6 Mistakes All Russian Beginners Make

Learning Russian? Here are 6 common mistakes that almost every beginner makes — and how to avoid them! Many of these mistakes are related to Russian cases and verb tenses, so make sure to study those topics carefully.

1. Saying "I'm tired" wrong

In Russian to express an emotion of being tired, we say "я устал". But a problem with this phrase is that it means "I tired myself out" — it's an action, not a description of ourselves. In English, it is a description of someone, in Russian it's an action. Which means:

• We can only use it to describe our current state, not past or future feelings. We can't say "я был устал" or "я буду устал". Instead we say "я был/буду уставшим". "Уставший" is now describing us, not an action.
• We have to conjugate "устал" into present and past according to who's tired.

2. Misusing "to work hard"

This phrase is very common in English, and of course you want to use it in Russian too, but the translation is quite tricky. A common mistake is to just say "тяжело работать", translating it word-by-word, but it's wrong!

To say "to work hard", you need to say "Усердно работать", of course conjugating "работать" properly as well.

Or, sometimes "стараться" can also be used. "Стараться" means "to try one's best".

3. Confusing слышать and слушать

Both of these verbs are used to talk about your hearing skills, but there's a small difference:

• слЫшать — to hear (a sense)
• слУшать — to listen (an action)

Examples:

• Я тебя не слышу — I can't hear you
• Я тебя не хочу слушать — I don't want to listen to you

4. Confusing видеть and смотреть

A very similar situation is with these 2 verbs:

• видеть — to see (a sense)
• смотреть — to look/watch (an action)

Examples:

• Папа смотрит в окно — Dad is looking in the window
• Папа видит там машину — Dad sees a car there

5. Saying "я надо сплю"

There are 2 big mistakes with this phrase:

First mistake: We have to say "мне надо", because literally it means "something is needed to me". The subject here is what we need, not us.

Second mistake: We don't conjugate verbs after "мне надо", again because we're not the subject here, that's why the verbs don't have to agree with us in their form.

6. Confusing русский and по-русски

Now these 2 are a whoooole different story. Let's break them down:

• Русский — adjective, describes nouns. Short form of "русский язык" for Russian language. "Русский" and "русский язык" are an answer to a question "what".

— What are you learning?
— Русский!

• По-русски — adverb, describes verbs. Answers the question "how".

So, we don't say "я говорю русский", but "я говорю по-русски".

On the other hand, when we have Russian as a subject, we can say "русский". Like in "Я изучаю русский" — I am learning Russian.

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