вы имеете в виду
“вы имеете в виду” (vy imeete v vidu) — do you mean... in Russian. Phrase, level B1. Chto vy imeyete v vidu? — "what do you have in view?" — the mind's eye of the meaning. In a live sentence: “Что вы имеете в виду?” — What do you have in view? Written with the characters в, ы, и, м, е, е, т, е, в, в, и, д… A word from the everyday Russian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Russian | вы имеете в виду |
| Read in Latin letters | vy imeete v vidu |
| Translation | do you mean... |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Chto vy imeyete v vidu? — "what do you have in view?" — the mind's eye of the meaning.
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.
- Что вы имеете в виду?Chto vy imeete v vidu?What do you have in view?
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 “do you mean...” in Russian?
«вы имеете в виду», read “vy imeete v vidu”. In a live sentence: “Что вы имеете в виду?” — What do you have in view? Phrase, level B1; written with the characters в, ы, и, м, е, е, т, е, в, в, и, д…
How is “вы имеете в виду” written in Latin letters?
vy imeete v vidu. 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?
Chto vy imeyete v vidu? — "what do you have in view?" — the mind's eye of the meaning. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.