Weather & Seasons in Russian
Weather talk introduces the most Russian sentence shape of all: the sentence with no subject. Once you can say «холодно», half of natural spoken Russian stops looking strange.
No Subject Needed
| Russian | English |
|---|---|
| Сегодня холодно. | It's cold today. |
| Жарко! | It's hot! |
| Тепло. | It's warm. |
| Сегодня хорошая погода. | The weather is nice today. |
No "it", no "is" — the adverb alone carries the sentence. Какая сегодня погода? — what's the weather today?
Cold TO You
Add a dative and the weather becomes personal — your fresh dative case at work:
Мне холодно. А тебе не жарко?
I'm cold. Aren't you hot?
Note: Literally 'to-me (it is) cold' — feelings happen TO you in Russian.
Rain Walks
Your motion verb moonlights as a weatherman:
| Russian | English |
|---|---|
| Идёт дождь. | It's raining. (the rain 'goes') |
| Идёт снег. | It's snowing. |
| Вчера шёл дождь. | It rained yesterday. (irregular past: шёл) |
The Seasons
| Season | English | in that season |
|---|---|---|
| зима | winter | зимой |
| весна | spring | весной |
| лето | summer | летом |
| осень | autumn | осенью |
Зимой в Москве холодно, а летом тепло.
In winter Moscow is cold, and in summer it's warm.
Note: зимой, летом — frozen instrumentals, as the next lesson will reveal.
Common Mistakes
- Adding “it”. Это холодно means "this thing is cold (to touch)". The weather is just холодно.
- Дождь идёт with the wrong verb. Rain never бежит or ходит in standard speech — идёт.
- Freezing past-tense шёл. Идти has an irregular past: дождь шёл, снег шёл.
What You Can Do Now
You can open any conversation the way half of humanity does — with the weather — and complain or rejoice about all four seasons like a local.