прервать
“прервать” (prervat) — to interrupt, to cut short in Russian. Verb, level B1. Zvonok prerval ego na poluslove — "the phone cut him off mid-sentence" — to stop in the middle: the talk, the silence; rvat, to tear, is kin — the thread snapped in the middle, and cutting a speaker off is the same. In a live sentence: “Звонок прервал его на полуслове” — The phone cut him off mid-sentence. Written with the characters п, р, е, р, в, а, т, ь.
In short
| Written in Russian | прервать |
| Read in Latin letters | prervat |
| Translation | to interrupt, to cut short |
| Part of speech | verb |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Zvonok prerval ego na poluslove — "the phone cut him off mid-sentence" — to stop in the middle: the talk, the silence; rvat, to tear, is kin — the thread snapped in the middle, and cutting a speaker off is the same.
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.
- Звонок прервал его на полусловеZvonok prerval ego na polusloveThe phone cut him off mid-sentence
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 interrupt, to cut short” in Russian?
«прервать», read “prervat”. In a live sentence: “Звонок прервал его на полуслове” — The phone cut him off mid-sentence. Verb, level B1; written with the characters п, р, е, р, в, а, т, ь.
How is “прервать” written in Latin letters?
prervat. 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?
Zvonok prerval ego na poluslove — "the phone cut him off mid-sentence" — to stop in the middle: the talk, the silence; rvat, to tear, is kin — the thread snapped in the middle, and cutting a speaker off is the same. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.