водительские права
“водительские права” (voditelskie prava) — driver's license in Russian. Noun, level A2. Literally "driver's rights": ya poteryal voditelskiye prava! — "I lost my driver's license!" In a live sentence: “Я потерял водительские права!” — I lost my driver's license! Written with the characters в, о, д, и, т, е, л, ь, с, к, и, е… A word from the everyday Russian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Russian | водительские права |
| Read in Latin letters | voditelskie prava |
| Translation | driver's license |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Literally "driver's rights": ya poteryal voditelskiye prava! — "I lost my driver's license!"
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 потерял водительские права!Ya poteryal voditelskie prava!I lost my driver's license!
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 “driver's license” in Russian?
«водительские права», read “voditelskie prava”. In a live sentence: “Я потерял водительские права!” — I lost my driver's license! Noun, level A2; written with the characters в, о, д, и, т, е, л, ь, с, к, и, е…
How is “водительские права” written in Latin letters?
voditelskie prava. 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?
Literally "driver's rights": ya poteryal voditelskiye prava! — "I lost my driver's license!" A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.