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Confusing Russian Words | Homonyms

In Russian language, there are lots of words that can make you feel confused. These words are called homonyms and they are divided into three groups: homographs, homoforms and homophones. Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings, whether they're pronounced the same or not. Homoforms are words that have the same pronunciation but they represent different forms of words, different parts of speech. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spelling. And there are the bad news - there are lots of homonyms in Russian language. So, if you want to avoid some awkward situations and misunderstanding, you should learn these words. Actually, these Russian homonyms are really fun to learn. Let's start with Russian homographs. Watch the video to download a mini guide with the most common Russian homonyms.


Russian homographs


Here are some examples of Russian homographs shown in the video. The first Russian word is 'плачу' where the stress is the key.

Russian homonyms

In fact, there is only one form with a pronoun 'Я' when these two Russian verbs coincide.


The second Russian verb that you should know and never confuse is the infinitive form 'писать'. As you can imagine, the stress in this word is extremely important.


The next Russian homograph is the word 'брак' which can have two possible meanings.

Russian homonym

Even though these words are written the same, they have completely different origins.


Another interesting Russian homograph is the noun 'коса' that has several meanings:


The next Russian homograph that sounds similar to the previous word is 'косяк'.

Other Russian homographs are given in the video lesson above.


If you found Russian homographs confusing, then you will be really surprised to learn Russian homoforms as these are words that represent different parts of speech.


Russian homoforms


The first Russian homoform is 'пора'

Russian homonym

Here are several meanings of the Russian homoform 'пора'


Here is the next Russian homoform - 'охота'

Russian homonym

Here are several meanings of the Russian homoform 'охота'


Another interesting Russian homoform - 'домой'

Russian homonym

Here are several meanings of the Russian homoform 'домой'


Other Russian homoforms are given in the video lesson above.


That's it, we have learned the most common Russian homonyms: homographs and homoforms. Of course, there are more Russian homonyms that I have shown in the video lessons, but you cannot learn them all at once.


If you have recently started to learn Russian language, you should absolutely get my free guide 'Essential Russian Words and Expressions to Understand Spoken Russian'.

This guide also contains audio files so that you can listen to these phrases on the go: while driving, walking, doing sport or brushing your teeth. Make sure that you repeat these phrases yourself and try to imitate my accent.


It's also very important to know how to pronounce Russian words correctly as not every Russian letter is pronounced the same way as it's written. There are certain Russian pronunciation rules that are really easy to learn.


 

Hello! My name is Mila and I am a founder of Hack Your Russian language platform. You can find me here:

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