хлеб
“хлеб” (khleb) — bread in Russian. Noun, level A0, topic — food and drink. A native word with no relatives in English. The voiced b at the end goes voiceless, so you hear "khlep". In a live sentence: “Хлеб, сыр и молоко, пожалуйста” — Bread, cheese and milk, please. Written with the characters х, л, е, б. One of 170 words in the set “food and drink” in the Russian course.
In short
| Written in Russian | хлеб |
| Read in Latin letters | khleb |
| Translation | bread |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A0 |
Why it looks that way
A native word with no relatives in English. The voiced b at the end goes voiceless, so you hear "khlep".
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.
- Хлеб, сыр и молоко, пожалуйстаKhleb, syr i moloko, pozhaluystaBread, cheese and milk, please
Nearby words: food and drink
A menu, a market, a shop sign, the question “what is this?”. Food is the most frequent subject of the first weeks and the safest excuse to start talking.
- кофеkofecoffeeMasculine against all expectations: odin kofe, "one coffee". The word is not declined in the ordinary sense, and the stress stays put.
- чайchayteaThe word traveled out of China by two roads: the northern one gave tea, the southern one chay. Chai is the same journey.
- водаvodawaterFeminine: odna voda. Its forms live a life of their own — khochu vodu, net vody — and the course table keeps them.
- молокоmolokomilkNeuter: goryacheye moloko. A distant cousin of "milk" — both come from the same ancient root for milking, though it takes etymology to see it.
- питьpitto drinkThe present tense reshapes the consonant: pyu, pyosh, pyot. Its result twin is vypit — the same verb with a prefix for "down to the bottom".
- сырsyrcheeseAfter numbers it takes the of-many form: dva syra. English "cheese" found no relatives for it in Europe.
- мясоmyasomeatNeuter, like moloko. A distant cousin of "meat" — same ancient root, though in English the word widened to mean food in general.
- рыбаrybafishFeminine: dve ryby, pyat ryb. The steak cut served in restaurants has its own name — steik.
- салатsalatsaladCame eastward through Italian insalata — "salted things", with the salt hidden inside. It names both the dish and the leaf.
- супsupsoupBorrowed from French soupe in the era of Peter the Great. Before it, dinner started with pokhlyobka — the village broth that never left.
Test yourself
Five questions from the same set — “food and drink”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “bread” in Russian?
A native word with no relatives in English. The voiced b at the end goes voiceless, so you hear "khlep".
- How do you say “meat” in Russian?
Neuter, like moloko. A distant cousin of "meat" — same ancient root, though in English the word widened to mean food in general.
- How do you say “water” in Russian?
Feminine: odna voda. Its forms live a life of their own — khochu vodu, net vody — and the course table keeps them.
- How do you say “soup” in Russian?
Borrowed from French soupe in the era of Peter the Great. Before it, dinner started with pokhlyobka — the village broth that never left.
- How do you say “cheese” in Russian?
After numbers it takes the of-many form: dva syra. English "cheese" found no relatives for it in Europe.
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 “bread” in Russian?
«хлеб», read “khleb”. In a live sentence: “Хлеб, сыр и молоко, пожалуйста” — Bread, cheese and milk, please. Noun, level A0, from the set “food and drink”; written with the characters х, л, е, б.
How is “хлеб” written in Latin letters?
khleb. 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?
A native word with no relatives in English. The voiced b at the end goes voiceless, so you hear "khlep". A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.