играть на пианино
“играть на пианино” (igrat na pianino) — to play the piano in Russian. Phrase, level A1. Sestra uchitsya igrat na pianino po video — "my sister is learning piano from videos" — na plus the location form of the instrument. In a live sentence: “Сестра учится играть на пианино по видео” — My sister is learning piano from videos. Written with the characters и, г, р, а, т, ь, н, а, п, и, а, н… A word from the everyday Russian course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Russian | играть на пианино |
| Read in Latin letters | igrat na pianino |
| Translation | to play the piano |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
Sestra uchitsya igrat na pianino po video — "my sister is learning piano from videos" — na plus the location form of the instrument.
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.
- Сестра учится играть на пианино по видеоSestra uchitsya igrat na pianino po videoMy sister is learning piano from videos
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 “to play the piano” in Russian?
«играть на пианино», read “igrat na pianino”. In a live sentence: “Сестра учится играть на пианино по видео” — My sister is learning piano from videos. Phrase, level A1; written with the characters и, г, р, а, т, ь, н, а, п, и, а, н…
How is “играть на пианино” written in Latin letters?
igrat na pianino. 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?
Sestra uchitsya igrat na pianino po video — "my sister is learning piano from videos" — na plus the location form of the instrument. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.