остаться без денег
“остаться без денег” (ostatsya bez deneg) — to run out of money in Russian. Phrase, level B1. V otpuske my ostalis bez deneg za dva dnya do vyleta — "on vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight" — dva, two, kept. In a live sentence: “В отпуске мы остались без денег за два дня до вылета” — On vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight. A word from the everyday Russian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Russian | остаться без денег |
| Read in Latin letters | ostatsya bez deneg |
| Translation | to run out of money |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
V otpuske my ostalis bez deneg za dva dnya do vyleta — "on vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight" — dva, two, kept.
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.
- В отпуске мы остались без денег за два дня до вылетаV otpuske my ostalis bez deneg za dva dnya do vyletaOn vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight
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 run out of money” in Russian?
«остаться без денег», read “ostatsya bez deneg”. In a live sentence: “В отпуске мы остались без денег за два дня до вылета” — On vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight. Phrase, level B1; written with the characters о, с, т, а, т, ь, с, я, б, е, з, д…
How is “остаться без денег” written in Latin letters?
ostatsya bez deneg. 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?
V otpuske my ostalis bez deneg za dva dnya do vyleta — "on vacation we ran out of money two days before the flight" — dva, two, kept. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.