отказаться
“отказаться” (otkazatsya) — to refuse, to decline in Russian. Verb, level A2. Ya ne otkazhus ot chashki chaya — "I will not refuse a cup of tea" — to say no to what was offered; ot plus kaz, the sign: you turn away from the offered thing; it asks ot chego, from what. In a live sentence: “Я не откажусь от чашки чая” — I will not refuse a cup of tea. A word from the everyday Russian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Russian | отказаться |
| Read in Latin letters | otkazatsya |
| Translation | to refuse, to decline |
| Part of speech | verb |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Ya ne otkazhus ot chashki chaya — "I will not refuse a cup of tea" — to say no to what was offered; ot plus kaz, the sign: you turn away from the offered thing; it asks ot chego, from what.
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.
- Я не откажусь от чашки чаяYa ne otkazhus ot chashki chayaI will not refuse a cup of tea
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 refuse, to decline” in Russian?
«отказаться», read “otkazatsya”. In a live sentence: “Я не откажусь от чашки чая” — I will not refuse a cup of tea. Verb, level A2; written with the characters о, т, к, а, з, а, т, ь, с, я.
How is “отказаться” written in Latin letters?
otkazatsya. 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?
Ya ne otkazhus ot chashki chaya — "I will not refuse a cup of tea" — to say no to what was offered; ot plus kaz, the sign: you turn away from the offered thing; it asks ot chego, from what. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.