можно вас спросить?
“можно вас спросить?” (mozhno vas sprosit?) — may I ask you? in Russian. Phrase, level A2. Mozhno vas sprosit o rabote? — "may I ask you about work?" — the polite opener. In a live sentence: “Можно вас спросить о работе?” — May I ask you about work? Written with the characters м, о, ж, н, о, в, а, с, с, п, р, о… A word from the everyday Russian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Russian | можно вас спросить? |
| Read in Latin letters | mozhno vas sprosit? |
| Translation | may I ask you? |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Mozhno vas sprosit o rabote? — "may I ask you about work?" — the polite opener.
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.
- Можно вас спросить о работе?Mozhno vas sprosit o rabote?May I ask you about work?
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 “may I ask you?” in Russian?
«можно вас спросить?», read “mozhno vas sprosit?” In a live sentence: “Можно вас спросить о работе?” — May I ask you about work? Phrase, level A2; written with the characters м, о, ж, н, о, в, а, с, с, п, р, о…
How is “можно вас спросить?” written in Latin letters?
mozhno vas sprosit? 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?
Mozhno vas sprosit o rabote? — "may I ask you about work?" — the polite opener. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.