Russian · Chapter 4 · Lesson 21 · Themed review
Den, noch, vremya
The words for the day, the clock and the calendar, plus the adverbs that say when: now, then, soon, too late, never.
Practise this lesson
20-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Den, noch, vremya: telling the time without the clock face
Russian time words look like a list to memorise, but they fall into three tidy groups: the units, the parts of the day, and the adverbs that say when. Learn them as groups and they stop being a list.
The units
is time in the general sense, as in there is no time. It is neuter despite ending in -я, one of a small family of nouns ending in -мя that break the pattern, and , name, is another.
, , , : minute, hour, day, year. also answers what time is it, so is two o'clock and two hours depending on context. has a famous quirk: after five and above, Russian switches to , a different word altogether, so you are , twenty years old, never twenty .
The parts of the day
, , : morning, evening, night. The day itself, , also means afternoon when set against the others.
What trips English speakers up is that Russian says in the morning with no preposition at all. It bends the noun into the instrumental case: , , , . One word, no in, no the. It feels abrupt at first, and then English starts to feel wordy.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow
, , . is literally of this day, and it is pronounced with a v where the г is written: sevódnya. Every Russian learner gets that one wrong once.
When
is now, at this moment. is now as opposed to before: things are different now. They are not interchangeable, and always carries a sense of change.
is earlier or before, and also used to: я , I used to live there. is a long time ago, or for a long time. is soon, is late.
How often
, , : always, sometimes, never. takes a with the verb as well, and that double negative is correct Russian rather than a mistake: я в Москве́, I have never been to Moscow.