Phrases — Overview
Grammar tells you the machinery. Phrases show you the machinery running. Use them together, not as a substitute for each other — a phrase you've memorized without understanding why it's built that way will fail the moment you need to change one word in it.
How to study a phrase
Every phrase on this site goes through the same three steps. Don't skip to step 3.
- Read the literal gloss. This is the word-for-word skeleton of the Russian — awkward English on purpose. It exposes the case endings, the missing "to be," the word order. This is where the grammar you're learning shows up in the wild.
- Say it aloud. Stress is marked (´) in every phrase on this site — use it. Saying the phrase out loud, with the right stress and vowel reduction (see Alphabet), builds the muscle memory that silent reading never will.
- Drill it as a flashcard. Only after steps 1 and 2. The flashcard app has a deck matching every page here.
The three-layer format
Every phrase table has the same three columns, plus a fourth for grammar notes:
| Russian | Literal | Means | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Как дела́? | "How affairs?" | "How's it going?" | Informal; reply: Хорошо́! |
- Russian — the actual phrase, stress marked.
- Literal — a word-for-word gloss, in quotes, deliberately clunky. «Как дела́» really is "how affairs" — Russian drops "are" and doesn't need an article. Once you see enough literal glosses, the case system stops feeling arbitrary.
- Means — the natural English equivalent, what you'd actually say.
- Notes — the grammar reason things look the way they do: which case is at work and why, formal/informal register, pronunciation traps. Where relevant, this links to the grammar lesson that explains it in full, e.g. dative.
After most tables you'll find a Pattern spotlight — a callout showing how one phrase generalizes into a whole template you can reuse with different vocabulary:
Pattern
«Мне, пожа́луйста, X» — "X for me, please" — works for ordering almost anything. Swap in any noun in the accusative and you can order it.
Patterns are the payoff of understanding the literal gloss: instead of memorizing 50 sentences, you memorize 5 patterns and plug in vocabulary.
Formal вы vs. informal ты
Russian has two words for "you," and picking the wrong one is a real social error, not a minor slip:
- ты — informal "you." Family, friends, children, people your own age you're on friendly terms with, or anyone who has explicitly invited you to use ты.
- вы — formal "you," and also the plural "you" (more than one person, any register). Strangers, anyone older than you, service staff, officials, and any first meeting with an adult. When in doubt, use вы — it's never wrong to be too formal, but it can be rude to be too casual.
Every phrase on this site that changes form between the two is marked in the Notes column as Formal or Informal. Where a phrase works for both (many do — «Как дела́?» is fine either way), no register is noted. When you see a verb ending in -ите/-ьте (e.g., Помоги́те, Скажи́те), that's the вы/plural imperative; the ты version drops to -и/-ь (Помоги́, Скажи́).
Where to go next
Start with Survival Essentials — the dozen phrases that let you handle not understanding something, which is the single most common situation you'll be in for the first few months.