мешать
“мешать” (meshat) — to hinder, to get in the way in Russian. Verb, level A2. Sosedskiy shum meshaet mne chitat — "the neighbor's noise hinders my reading" — to be the hindrance; it asks to whom: do not hinder me; the sack word is no kin, only a sound-alike. In a live sentence: “Соседский шум мешает мне читать” — The neighbor's noise hinders my reading. Written with the characters м, е, ш, а, т, ь. A word from the everyday Russian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Russian | мешать |
| Read in Latin letters | meshat |
| Translation | to hinder, to get in the way |
| Part of speech | verb |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Sosedskiy shum meshaet mne chitat — "the neighbor's noise hinders my reading" — to be the hindrance; it asks to whom: do not hinder me; the sack word is no kin, only a sound-alike.
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.
- Соседский шум мешает мне читатьSosedskiy shum meshaet mne chitatThe neighbor's noise hinders my reading
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 hinder, to get in the way” in Russian?
«мешать», read “meshat”. In a live sentence: “Соседский шум мешает мне читать” — The neighbor's noise hinders my reading. Verb, level A2; written with the characters м, е, ш, а, т, ь.
How is “мешать” written in Latin letters?
meshat. 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?
Sosedskiy shum meshaet mne chitat — "the neighbor's noise hinders my reading" — to be the hindrance; it asks to whom: do not hinder me; the sack word is no kin, only a sound-alike. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.