guy and a girl are involved in. |
| Oksana: Just a quick reminder to you - there was a guy named Vlad. Once he met a girl named Ira and decided to play a cool guy. He introduced himself as an important banker and thought it would help him, well, in whatever he was trying to do. I don’t know whether he succeeded that time but he obviously thought he’d never see the girl again. |
| Eddie: Right, and then sometime later he bumps into Ira on the street and reveals the truth. He’s just a student living in a dorm and he’s sorry for the show he pulled last time. He obviously like Ira and wants to make up for things. |
| Oksana: Yes, but she’s being pretty sarcastic about all his attempts, although she also seems to be interested in him so she’s not being too harsh. She knows where to stop. |
| Eddie: Yeah, she seems to like him too but she feels on top of the situation and can afford to play with Vlad’s feelings and pride a bit. Anyway, last time he invited her to the restaurant so I guess we’ll be joining the guys in the middle of dinner. Let’s listen to the conversation and find out how this story ends. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Oksana: Спасибо, Влад, замечательный ужин. Девушка, счёт, пожалуйста! |
| Eddie: Ира, я заплачу! |
| Oksana: Своей стипендией? Не смеши. Я сама заплачу. Кстати, разрешите представиться, менеджер банка "Альфа". |
| Eddie: Ты серьёзно?... У меня нет слов… |
| Oksana: Серьёзнее не бывает! Ну, что, поехали ко мне? Такси! |
| Eddie: Once again, more slowly. |
| Oksana: Еще раз, медленнее. Спасибо, Влад, замечательный ужин. Девушка, счёт, пожалуйста! |
| Eddie: Ира, я заплачу! |
| Oksana: Своей стипендией? Не смеши. Я сама заплачу. Кстати, разрешите представиться, менеджер банка "Альфа". |
| Eddie: Ты серьёзно?... У меня нет слов… |
| Oksana: Серьёзнее не бывает! Ну, что, поехали ко мне? Такси! |
| Eddie: Once again with a translation. |
| Oksana: Еще раз, с переводом. Спасибо, Влад, замечательный ужин. Девушка, счёт, пожалуйста! |
| Eddie: Thank you, Vlad, it was a wonderful dinner. Waitress, a bill, please. |
| Oksana: Ира, я заплачу! |
| Eddie: Ira, I'll pay! |
| Oksana: Своей стипендией? Не смеши. Я сама заплачу. Кстати, разрешите представиться, менеджер банка "Альфа". |
| Eddie: With your scholarship money? You must be joking. I'll pay myself. By the way, let me introduce myself, I'm a manager of "Alfa" bank. |
| Oksana: Ты серьёзно?... У меня нет слов… |
| Eddie: You're serious? ...I'm speechless… |
| Oksana: Серьёзнее не бывает! Ну, что, поехали ко мне? Такси! |
| Eddie: Can't be any more serious! So, let's go to my place! Taxi! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Eddie: That’s a turn-up. |
| Oksana: I know. |
| Eddie: Well, I don’t even know whether to consider this guy lucky or not lucky. |
| Oksana: A girl he likes turned out to be a successful and loaded lady, and she just invited him over to her place. I don’t hear unlucky here. |
| Eddie: She’s having fun with him, but I have a feeling that she’ll wake up tomorrow and throw him out the door. |
| Oksana: No, come on. She likes him. She’s making fun of him in an endearing way. I think he is what she’s been looking for, not a cocky financier but a simple guy with pure and loving heart. Everything else she can just buy. |
| Eddie: I don't know, I just wouldn’t feel comfortable in this situation. |
| Oksana: I understand, but I think with these guys everything will be fine. They’ll wake up happy and in love tomorrow. Let’s listen to the vocabulary they use in their dialogue. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Eddie: The first word is… |
| Oksana: [Счет] |
| Eddie: Bill, check, account. |
| Oksana: [Счет] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Платить] |
| Eddie: To pay. |
| Oksana: [Платить] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Стипендия] |
| Eddie: Scholarship, scholarship money. |
| Oksana: [Стипендия] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Смешить] |
| Eddie: To make someone laugh. |
| Oksana: [Смешить] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Разрешите представиться] |
| Eddie: Let me introduce myself. |
| Oksana: [Разрешите представиться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Слово] |
| Eddie: Word. |
| Oksana: [Слово] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Бывать] |
| Eddie: To happen, take place, have been. |
| Oksana: [Бывать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Не бывает] |
| Eddie: Couldn’t be anymore. |
| Oksana: [Не бывает] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Eddie: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. So first Vlad is asking for the bill which is… |
| Oksana: [Счет]. It comes from the verb [считать] which means “calculate”. Well, and I guess the word [счет] literally just means “calculation”. |
| Eddie: And is used in the meaning of “bill” or “check”. So, in a restaurant, you just say [счет, пожалуйста], right? |
| Oksana: Yes, that’s right. |
| Eddie: And being a gentleman, Vlad feels weird when Ira asks for the bill. He makes an attempt to stop her from paying. |
| Oksana: [Ира, я заплачу!] |
| Eddie: “Ira, I’ll pay.” The key word here is [платить]. This word is mainly used in two contexts, “to pay for something” and “to pay with something”. |
| Oksana: When you pay for something, you use [платить] with the preposition [за], “for”. For example, [платить за квартиру]. |
| Eddie: To pay for the apartment. |
| Oksana: And when you pay with something you put the noun that is the means of your payment into the instrumental case. For example, [платить наличными]. |
| Eddie: To pay in cash. |
| Oksana: [Платить карточкой] |
| Eddie: “To pay with a card.” Right. Also, in our lesson, the word [платить] was used with the prefix [за], which indicates that the verb is perfective. [One] shows one time, complete action. [Заплатить]. |
| Oksana: Yeah, so Vlad wants to [заплатить] but he’s attempts to be gentleman was nipped in the bud by another sarcastic, but I'm sure endearing joke. [Своей стипендией?] |
| Eddie: “With your scholarship money?”. Oksana, are you sure she’s saying it with affection? Because I wouldn’t take it as warm sympathy. |
| Oksana: I'm sure she did. Besides, Russians don’t get offended easily and they would most probably just reply with the same sarcastic joke back. But Vlad is being careful. The time for counter attacks has not come yet. By the way, the word [стипендия] means “scholarship” or “scholarship money”. We usually say [получить стипендию] which means “to get a scholarship”. |
| Eddie: Or “scholarship money”, right? So you can say [Я получил стипендию в Гарвард ], “I got a scholarship to Harvard”. Or you can say [Я получил стипендию за март], which means “I got my scholarship money for March”. |
| Oksana: That’s right. Next we had the phrase [Не смеши]. |
| Eddie: Which literally means “don’t make me laugh” but should be translated as “come on, you must be kidding me” or something like that. The verb [смешить] itself means “to make someone laugh” and that someone should be put into the genitive case. |
| Oksana: Right. And next we should take a look at the phrase [Разрешите представиться]. |
| Eddie: It means “Let me introduce myself”. It’s a rather formal phrase but Ira is kind of making fun of the whole situation now so she’s using the sophisticated way of introducing herself. You can also drop the reflexive ending [ся] and get [Разрешите представить], which would be “let me introduce you to” when you’re talking about some other person. |
| Oksana: Right so she’s an alpha bank manager, something that Vlad introduced himself as when they first met. How ironic. |
| Eddie: It is. I'm sure he’s feeling pretty stupid now, so he has nothing else to say but… |
| Oksana: [Ты серьезно? У меня нет слов.] |
| Eddie: “Are you serious? I don’t know what to say.” [У меня нет слов] literally means “I don’t have words”. Usually you only say this about yourself when you’re surprised, shocked or even disappointed. You can also leave out [у меня] and just say [нет слов]. |
| Oksana: So he asks, “Are you serious?” and the answer is [Серьезнее не бывает]. [Серьезнее] is a comparative form of [серьезно] and means “more serious”. |
| Eddie: Now let’s take a look at the verb [бывать]. It is a rather colloquial words which has two main meanings. The first one is “to happen”. We can also say it’s just a more conversational word for [случаться]. Here are some examples. |
| Oksana: [Так бывает, что близкие люди теряют друг друга на долгие годы.] |
| Eddie: “It happens sometimes that close people lose each other for many years.” You can also use it as a short answer in a dialogue. Oksana, let’s make a dialogue. |
| Oksana: [Я провалила этот экзамен дважды.] “I failed this exam twice.” |
| Eddie: [Бывает] “It happens.” Good, but there’s another meaning this word can have. The meaning “have been”. It’s frequently used in a conversational and joking way to say that you had a chance to be somewhere or simply that you’ve been to some place. |
| Oksana: Yes, for example [Я бывала в Корее, ничего особенного]. “I’ve been to Korea, nothing special.” |
| Eddie: Ok, I haven’t been to Korea. [Я не бывал в Корее] therefore I can’t really say anything to that. But I can say that neither of the two mentioned meanings match the context of our dialogue. |
| Oksana: That’s true. But in our dialogue, it’s not just a word but a part of a grammar structure, comparative adjective, like “bigger”, “brighter” etc. Plus [Не бывает]. |
| Eddie: And it gives us the phrase for “couldn’t be any more” plus a comparative adjective like “couldn’t be bigger” or “couldn’t be brighter”. In our case it’s “couldn’t be more serious”. |
| Oksana: Right. [Серьезнее не бывает]. Here are some other examples. [Лучше не бывает.] |
| Eddie: Couldn’t be better. Really good. |
| Oksana: [Холоднее не бывает.] |
| Eddie: Couldn’t be colder. Really cold. |
| Oksana: [Смешнее не бывает.] |
| Eddie: “Couldn’t be funnier. Really funny.” And finally the girl pays for dinner and invites Vlad over to her place. |
| Oksana: Saying [Поехали ко мне] where [поехали] is a command form for the word [поехать], “to go”. And [ко мне] literally means “to me” but implies “to my place”, obviously. I think we have a happy ending here. |
| Eddie: Well, for us it’s the ending because we’re not following the guy to Ira’s place. Not only because it would be inappropriate, but also because we have some grammar to take a look at. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Oksana: Right, so let the guys have fun and we’re getting to our grammar part. |
| Eddie: We have to finish with the cases, right? In the previous lessons, we learned one of the functions of the genitive case. It indicates possession. In today’s lesson, we have another example of the genitive case representing its possession function. |
| Oksana: [Менеджер банка] “a bank manager”. Or to fit it into our possessive “of” function of the genitive case, we can translate it as “a manаger of a bank”. |
| Eddie: Yes, that makes things easier. The possession is more obvious. The possessor in this case is the bank, therefore it is the one we should convert into the genitive case. According to the rules of how to form the genitive case, we simply add [а] to the word “bank” and get [банка]. |
| Oksana: Right, so that was a review of the previous lesson. Today we’ll learn another two functions of the genitive case. |
| Eddie: Apart from indicating possession, the genitive case is used for words where in English you could place “some”, “any”, “few” or “several” before. It’s also commonly used with numbers and other quantities. Give us some examples, Oksana. |
| Oksana: [Несколько часов] |
| Eddie: Several hours. |
| Oksana: [Немного молока] |
| Eddie: Some milk. A little milk. |
| Oksana: [Три книги] |
| Eddie: Three books. |
| Oksana: [Семь стульев] |
| Eddie: “Seven chairs.” Great, so whenever there’s a number, the noun that goes after it should be put into the genitive case. Or whenever you can put words like “any”, “some” and so on into the English translation. |
| Oksana: The genitive is also very commonly used after negation, especially in the following cases. |
| Eddie: [У меня нет] plus noun in genitive. “I don’t have” noun. Also, noun in genitive, [нет], there’s no noun. So the word [нет] in Russian has two meanings. “No” as a simple negative answer and “there’s no”, “is not” as a verb. In the case where it’s used in the second meaning, a noun following it should always be put into the genitive case. What are the examples, Oksana? |
| Oksana: Well, for example, [У меня нет собаки]. |
| Eddie: I don’t have a dog. |
| Oksana: [У меня нет слов]. |
| Eddie: “I don’t have words. I'm speechless.” An example from our lesson. |
| Oksana: So with the phrase “I don’t have”, that exact thing that you don’t have should be put into the genitive case. And here are the examples with [нет] in the meaning of “there is no”. [Директора нет в офисе] |
| Eddie: The director is not in the office. |
| Oksana: [Чая нет] |
Outro |
| Eddie: “There’s no tea.” Great, now all you have to do is check out our PDF materials and cement everything you’ve learned today in our mind. |
| Oksana: And get ready for the new, fun mini series of lessons on our site. |
| Eddie: Ok, thank you very much. That’s it for today. Goodbye. |
| Oksana: [Пока! До встречи!] |
Comments
Hide