Dialogue

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Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Oksana: [Всем привет!]
Eddie: Eddie here. And I feel like I practically live in the office we’ve been talking about for the past several lessons.
Oksana: The last two episodes weren’t that fun though.
Eddie: Even disappointing I’d say. I wonder whether the employees will get back at the boss in any way for depriving them of winter holidays, bonuses and appointing some sleazy guy to be their boss.
Oksana: I don’t think so. The crisis makes people hold on to their jobs no matter how obnoxious they might be.
Eddie: But the crisis card is not going to work for the boss forever. Anyway, finding this balance between doing what’s good for him and not letting the employees lose it. By the way, how’s our [безответственный] and [медлительный] Ivan doing?
Oksana: That’s what we’re going to talk about today. You were wondering whether the boss fired him. Well, listen to the conversation and find out yourself.
DIALOGUE
Oksana: Иван, зайдите ко мне.
Eddie: Вызывали, Пётр Сергеевич?
Oksana: Вызывал. Я прочитал Ваш отчёт. Да, тот самый, мятый и в пятнах. Я приятно удивлён!
Eddie: Правда?...
Oksana: Если Вы его написали сами, то должен Вам сказать... Вы молодец! Не ожидал. Вы заслужили благодарность от всего отдела и новогодний бонус! Поздравляю!
Eddie: Once again, more slowly.
Oksana: Еще раз, медленнее. Иван, зайдите ко мне.
Eddie: Вызывали, Пётр Сергеевич?
Oksana: Вызывал. Я прочитал Ваш отчёт. Да, тот самый, мятый и в пятнах. Я приятно удивлён!
Eddie: Правда?...
Oksana: Если Вы его написали сами, то должен Вам сказать... Вы молодец! Не ожидал. Вы заслужили благодарность от всего отдела и новогодний бонус! Поздравляю!
Eddie: Once again, with a translation.
Oksana: Еще раз, с переводом. Иван, зайдите ко мне.
Eddie: Ivan, come into my office.
Oksana: Вызывали, Пётр Сергеевич?
Eddie: Did you call me Pyotr Sergeevich?
Oksana: Вызывал. Я прочитал Ваш отчёт. Да, тот самый, мятый и в пятнах. Я приятно удивлён!
Eddie: I did. I read your report. Yes, that one: wrinkled and stained. I'm pleasantly surprised!
Oksana: Правда?...
Eddie: Really…
Oksana: Если Вы его написали сами, то должен Вам сказать... Вы молодец! Не ожидал. Вы заслужили благодарность от всего отдела и новогодний бонус! Поздравляю!
Eddie: If you wrote it yourself then I must tell you...You did a good job! I didn't expect that. You earned the gratitude of the whole department and a New Year bonus! Congratulations!
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Oksana: So do you have more faith in people now?
Eddie: Not really. Knowing a bit about Ivan’s nature, I can’t believe this excellent report wasn’t a onetime stroke of luck.
Oksana: But you know this boss is really good at sticking carrot policy.
Eddie: He is. I just hope Ivan learns to appreciate the boss’ carrots and starts doing his job properly on a normal basis. Ok, enough talking. Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first word we’ll look at is…
VOCAB LIST
Oksana: [Вызывать]
Eddie: To call, call in, send for, summon.
Oksana: [Вызывать]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Самый]
Eddie: Very, the exact, same.
Oksana: [Самый]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Пятно]
Eddie: Stain, spot.
Oksana: [Пятно]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Удивленный]
Eddie: Surprised.
Oksana: [Удивленный]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Молодец]
Eddie: Well done, good job.
Oksana: [Молодец]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Ожидать]
Eddie: To expect, await.
Oksana: [Ожидать]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Заслужить]
Eddie: To earn.
Oksana: [Заслужить]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Благодарность]
Eddie: Gratitude.
Oksana: [Благодарность]
Eddie: Next.
Oksana: [Поздравлять]
Eddie: To congratulate.
Oksana: [Поздравлять]
VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE
Eddie: Let’s go through all these words one by one. What was the first one?
Oksana: [Вызывать]
Eddie: [Вызывать] this word is mostly used in the workplace when a superior calls a subordinate to his office, usually by phone or through a secretary.
Oksana: For example, one worker is rushing to another saying [Александр, тебя “генеральный” вызывает!], “Alexander, the head is calling you in.”
Eddie: Yes, usually when the boss is calling you nothing good is to be expected.
Oksana: I guess the superiors in Russia are always pictured as someone you should avoid and interact with the least. But here’s another example of the word. [Вера, вызовите мне Новосельцева.] A boss is talking to a secretary - "Vera, call [Новосельцев] into my office.” Actually it’s a phrase from one of my favorite movie, “The Office Romance”, [Служебный роман].
Eddie: Yeah, it’s a very kind soviet movie. You should watch it and get some office lingo from there. By the way, if I'm not mistaken [вызывать] is also a word for “calling in” or “sending for a doctor”.
Oksana: Yeah, that’s right. For example, [Вызовите врача.Человеку плохо], “Call a doctor. A man is feeling bad.” Or [Мы ему вызвали врача ночью], “We sent for a doctor for him at night.”
Eddie: Ok, that’s covered. Then we had a phrase, [тот самый]. Could you please tell us why you need the word [самый] here and can’t just say [тот отчет], which is “that report”.
Oksana: Well, probably for the same reason you have the word “very” for that. So you can say “that very report”. [Самый] doesn’t mean “the most” in this case but emphasizes on the thing being the same, identical to the one mentioned before.
Eddie: Can you substitute “taught” with [этот], for example?
Oksana: Of course you can, according to the situation. For example [Этот самый вопрос я задала ему вчера], “This very question I asked him yesterday.
Eddie: Ok, I think that’s clear. Next we have a simple noun for “stain” or “spot”.
Oksana: [Пятно] Actually it can also be used when talking about big birth marks like the one on Gorbaciov’s forehead. We say [Родимое пятно] for that.
Eddie: I think in our case it was a coffee and chocolate stain, but despite that there was something valuable found in it. What does he say on that?
Oksana: He says [Я приятно удивлен].
Eddie: [Приятно] is a well-known phrase for you from [Приятно познакомиться]. It means “nicely” or “pleasantly”. And the adjective [удивленный] means “surprised”, right?
Oksana: Right. It’s just in the dialogue it was pronounced as [удивлен] and not [удивленный]. There’s a reason for that but we’ll talk about it in our grammar part.
Eddie: Ok, I’ll wait. Oh, next we have one of my favorite words, [молодец].
Oksana: Yeah, it’s a noun and I don’t even know whether there is an equivalent to this word in English or not.
Eddie: I think we can translate it as “good job” or “well done”. It won’t be a direct translation because English doesn’t have just one noun to describe a person who’s done a good job.
Oksana: You should remember it. Russians love saying this word right and left.
Eddie: I guess if even the boss says that… What else did he tell Ivan about this report?
Oksana: That he [не ожидал], “he didn’t expect” literally. The word “to expect” is [ожидать].
Eddie: Is there an adjective for that word like the English “unexpected”?
Oksana: There is. [Неожиданный .Неожиданный бонус]
Eddie: That’s something that the employees of that company lost hope for, but not Ivan. His report must be a golden cow for the boss.
Oksana: Realistically, maximum that Ivan [заслужил], “earned”, is [благодарность], “gratitude”. I mean after all that attitude he showed to his work? But the boss seems to like him for some reason.
Eddie: We won’t specify the reasons. Ok, so he [заслужил] the 13th salary.
Oksana: Yes, by the way, unlike in English you can’t use it with the wages or salaries. [Заслужить] something is only said about some particular benefit you earned for your good job. It’s not said about the regular payments.
Eddie: Ok, so he earned the gratitude in a New Year’s bonus. That’s really weird for a guy like him but whatever.
Oksana: Yeah, and on top of the gratitude and the bonus, the boss [поздравляет] him.
Eddie: He congratulates Ivan.
Oksana: Usually, we use this verb with the preposition [с], “with”. [Поздравлять с праздником]
Eddie: To give someone holiday greetings.
Oksana: [Поздравлять с днем рождения]
Eddie: “To give someone birthday greetings.” And the word [поздравляю] just means “congratulations”. Ok, grammar time. What should we talk about grammar-wise today.

Lesson focus
Oksana: We’ve talked about adjectives a lot but it’s never enough if you’re talking about the Russian adjectives. So let’s take a look at those.
Eddie: We have one adjective in our lesson that you said we’d talk about in the grammar part.
Oksana: Yes, that was the short adjective. Do you know what that is, Eddie?
Eddie: Yes, I know there are normal and short adjectives in Russian.
Oksana: Ok, let’s start with a little review. What is considered normal when you talk about adjectives, Eddie?
Eddie: Normal is something we learned in lesson 18. Normal adjectives come before nouns, for example [Красная машина], “red car”. They always agree in gender and case with the noun that they’re describing.
Oksana: That’s right. Let me give you a couple of other examples though. [Я прочитал Ваш мятый отчет]
Eddie: I read your wrinkled report.
Oksana: [У меня нет новых ботинок]
Eddie: I don’t have new shoes.
Oksana: [Ботинок] in this case is plural and in genitive case, therefore [новых] is also genitive, plural.
Eddie: And what about short adjectives?
Oksana: They are generally used to make statements about something. In English, they usually follow the word “is” or “are”, like in “she is busy”.
Eddie: And they are not followed by a noun, right?
Oksana: Exactly. In today’s lesson, the example of a short adjective was [удивлен], “surprised”.
Eddie: How would it sound if it was normal?
Oksana: It would sound as [удивленный] and would have to have a noun to describe. [Удивленная женщина] “a surprised woman” or [удивленный вид] “surprised look”. But in our case it’s just a statement - [Я удивлен] “I'm surprised.
Eddie: I just wanted to add that you don’t need to mind cases when using short adjectives. You only need the nominative when making those short statements. Although the adjectives should still agree in gender with the noun.
Oksana: [Она необыкновенно красива]
Eddie: She’s amazingly beautiful.
Oksana: [Она] is feminine, therefore [красива] is also feminine. Another example, [Я очень занят в последнее время]
Eddie: I'm very busy lately.
Oksana: Apparently [я] is some guy” here, because he says [занят]. If it was a girl, she’d say [занята]. Here’s another example. [Занято!]
Eddie: “Occupied!” - if you’re yelling from the toilet.
Oksana: That’s always said in the neutral gender.
Eddie: By the way, you can find all the endings that you need to form the short adjectives in our PDF materials. And now we have another grammar point to look at briefly. What’s it going to be, Oksana?
Oksana: The aspects.
Eddie: Today we’ll consolidate our knowledge about the aspects of Russian verbs. The aspect is how an action is perceived though the eyes of the Russian speaker. Russians look at an action as being in one of two states: completed or on-going and habitual.
Oksana: Yes, but not to be confused with tense when the action takes place in time. Aspect is the distinction between whether the action has been completed or not and occurs in all tenses, past, present and future. Although when you are talking in the present tense you can ignore aspects altogether.
Eddie: Aspect of most Russian verbs can be determined by looking at their prefixes and suffixes. Let’s take a look at some verbs from today’s lesson to get a better idea about aspects. We’ll give them to you in the imperfective aspect first, which means the actions are either ongoing or habitual, and then the perfective aspect to compare. So the first pair is…
Oksana: [Заходить]
Eddie: Imperfective “to drop by”, “to come in”.
Oksana: And [Зайти].
Eddie: Perfective. Examples.
Oksana: [Я к нему год не заходила]
Eddie: I haven’t dropped by on him for over a year.
Oksana: [Я зайду к тебе вечером]
Eddie: “I will drop by on you in the evening.” Next we have the words for “to call in”, “summon”.
Oksana: [Вызывать] imperfective and [вызвать], perfective. [Начальник вызывает подчиненного]
Eddie: The boss is calling in the subordinate.
Oksana: [Мы вызвали врача]
Eddie: “We called the doctor.” This action is obviously completed. Another three pairs left. Let’s take a look at the verb “to read”. In its imperfective form it will sound as [читать] and in perfective it’ll be [прочитать].
Oksana: Here are the examples. [Я читаю книгу]
Eddie: I'm reading a book.
Oksana: [Я уже прочитал эту книгу]
Eddie: “I already read this book.” Then we have a verb which is useful to remember in pair with the verb “to read”. The word is “to write”.
Oksana: [Писать], imperfective, and [написать], perfective. Listen to the examples. [Я пишу письма каждый день]
Eddie: I write letters every day.
Oksana: [Я написал письмо, но еще не отправил]
Eddie: “I wrote a letter but I haven’t sent it yet.” The incomplete and completed actions are obvious. And finally, the last word for today.
Oksana: [Поздравлять, поздравить] “To congratulate”. [Мы его поздравлям каждый год]
Eddie: “We congratulate him every year. This is a habitual action, so it’s in the imperfective aspect.
Oksana: [Его никто не поздравил с днем рождения]
Eddie: “No one congratulated him on his birthday.” Sad, but at least it was just one forgotten birthday, it’s not a habitual thing. So, as you can see, very often the perfective is simply a slight alteration of the imperfective form’s spelling. Adding of a prefix, changing vowels, a different ending on the stem are some ways in which the perfectives are made.

Outro
Oksana: Sometimes the same word can sound totally different in different aspects, but that just needs memorization and practice. Be patient.
Eddie: Ok, thanks for being with us. Please join us again next time.
Oksana: [Всем пока. До встречи!]

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