стихи
“стихи” (stikhi) — poems, verses in Russian. Noun, level B1. Stikhi babushka pomnit naizust — "grandma knows the poems by heart" — plural only, like money: one stikhotvoreniye, many stikhi; Greek for row, a row of words in rhythm. In a live sentence: “Стихи бабушка помнит наизусть” — Grandma knows the poems by heart. Written with the characters с, т, и, х, и. A word from the everyday Russian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Russian | стихи |
| Read in Latin letters | stikhi |
| Translation | poems, verses |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Stikhi babushka pomnit naizust — "grandma knows the poems by heart" — plural only, like money: one stikhotvoreniye, many stikhi; Greek for row, a row of words in rhythm.
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.
- Стихи бабушка помнит наизустьStikhi babushka pomnit naizustGrandma knows the poems by heart
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 “poems, verses” in Russian?
«стихи», read “stikhi”. In a live sentence: “Стихи бабушка помнит наизусть” — Grandma knows the poems by heart. Noun, level B1; written with the characters с, т, и, х, и.
How is “стихи” written in Latin letters?
stikhi. 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?
Stikhi babushka pomnit naizust — "grandma knows the poems by heart" — plural only, like money: one stikhotvoreniye, many stikhi; Greek for row, a row of words in rhythm. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.