Learn about the conjunction чтобы
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 |
| Gina: Hello everyone and welcome to RussianPod101.com. This is the Upper Beginner Series, Season 1, lesson 14, Don’t Exercise on a Full Stomach in Russia! I’m Gina. |
| Svetlana: And I’m Svetlana. Privet. In this lesson, you're going to learn about complex sentences and how to use the conjunction чтобы. |
| Gina: And we’ll also listen to how excited Elena is to see the results before even starting her actual training. |
| Svetlana: The conversation is between Elena and a trainer, and it takes place in the gym. |
| Gina: The speakers are strangers so they’ll be using formal Russian. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Elena: Сегодня мой первый день в спортзале. Я немного волнуюсь,но мне не терпится увидеть мои результаты. С чего начать? |
| Trainer: Всегда нужно начинать с разминки, чтобы разогреть тело и подготовиться к нагрузкам. |
| Elena: Хорошо, надеюсь нагрузки будут не слишком большие, потому что будет немного трудновато напрягаться после плотного обеда. |
| Trainer: Вам не следует плотно есть перед тренировкой. Думаю, сегодня мы ограничимся только разминкой. |
| Elena: Segodnya moy perviy den ' v sportzale. Ya nemnogo volnuyus ',no mne ne terpitsya uvidet ' moi rezul 'taty. S chego nachat '? |
| Trainer: Vsegda nuzhno nachinat ' s razminki, chtoby razogret ' telo i podgotovit 'sya k nagruzkam. |
| Elena: Horosho, nadeyus ' nagruzki budut ne slishkom bol 'shiye, potomu chto budet nemnogo trudnovato napryagat 'sya posle plotnogo obeda. |
| Trainer: Vam ne sleduyet plotno yest ' pered trenirovkoy. Dumayu, segodnya my ogranichimsya tol 'ko razminkoy. |
| Elena: Today is my first day at the gym. I'm a bit nervous, but I can't wait to see the results. What should I start with? |
| Trainer: You should always start with a warm-up to prepare your body for training. |
| Elena: Okay, I hope the training won't not be too hard because it's going to be hard to work out after a big lunch. |
| Trainer: You shouldn't eat too much before training. I think it's better to if we just do the warm up exercise for today. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina: What a waste! Elena’s been preparing for this day for so long. She spent so much time and money and she couldn’t even train because of her full stomach. |
| Svetlana: Yeah, in these cases we usually say Первый блин - комом! |
| Gina: Huh? What does that mean? Failure? |
| Svetlana: Good guess! Almost! If we break down this phrase, it won’t make much sense but the interpretation would be something like “The first step will most likely be a failure since it’s the hardest”. |
| Gina: I see. So something like... “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” |
| Svetlana: Exactly! Hopefully she will. |
| Gina: Yeah. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Gina: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first word we shall see is... |
| Svetlana: терпеть [natural native speed] |
| Gina: to stand, to bear |
| Svetlana: терпеть [slowly - broken down by syllable] терпеть [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: разминка [natural native speed] |
| Gina: warm up |
| Svetlana: разминка [slowly - broken down by syllable] разминка [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: разогреть [natural native speed] |
| Gina: to warm up |
| Svetlana: разогреть [slowly - broken down by syllable] разогреть [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: подготовиться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: to prepare |
| Svetlana: подготовиться [slowly - broken down by syllable] подготовиться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: напрягаться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: to exert oneself |
| Svetlana: напрягаться [slowly - broken down by syllable] напрягаться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: плотный [natural native speed] |
| Gina: plentiful |
| Svetlana: плотный [slowly - broken down by syllable] плотный [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Svetlana: ограничиваться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: to limit oneself |
| Svetlana: ограничиваться [slowly - broken down by syllable] ограничиваться [natural native speed] |
| Gina: And last... |
| Svetlana: немного [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a little bit |
| Svetlana: немного [slowly - broken down by syllable] немного [natural native speed] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Svetlana: The first key phrase is не терпеться. |
| Gina: “can’t wait to do something”. This phrase originated from the verb that literally means “to stand” or “to bear”, but also can be translated as “to wait”. Svetlana, which is the verb? |
| Svetlana: The verb is терпеть. The phrase не терпеться consists of the negative particle не and the verb терпеться. |
| Gina: Interestingly, this phrase is used to mean “to be excited about something” or “not being able to wait for something to happen”, the verb... |
| Svetlana: ...терпеться... |
| Gina: ...is usually used to mean “to endure something” or “to go through some challenges”. For example- |
| Svetlana: Терпи пока терпится. |
| Gina: “Be patient as long as you can”. Okay, what’s the next word? |
| Svetlana: The next key word is an adverb трудновато. |
| Gina: “difficult” |
| Svetlana: This adverb is derived from the short form of the adjective трудный/ трудноватый, meaning “difficult”. |
| Gina: The interpretation of this adjective would be “it is not easy but fairly/rather/somewhat difficult/hard”. Svetlana, can you give us an example? |
| Svetlana: Sure. Первое время будет трудновато жить вдали от родителей, но, думаю, я привыкну. |
| Gina: “In the beginning it’d be difficult to live apart from my parents but I think i can handle it.” |
| Svetlana: The main difference between the adjective трудный and |
| трудноватый is that the second one is usually used to express |
| somebody’s subjective opinion. For example- |
| Пробежать пять километров без подготовки тебе будет трудновато. |
| Gina: “It must be fairly difficult for you to run 5 km without any training.” Okay, and what’s the last keyword for this lesson? |
| Svetlana: It’s the reflexive verb ограничиваться. |
| Gina: “to limit oneself”. This verb is derived from the noun |
| Svetlana: граница |
| Gina: which means “limit”, “border”, “edge”, or anything that constrains or confines you. Like many verbs in Russian, this verb has several meanings. The first one is “to be satisfied with what you have”. For example, |
| Svetlana: Он ограничился бокалом вина за ужином. |
| Gina: “He limited himself to only one glass of wine with dinner.” or “He was satisfied with just one glass of wine.” The other meaning is “ not to go beyond something” or “to stay in very confined conditions”. For example: |
| Svetlana: На первый раз мы решили ограничиться предупреждением. |
| Gina: “For the first time we decided just to give a warning.” |
| Okay, now it’s time to move onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Svetlana: In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to build complex sentences by using the conjunction чтобы. |
| Gina: We used this conjunction in the sentence "You should always start with a warm-up to prepare your body for training." |
| Svetlana: Yes. Всегда нужно начинать с разминки, чтобы разогреть тело и подготовиться к нагрузкам. |
| Gina: This conjunction is used in complex sentences to make a purpose clause, and it can be translated as “in order to”, “for”, or “to” in English. Let’s take a look at another example with this conjunction. |
| Svetlana: Я занимаюсь английским языком с репетитором, чтобы поступить в тот университет. |
| Gina: “I’m studying English with a tutor in order to enter that university.” Since this conjunction is used to indicate the purpose of the action in the main sentence, it’ll also answer the questions... |
| Svetlana: ...зачем?... |
| Gina: ...“Why?” and... |
| Svetlana: ...для чего? |
| Gina: “What for?” and... |
| Svetlana: ...с какой целью? |
| Gina: Literally “For what purpose?” |
| Svetlana: Here is another sample sentence. Я пришёл домой раньше, чтобы приготовить ужин для моей семьи. |
| Gina: “I came home earlier to cook dinner for my family.” |
| So our conjunction will always be placed at the beginning of the dependent clause and, when writing, we separate the sentence into two parts with a comma. |
| Svetlana: Now let’s try to build complex sentences with the conjunction чтобы. |
| Gina: Okay. So if the predicates in both clauses refer to the same subject, the first predicate should be conjugated with this subject, while the predicate that comes after our conjunction will be used in dictionary form. For example, |
| Svetlana: Я пришёл, чтобы сообщить вам об этом. |
| Gina: “I came to inform you about it.” |
| Svetlana: As you can see, the verb пришёл or “came”, is conjugated for the pronoun Я, or “I”, and the verb that’s used after чтобы is in infinitive form - сообщить or “to inform”. |
| Gina: Great! But what if predicates refer to different subjects? |
| Svetlana: That’s easy! We’ll just conjugate for the subject they refer to, and the predicate that comes after the conjunction чтобы will always be in past tense. For example, Я пришёл, чтобы вы рассказали мне об этом. |
| Gina: “I came so that you can tell me about it.” |
| Svetlana: In this case, the verb пришёл “came” is conjugated for the pronoun Я “I”, and the verb рассказали “tell” refers to the other pronoun вы, meaning “you” plural. So we conjugate the verb рассказали for the pronoun вы. |
| Gina: I see how it works. Okay that's it for this lesson. Don’t forget to check the lesson notes for more information and examples. |
Outro |
|---|
| Gina: We’ll see you next time, everyone. Bye! |
| Svetlana: Пока пока. |
Comments
Hide