Golova i serdtse

The body words in Russian are mostly plain and regular. What makes this session worth doing is what happens when you use them to say how you feel, because Russian often moves the person out of the subject position altogether.

Head to foot

голова́ is head, лицо́ is face, глаз is eye, рот is mouth, во́лос is a single hair, and you will nearly always see the plural во́лосы. те́ло is the body as a whole.

рука and нога́ are the two that catch English speakers. рука covers the whole arm and the hand. нога́ covers the whole leg and the foot. Russian can be more precise when it needs to be, but in everyday speech one word does both, and у меня́ боли́т нога́ could be your knee or your toe.

се́рдце is heart, both the organ and the feeling, as in English. кровь is blood.

Pain

боль is pain, the noun. бо́льно is the word for it hurts, and it takes no subject at all: мне бо́льно, literally to me it is painful. The person who hurts goes into the dative case, and the sentence has no grammatical subject.

Feelings, and the dative again

The same pattern runs through the feelings. стра́шно is frightening, and мне стра́шно is I am scared: to me it is frightening. It is not a quirk of one word. Russian regularly treats a feeling as something that happens to you rather than something you do, and the dative is how it says so.

Some feelings do take an ordinary subject. я рад is I am glad, and рад is a short adjective that changes with gender: a woman says я ра́да. сча́стливый is happy in the deeper sense, closer to fortunate or content.

чу́вство is feeling, and чувствовать is to feel. Note the silent first в: it is pronounced chústvo. любо́вь is love, the noun.

Two verbs with -ся

боя́ться is to be afraid, and волнова́ться is to worry. Both end in -ся, and both are grammatically intransitive: боя́ться takes what you fear in the genitive, я бою́сь соба́к, I am afraid of dogs. не волну́йся is don't worry, and you will hear it constantly.