заниматься спортом
“заниматься спортом” (zanimatsya sportom) — to do sports in Russian. Phrase, level A2. Reshil zanimatsya sportom s ponedelnika — "he decided to take up sports from Monday" — to make exercise the habit; zanimatsya asks what? in the instrument case: sport, music, the garden plot. In a live sentence: “Решил заниматься спортом с понедельника” — He decided to take up sports from Monday. Written with the characters з, а, н, и, м, а, т, ь, с, я, с, п…
In short
| Written in Russian | заниматься спортом |
| Read in Latin letters | zanimatsya sportom |
| Translation | to do sports |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Reshil zanimatsya sportom s ponedelnika — "he decided to take up sports from Monday" — to make exercise the habit; zanimatsya asks what? in the instrument case: sport, music, the garden plot.
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.
- Решил заниматься спортом с понедельникаReshil zanimatsya sportom s ponedelnikaHe decided to take up sports from Monday
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 “to do sports” in Russian?
«заниматься спортом», read “zanimatsya sportom”. In a live sentence: “Решил заниматься спортом с понедельника” — He decided to take up sports from Monday. Phrase, level A2; written with the characters з, а, н, и, м, а, т, ь, с, я, с, п…
How is “заниматься спортом” written in Latin letters?
zanimatsya sportom. 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?
Reshil zanimatsya sportom s ponedelnika — "he decided to take up sports from Monday" — to make exercise the habit; zanimatsya asks what? in the instrument case: sport, music, the garden plot. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.