Words that Confuse Me

As my vocabulary has gradually expanded, I have come across certain Russian words that I have trouble keeping track of because they are extremely close in spelling and pronunciation to other words that mean completely different things. Conversations with my companions have revealed that I am far from being alone in my tendency to mix these words up. As such, I decided that I ought to compile a list of some of the words that I have (and sometimes still do) mix up. I've been working on this post for a couple weeks, adding new words when I think of them... or when I mix something up and don't say what I intended to... Making mistakes is a part of learning a language, and figuring out how to learn from your mistakes and laugh off any embarrassment they may have brought upon you are the best ways to keep progressing forwards. Enjoy.

Ряд - Row (ryat)

Рядом - Next (as preposition or adverb) (ryadam)

Рад - Glad (rat)

I'm going to admit now that it took me multiple months to actually figure out that these words were all distinct and separate from one another and not the same word being used in multiple different contexts or sentence structures. To further complicate matters, nouns, like ряд, have different endings depending upon what preposition they are preceded by, so there ends up actually being six different variations for each noun (plus six more for that same noun when it is plural). It just so happens that ряд, when preceded by certain prepositions, must be spelled exactly like рядом, which, when used as a preposition or adverb, is an entirely different word.

Цвет - Color (tsvet)

Цветок - Flower (tsvetok)

Свет - Light (svet)

I know for sure that I've been mixing these three up, as any attempt to use them in conversation invariably ends with me being corrected by the person I'm talking to. I bought you some colors. Will you please turn off the flowers? That shirt is my favorite light.

To further confuse matters, there are a selection of related adjectives that are also extremely similar, both to each other and to the nouns I always mix up. I usually encounter these in a written format, and proceed through a brief moment of confusion (Brightly lit Easter?) before I figure out which word I'm actually reading (Right... Holy Easter...).

Святой - Holy (svyetoy)

Цветной - (Multi)colored (tsvetnoy)

Светлый - Bright (svetliy)

Корица - Cinnamon (karitsa)

Курица - Chicken (kuritsa)

The distinction between these words is important in two scenarios: 1) When determining if a food contains meat or not (I'm a vegetarian), and 2) When purchasing spices. If you don't read the packages carefully, you might end up purchasing a packet of chicken seasoning instead of ground cinnamon, and I doubt that the chicken seasoning would taste very nice with your oatmeal.

Чеснок - Garlic (chesnok)

Честно - Honestly (chesno)

Чисто - Clean(ly) (chista)

I learned the words for clean and garlic before learning the word for honestly. When it came up one day in my Russian language class, I spent a moment trying to figure out if the word could possibly have something to do with garlic or cleanliness (neither one realy worked well in context) before I learned that it really hadn't got anything to do with either one.

Лес - Forrest (less)

Лестница - Staircase (lestinitsa)

Seeing as the word for forest is nothing like the word for tree (see the next paragraph for more about the word for tree), I tend to completely forget about it, ending up wondering if лес is somehow an abbreviation for staircase before eventually figuring out that I'm totally wrong. Hopefully now that I have written this out, I'll stop forgetting.

Now, imagine my confusion when I was told by a friend that we would be going to visit their summerhouse in the "word that sounds almost exactly like tree." As it turns out, this word actually means village or country, which cleared things up, but that most certainly was not the last time I mixed those two words up.

Деревня - Village/Country (noun) (derevnya)

Дерево - Tree (dereva)

Деревянный - Wooden (derevyani)

Деревенский Country, rural (derevenski)

The adjectives meaning wooden and rural are very similar to the words for tree and village, which makes sense, but also makes me likely to mix them up as well.

I need to precede these next few words with an brief explanation of a bit of Russian grammar. Though Russian has just three verb tenses (English has sixteen), verb-related grammar still ends up being complicated and confusing. Most verbs come in pairs - one for the perfective aspect, used to indicate defined actions (like reading and finishing a book), and the other for the imperfective aspect, used to indicate ongoing or habitual actions (like usually reading after dinner). (Of course there are exceptions and verbs that don't have a perfective counterpart, too, but that's the exception rather than the rule).

I simply want point out that I have not included in this list all of the verbs that are confusingly similar to their perfective/inperfective counterpart; the majority are minimally different in spelling and I am constantly mixing them up, but it would have been impossible to list them all. The only verb pairs that I have included are the ones below, and I have included them because these particular two pairs of verbs sound almost exactly the same, and all four words are commonly used in ballet class. 

Поднимать - To lift (imperfect) (podnimat)

Понимать - To understand (imperfect) (ponimat)

Поднять - To lift (perfect) (podnyat)

Понять - To understand (perfect) (ponyat)

It took me a good long time before I realized that half of the time I had heard a word and understood it as some form of to understand, I had, in fact, misunderstood.

Стороны - Sides (storaniy)

Страницы - Pages (stranitsiy)

It's possible that you may now be wondering just why I have so much trouble telling all of these words apart. But remember what I said earlier on about having six different endings for each noun, plus six more for each noun when it is plural... Sometimes, depending on the spelling of a word and the ending that is being added, the middle of the word will also gain or loose a vowel to make the pronunciation more comfortable, and then there are certain words that change completely when they are placed in particular grammatical constructions. This can make it quite difficult to tell what word you're reading or hearing, and the potential for mixing up similar words is great.

This story is last because it's my favorite one...

Пицца - Pizza (like pizza but with a ts sound in place of the zz)

Птица - Bird (pteetsa)

A classmate, also an international student, once walked up to me, giggling uncontrollably. I asked what was going on, and so she told me about how she'd just gone to speak to a teacher about what dances she was rehearsing, and, meaning to say that she was rehearsing the Blue Bird pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty, had instead said that she was rehearsing the pas de duex of the Blue Pizza.