Here saying the Russian phrase ‘извините’ (izvinite – ‘sorry’) is reserved for situations when someone is actually at fault. When you travel to Russia, don’t be as apologetic as you might be in Europe or Canada. Many non-Russian speakers also assume that Babushka is another word for a Russian doll or a scarf that Russian grandmas wear, but this is not the case. RELATED CONTENT: A love letter to Russia, the country I’m proud to call my homeīabushka (Бабушка) is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, and the ш (‘sh’) should sound harsher than the English ‘sh’.

This is one of the features of the language that makes it difficult to learn, but very poetic and beautiful when understood. You see, one of the main differences between English and Russian is that while in English you need to always follow the word order (‘I’ then ‘love’ then ‘you’), even with adjectives sometimes, in Russian you can play with it freely and a lot depends on the intonation. ‘Yellow blue tebya’ is easier to pronounce and remember, right? And it sounds very similar.įun fact: you can move all 3 words around as you wish and say ‘ya lyublyu tebya’, ‘ya tebya lyublyu’ and so on in 6 different variations. My tip for all of you English speakers would be to use words ‘yellow’ & ‘blue’ as support. This romantic Russian phrase that means ‘I love you’ can be hard to pronounce. To do it properly, chop the V in the middle and you are on the right track. When you read it letter by letter, you will pronounce it as ‘Zdravstvui’, which actually has a slightly different meaning of ‘get well/feel healthy’. The word ‘здравствуй’ signifies a greeting, similar to English ‘hello’. But certain words are easier as you will hear them almost everywhere you go. There is no easy way to remember these exceptions and many Russians also make mistakes. Zdrastvui (3дравствуй)Ĭontrary to popular belief, the pronunciation of many Russian phrases and words differs from their writing. RELATED CONTENT: Russia’s new e-visa has made it even easier to visit St Petersburg 2. Na zdorovie (На здоровье) is actually a response to someone asking to do something (Можно мне кусок пирога? – На здоровье: Can I have a slice of pie? – Go ahead) or a way of saying ‘You are welcome’ in response to ‘Spasibo’ (‘Спасибо’ or ‘Thank you’). It could be ‘for family’, ‘for love’, ‘for meeting each other’ or even a super long story going back to the day you met someone – the sky is the limit. True Russian toasts are custom-made for the occasion during every single toast. We are known to be a drinking nation, but we actually don’t have an equivalent for ‘cheers’. However, this usage seems to be common in Polish, but not in Russian. Na zdorovie (На здоровье)Ī lot of people around the world seem to think ‘на здоровье’ (na zdorovie) is Russian for ‘cheers’ when toasting. Luckily, we’ve prepared a list of Russian phrases you will likely encounter on your travels, together with their correct meanings and pronunciations, for you to read through before you travel to Russia. Learning Russian can sometimes feel like trying to swim against a tidal wave: no matter how hard you try, it seems there’s always another grammar, pronunciation or lexical curveball headed your way.

Russian transliteration phonetic