Russkiy Yazyk! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Winter

"Zima" is indeed winter. "Vesna" is spring, "Leto" is summer, and "Ocen'" is autumn.

Russian is the seventh most spoken language worldwide: approx. 164 million people speak it as their first language, and approx. 114 million speak it as a second language, giving a total of 278 million speakers!

The title of this quiz, "Russkiy Yazyk" is of course Russian for "Russian tongue" or "Russian language".

Answer: Govorit

"Govorit" is the correct answer; "govorit'" is a second conjugation verb - i.e. one that ends in "it'" (Second conjugation is not exclusively "it'" verbs, but contains most that have multisyllabic infinitives). This means that the third person conjugation is made up of the stem "govor-" and the third person ending "it", giving "govorit".

"Govoriu", "Govorish'" and "Govorim" are the first person singular (I), second person singular (you), and the first person plural (we) forms respectively: "I speak", "You speak", and "We speak".

Answer: Children

"Deti" means children - the singular is "ditya", although "rebyonok" (child) is more commonly used in the singular (pl. "rebyata").

"Brothers" would be "brat'ya", "parents" would be "roditeli", and "cousins" "kuzeny".

Russian is part of the Indo-European language family, and along with Ukrainian and Belorussian (or Byelorussian) makes up the East Slavic languages.

Answer: Genitive

"Ivana" is the genitive, or possessive form of "Ivan", therefore it means "of Ivan", or "of John", John being the English cognate of Ivan. "Dom Ivana" therefore means "the house of Ivan" or "Ivan's house". "Ivana" is also the accusative form - masculine animate nouns have this special accusative form, when ending in a consonant. A regular masculine noun would not change in the accusative, as in the example "Ya lyublyu hleb" - "I like bread."

"Ivan" is of course the nominative, or subject form, as in the sentence "Ivan lyubit Lyudu" - "Ivan loves Lyuda".

The instrumental case is used mainly for "with" but also for expressions such as "by" and "at" as in "at night". The instrumental form of Ivan would be "Ivanom" meaning "by Ivan". For "with", you would include "s": "s Ivanom" - "with Ivan".

The locative, or prepositional, form would be "Ivane" - this case is used with "v" - "in", "o" - "about", and "pri" - "in the presence of". So "pri Ivane" would mean "in the presence of Ivan" or "in Ivan's presence".

Answer: Utrom

"-om" is the standard ending in the instrumental case for neuter nouns ending in "-o" and also for masculine nouns ending in a consonant - for example, "karandash", meaning "pencil", would become "karandashom" - "with a pencil".

Russian is the official language in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. While it is widely spoken in the Ukraine, it is not an official language. It is also an official language of the United Nations.

Answer: Sestrichka

Diminutives are generally formed by adding "-ik" or "-chka" to the nominative form. In this case, we want "little sister" so we take the nominative for "sister" - "sestra", and add the ending "-chka" to make "sestrichka" - note that stem vowel "a" is changed to an "i". This form is commonly known as the double diminutive; the single diminutive of "sestra" is "sestritsa". There is also such thing as a triple diminutive!

Although diminutives do indeed convey smallness, they are more often used to convey affection, such as English words "puppy", or "Johnny", or "Frankie" etc. They also convey politeness. They are very common in Russian, and especially with Russian children.

"Sestra" is the nominative form of "sister", as stated above, and I made up the other two!

Answer: Friend

"Drug" is the singular form of "friend" - the plural is irregular, and is "druz'ya". A female friend would be a "podruga" - notice "drug" in the middle.

"Waiter" would be "ofitsiant", ("waitress" takes the feminine form of "ofitsianka"). A "mobile phone" is a "mobil'niy telefon" or a "sotoviy telefon". And a "drug" is a "medikament" in the medical sense, or a "narkotik" in the sense of illicit narcotics.

Russian is commonly written using a handwritten, cursive form, which has certain forms of each letter. This can be confusing for people studying the language, as not only are some letters sometimes indistinguishable from each other, but some letters look like other cognates of the Roman alphabet. For example, the Cyrillic character "d" is written as "D" in the capital cursive form, but as "g" in the lower case; similarly "t" is written more like an "m" which is very similar to the cursive forms of the Cyrillic character "m".

Answer: Glasnost

"Glasnost" does indeed mean "openness" or "publicity" and was a domestic reform introduced by Gorbachyov (normally Romanized as Gorbachev), which gave new freedoms to the people, notably more freedom of speech.

"Perestroika" means "re-construction" or "reformation" and was another domestic reform which referred to the restructuring of the Soviet economy.

In "matryoshka" we meet another diminutive form, this time from "mat'" - "mother", thus "matryoshka" means "little mother". It is used in English to mean a set of Russian dolls.

Finally, "sputnik" means "traveling companion" and was the name given to each in a series of Soviet spacecrafts.

Answer: Moskva, Rossiya

The correct answer is "Moskva, Rossiya". The "o" is "Moskva" is what is known as an "unstressed o" and is pronounced more like an "a", with the stress falling on the last syllable of the word: "mask-VA".

The Russian term for the full name "Russian Federation" is "Rossiyskaya Federatsiya", and USSR is "SSSR", which stands for "Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik" ("Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"). You can see why it may be easier for learners of Russian to simply use the abbreviated form! The word "Soviet", sometimes Romanized as "sovyet", is simply the Russian word for "council".

Answer: Inostranniy

"Inostranniy" is the odd one out; it means "foreign". The other three are color words: "byeliy" is "white" (partly seen in the country name "Byelorus'"/"Byelorussia", which is of course Belarus, which comes from "white Rus"). "Chyorniy" is "black", and "krasniy" means "red" (as seen in the Russian for the Red Square, "krasnaya ploshchad'").