сырой
“сырой” (syroy) — damp, raw in Russian. Adjective, level B1. Podval syroy, kartoshka nachnyot gnit — "the basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot" — two senses at once: undercooked and damp; English takes two words, raw and damp, while this one manages with one. In a live sentence: “Подвал сырой, картошка начнёт гнить” — The basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot. Written with the characters с, ы, р, о, й. A word from the everyday Russian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Russian | сырой |
| Read in Latin letters | syroy |
| Translation | damp, raw |
| Part of speech | adjective |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Podval syroy, kartoshka nachnyot gnit — "the basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot" — two senses at once: undercooked and damp; English takes two words, raw and damp, while this one manages with one.
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.
- Подвал сырой, картошка начнёт гнитьPodval syroy, kartoshka nachnyot gnitThe basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot
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 “damp, raw” in Russian?
«сырой», read “syroy”. In a live sentence: “Подвал сырой, картошка начнёт гнить” — The basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot. Adjective, level B1; written with the characters с, ы, р, о, й.
How is “сырой” written in Latin letters?
syroy. 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?
Podval syroy, kartoshka nachnyot gnit — "the basement is damp; the potatoes will start to rot" — two senses at once: undercooked and damp; English takes two words, raw and damp, while this one manages with one. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.