простой в работе
“простой в работе” (prostoy v rabote) — downtime in Russian. Phrase, level B1. Iz-za avarii vyshel prostoy v rabote na dva dnya — "because of the accident there were two days of downtime" — prostoy here is a noun, the stoppage; not the simple man — there it is the adjective. In a live sentence: “Из-за аварии вышел простой в работе на два дня” — Because of the accident there were two days of downtime. A word from the everyday Russian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Russian | простой в работе |
| Read in Latin letters | prostoy v rabote |
| Translation | downtime |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Iz-za avarii vyshel prostoy v rabote na dva dnya — "because of the accident there were two days of downtime" — prostoy here is a noun, the stoppage; not the simple man — there it is the adjective.
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.
- Из-за аварии вышел простой в работе на два дняIz-za avarii vyshel prostoy v rabote na dva dnyaBecause of the accident there were two days of downtime
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 “downtime” in Russian?
«простой в работе», read “prostoy v rabote”. In a live sentence: “Из-за аварии вышел простой в работе на два дня” — Because of the accident there were two days of downtime. Phrase, level B1; written with the characters п, р, о, с, т, о, й, в, р, а, б, о…
How is “простой в работе” written in Latin letters?
prostoy v rabote. 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?
Iz-za avarii vyshel prostoy v rabote na dva dnya — "because of the accident there were two days of downtime" — prostoy here is a noun, the stoppage; not the simple man — there it is the adjective. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.