Recently we had a post about the tricky linguistic side to getting married in Russian – read “How About ‘Getting Married’ in Russian?” now if you missed it before – but the problems with how to define relationships in this language doesn’t end there. As a matter of fact, the trouble with love in Russia starts already after your first «свидание» [here: date; but also: appointment, interview; rendezvous, tryst] with a cute Russian (belonging to the sex preferred by you, of course, myself I prefer «русские мужчины» [plural: Russian men], though I’ve heard plenty of good things about «русские женщины» [plural: Russian women], too). Let’s say that you and your Russian date have discovered for each other what is very rare but sometimes actually happen not only «в кино» [in the movies] but also in real life: «взаимная любовь» [mutual love]. Then what? What Russian word do you use to say ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’? Now is where it gets tricky! Let’s say you’ve started dating a nice, kind and cute Russian girl. The two most common things you could call her in Russian – except for «дорогая» [my dear], «любимая» [my beloved] or (when you feel it is time to get down on one knee and pull out the ring that is) «любовь моя» [my love] – is «моя подруга» [my girlfriend, or just ‘my female friend’] or «моя девушка» [my girl]. However, there is always a moment of confusion if you only refer to her as «моя подруга», since that word doesn’t exclusively stand for ‘girlfriend’ but for all of your female friends in general. And one can have many «подруги» [female friends] as we all know, without necessarily having to be dating them all (not at one and the same time, at least!). Sometimes you can help clear up the confusion somewhat by always putting the possessive «моя» [my] in front of the word, but it doesn’t always save the day.

Maybe you’re thinking that the best thing you can call your Russian girlfriend after all is «моя девушка» [my girl]. Well, it is – at least as long as she is under the age of thirty. Or simply not so picky about forcing you to be man enough to call her «женщина» [a woman] and also treat her like it. I’ve never heard of any man calling their woman «моя женщина» [my woman] with the same semantic meaning that ‘my girlfriend’ carries in English. I suppose that if you’re thinking of calling her that, then it’s high time you pull yourself together and marry her so that you can finally fess up to the usage of «моя жена» [my wife]…

Now it may sound like men have the most trouble with naming their girlfriends in Russian. That’s not so. Foreign girls who happen to acquire Russian boyfriends face pretty much the same problem. After a couple of dates you can start calling your beloved «Вася» [diminutive of «Василий»: Vasily] either «мой друг» [my boyfriend, or just ‘my male friend’] or «мой молодой человек» [my young man]. The latter I have noticed during my years in Russia as being the preferred form of referring to your boyfriend among Russian girls. I’ve never heard anyone ever saying «мой мужчина» [my man], except as a joke (or when I’ve said it myself because I thought it was okay). The problem with calling your boyfriend by just the little word «друг» [(male) friend] is that usually people have «много друзьей» [many friends] and could cause confusion as to what exactly you mean when you start a sentence saying: «Мы с другом…» What on Earth do you mean? Do you mean ‘I and my boyfriend’ or ‘I and my (male) friend’? When I studied «русский как иностранный»  [Russian as a foreign language] in Russian together with other foreigners (mainly girls) one of our professors suggested we make the definition by calling a man that we were just friends with «чистый друг» [a ‘clean’ friend]. That worked fine for a week or two, until the Japanese girl in my group once referred to her boyfriend as her «грязный друг» [‘dirty’ friend]…

Who needs «грязный друг» [a dirty male friend, colloquially used (among certain foreigners in the Central Urals) as a way to say ‘boyfriend’ in Russian without confusing anyone] when there’s «женская дружба» [female friendship] like this?

And to answer today’s post’s question in the title: there’s three ways of saying that you’re dating in Russian. You can use «ходить на свидания» [to go on dates], which is a little old-fashioned and also sounds a bit formal to me. More common these days is to describe dating by the imperfect verb «встречаться» [be found; meet, get together; go with; see; occur]. But you can also call it plainly «дружить» [be friends, pal up, keep company; neighbor]. The problem with the last verb is the same that comes with the words «подруга» [female friend] and «друг» [male friend], namely that you don’t what exactly kind of friendship a sentence like the following tries to describe:

«Аня дружит с Антоном» – [Anya is dating Anton? Anya is friends with Anton?].

It would be better if Anya were to clear up things by saying either: «Мы с Антоном встречаемся» [Anton and I are dating] or «Мы с Антоном только друзья…» [Anton and I are just friends].

And to finish this post, I’d have to say that even though it hurts to get dumped (by a Hungarian this time, not a Russian, mind you – but really it makes no difference as I couldn’t pronounce either of their last names and that’s a sure sign you’re not really supposed to marry that person if adding their last name to yours means you’ll spend the rest of your life unable to introduce yourself properly to other people), in Russian language it is much simpler to be single!