что
“что” (chto) — what, that in Russian. Pronoun, level A1. Two jobs: the question word "what" and the plain "that" joining clauses. Ya ne znayu, chto eto — "I do not know what this is". In a live sentence: “Я не знаю, что это” — I do not know what this is. Written with the characters ч, т, о. A word from the everyday Russian course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Russian | что |
| Read in Latin letters | chto |
| Translation | what, that |
| Part of speech | pronoun |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
Two jobs: the question word "what" and the plain "that" joining clauses. Ya ne znayu, chto eto — "I do not know what this is".
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Я не знаю, что этоYa ne znayu, chto etoI do not know what this is
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “what, that” in Russian?
«что», read “chto”. In a live sentence: “Я не знаю, что это” — I do not know what this is. Pronoun, level A1; written with the characters ч, т, о.
How is “что” written in Latin letters?
chto. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Two jobs: the question word "what" and the plain "that" joining clauses. Ya ne znayu, chto eto — "I do not know what this is". A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.