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«Неважно» – unimportant or unwell? Posted by on Jul 31, 2008 in language

A while back I posted an entry with the title ‘The Russian Emotion: Sickness’ , but it seems that I left one way of expressing feeling under the weather unmentioned back then. One early morning last fall a Russian friend told me: «Ты выглядишь неважно.» That didn’t make much sense at all to me at first, since I thought she had just said to me: “You look unimportant”. Well, perhaps I wasn’t wearing a smart suit and it could be that I went too easy on the mascara that morning, but does that make a person look unimportant? I was, to say the least, puzzled, this leading to silence on my part and caused her to further develop our conversation on her own with a follow-up question: «Не заболела ли ты?» [You’re not sick, are you?] That was when I had myself a little aha-moment and answered: «Нет, не думаю, хотя горло немножко болит» [No, I don’t think so, even though my throat hurts a little]. What turned out to be the beginning of a cold was also the beginning of understanding the second meaning of the adverb «неважно» – unwell; not very well.

 

Isn’t it ironic that most of us tend to be feeling a little «неважно» when nature is this beautiful? Unless you’re Александр Сергеевич Пушкин [Alexander Sergeivich Pushkin], that is, who loved fall and was so inspired by yellow leaves that they caused him to write most of his masterpieces during this season

 


Here are two other ways to use this word in sentences about sickness:

«Он себя неважно чувствует» – He doesn’t feel very well.

«У неё неважное здоровье» – She has poor health.

Of course, one can always use this word in its general meaning, for example exclaiming «Неважно!» [It doesn’t matter!] when asked window or aisle while checking in at the airport. You could also break up a silly argument about whether it’s best to provide still or carbonated water for the speakers at conference about global warming with saying: «Вопрос неважный!» [It’s an unimportant matter!]. And you’d be right. After having said that you could add «Нам сегодня нужно сосредоточиться на важном!» [We have to concentrate on what’s important today!] and you’d be even more right.

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Comments:

  1. JTapp:

    I’ve never heard that for sickness. Very simple and useful idiom, thanks.

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