So, I wanted to know how much of a new language a polyglot could learn by just starting from a random sentence.

The sentence I chose was: Без тебя мне холодно

It’s Russian, and it means “Without you, I feel cold.”

Now, without is a common preposition. In Russian, it always takes the genitive case. So, the Russian ты (you) becomes тебя. That’s interesting. I had to find more examples, just so I can master the pattern. Using my local LLaMA, I got these:

  • Без проблем : Without problem, or no problem! That’s a handy phrase to know.
  • Без смысла : Without meaning, or pointless. Hopefully this exercise won’t be pointless.
  • Без конца : Without end, or endless. I think I’m getting a hang of it at this point.
  • Без воды : Without water. Apparently this can also be a phrase that figuratively means something is “concise” or “to the point”… something stripped down to its essentials. By the way, while “Без воды” and “doesn’t hold water” don’t share a direct linguistic connection (as far as we know), they both seem to leverage the common understanding and symbolism of water. They, of course, convey two totally distinct ideas too.
  • Без сахара : Without sugar. Figuratively, it might be used to describe something that lacks appeal.
  • Без соли : Without salt. Again, figuratively, it can be used to say that something lacks flavor or excitement, similar to saying something is “bland” or “uninteresting”.

Now, I’ve added quite a few words to my vocabulary. But they are all in the genitive case. воды, for instance, is the genitive form. Time to learn their nominative forms.

So, water in the nominative form is вода. That reminds me of vodka. What does that mean? Well, водка clearly has some connection to вода. It could mean “little water” because -ка is the dimunitive suffix. The use of diminutives in Slavic languages is very common.

But водка also means “water of life”. Hmm, I’m a student of Latin, and that reminds me of aqua vitae (Aquavit). In Gaelic, there’s a similar term: “uisge beatha” (whiskey)…

Next, I decided to focus on смысл (remember Без смысла?). It’s quite a versatile word. It can mean “meaning,” “sense,” or “significance”. Смысл жизни means “the meaning of life”, something Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy were quite interested in.

“Какой смысл жизни?” is a sentence I memorized immediately, just so I can use it. It means “what’s the point of life?” жизни here is the genitive form of Жизнь.

Using text embeddings of смысл жизни, I found more such phrases.

  • Книга жизни : Book of life
  • Цель жизни : Purpose (or goal/target/aim) of life
  • Цена жизни : Price/cost of life

Цена seems to be a useful word. So, Высокая цена means “expensive”. And Ценность is a broader term that means “value”. Культурная ценность, for instance means “cultural value”. And Материальная ценность means “material value”.

Another suffix to learn there: -ная. It’s used to form adjectives from nouns. That’s why Культура (culture) becomes Культурная. That’s useful, so I had to get more examples:

  • Интересная книга : Interesting book
  • Красивая музыка : Beautiful music
  • Умная девушка : Smart girl. ум means “mind”, “intellect”, or “wit”. Strangely, “reason” and Разум mean the same thing, even though their origins are quite different.
  • Солнечная погода : Sunny weather
  • Трудная работа : Difficult work. There’s a distant connection between труд and “tread (moving with effort)”.

Russian has the concept of grammatical gender, so -ная is what you use for feminine nouns. I’ll learn how to use the suffix with masculine and neuter forms later.

Now I backtrack to конца. It’s the genitive form of конец. For example, Без Конца света means “without the end of the world.” Свет actually means “light”, and света is its genitive form. So, both words are in the genitive case here. Can say Конец света otherwise (in the absence of Без). More examples:

  • Конец истории : End of the story (история = story/history). история comes from the Greek word “ἱστορία”.
  • Конец дня : End of the day
  • Конец эпохи : The end of an era (or epoch). Эпохи is the genitive form of эпоха.
  • Конец мечты : End of a dream

мечты is the genitive and plural form of мечта (dream). Мои мечты (my dreams) and Свои мечты are common phrases.

Мои and Свои seem to be useful. Being able to indicate possession/reflection is. But these words are for indicating possession of multiple items. They look different when indicating one item.

  • мои книги : My books
  • моя книга : My book
  • Мои друзья : My friends
  • Мой друг : My friend
  • Мои учителя : My teachers
  • Мой учитель : My teacher
  • Мои машины : My cars
  • Моя машина : My car

Thankfully, его and eё don’t.

  • Его друзья : His friends
  • Его друг : His friend
  • Его кошки : His cats
  • Его кошка : His cat
  • Её дома : Her houses
  • Её дом : Her house
  • Её сёстры : Her sisters
  • Её сестра : Her sister

Now I go back to сахара (of sugar). Чашка сахара (a cup of sugar) and Цена сахара (cost of sugar) are more examples of its usage. In the nominative case, it’s cахар. Сахар в чае is another easy phrase to memorize. It means “sugar in tea”. That sounds so much like Hindi (चाय में शक्कर transliteration: chay mein shakkar)… Hindi, like Russian, uses postpositions rather than prepositions in some cases, but में works like в in this context.

У тебя сахар в чае? is another common phrase. It means “Do you have sugar in your tea?”. Literally, it means “At you (is) sugar in tea?”. So, У + (genitive case) means “to have”. That’s cool.

Some examples to drive this home:

  • У меня есть книга : I have a book (At me there is a book). Есть means “there is”, another very useful construct to know. But it’s not always necessary. У меня книга means the same thing. Worth knowing though, that У тебя есть сахар в чае? is grammatically correct, but rather unnatural. It’s closer to “Do you have (any) sugar in your tea?”, as if the presence of sugar is unexpected.
  • У нас есть время : We have time
  • У него в машине книги : He has books in his car.
  • У тебя всё нормально? : Is everything normal (okay) with you? Всё is another very versatile word. Could mean “everything”, but also “still”, “that’s all”, and more. Всё хорошо (everything’s good) and Ты всё? (are you done?) are very common sentences.
  • У тебя брат? : Do you have a brother?

I think I’m going to focus on есть now, and call it a day. In very formal or philosophical language, it can mean “to be”. Время есть деньги (time is money) or Время есть иллюзия (time is an illusion), for instance. Also can be present when discussing math. For example, Два плюс два есть четыре.

Бог есть любовь (God is love) and Красота есть правда (beauty is truth) are sentences I came across in philosophical/religious contexts. Oh, and Гармония есть баланс.

Красота comes from красивый (beautiful), they say. But it’s closely related to красный too, which means “red”. Apparently red was associated with wealth, and everything beautiful or magnificent. It could also mean divine. Well, Прекрасный definitely does.

I know I had said I’d stop, but I have to talk about Бог now. In Slavic languages, words related to “Бог” too mean “wealth” or “happiness”. Богатый (wealthy), for instance. Clearly, there’s a connection between divinity, beauty, and material prosperity in Slavic cultures. Oh, and it sounds very much like Sanskrit’s भग (bhaga), which is the same concept (wealth or fortune, but also divine lord).

I keep trying to find such connections because they help me anchor the new words in my mind’s “latent space”.

Ну всё. Пока (well, that’s all for now, bye).