[This message has been edited by Cold Warrior]
Ask Nicely and You'll Get Your Way
By Michele A. Berdy
Ya vas umolyayu: Oh, please! Don't be silly! Give me a break ! Get off it! Give it a rest!
Russian gives us a plethora of ways to ask for something, from the straightforward prosit (to ask) to every shading of entreaty, polite or impolite. If you want to ask someone to take an action, you can use uprashivat/uprosit, with imperfective and perfective the indicator of whether or not we got what we were asking for. Ya polchasa uprashivala ego pazreshet mne sdelat etu rabotu, no on ukhodil ot otvet. (I spent half an hour asking him for permission to do the work, but he kept avoiding an answer.) Nakonets-to ya ego uprosila.(I finally prevailed upon him to agree.)
Umolyat is a stronger form of asking: It means to "entreat" or "beg." Ya umolyal ego ne ekhat. (I begged him not to go.) However, when you say Ya vas/tebya umolyayu! in an exasperated tone with the accent on Ya, it is a strong form of objection, as in the following exchange: "On mne ne pozvonit." "Ya tebya umolyayu! Konechno, on pozvonit. On tebya lyubit." ("He won't call me." "Oh, please! Of course he'll call. He loves you.") Zaklinat/zaklyast is a word that can mean "to invoke" (as in evil or good spirits) but also "to entreat." Ya zaklinala ego vsem svyatym. (I begged him on everything he holds sacred.)
You can also strengthen the simple prosit with lots of adverbs and adverbial phrases. For example, Ya tebya ochen proshu! (I beg you!) Or when you are really desperate: Ya proshu Khrista radi. (For God's sake, I'm begging you.)
When you want to ask for a thing, you can use vyprashivat/vyprosit. On chasto vyprashival u menya dengi.(He often asked me for money.) Klyanchit is a nice word that means what it sounds like: to pester, bug or nag someone for something. It can be used in reference to house pets' behavior in the kitchen. Pyos sidit u stola i klyanchit edu.(The dog sits by the table and pesters us for food.)
Kanyuchit also means to beg, but with the sense of whining for something. Perestan kanyuchit! Ya tebe ne dam deneg na morozhenoe. (Stop whining! I won't give you money for ice cream.) When you want to bum or cadge a cigarette or money, you can use the word strelyat, which has the primary meaning of "to shoot." Ona inogda strelyaet u menya sigaretu. (Sometimes she bums a cigarette from me.)
There are also ways to get something that are not so nice. Vymogat is "to extort" something, and can be used either literally or describe something that is de facto extortion. Oni ne prosili zaplatit, a prosto vymogali u nas dengi.(They didn't ask for payment; they simply extorted money from us.) If you are trying to get money out of an institution, you can use vybivat/vybit. My vybili sredstva iz ministerstva na kapremont.(We wheedled funds out the ministry to do major repair work.)
Russia being Russia with its long history of asking the tsar-batyushka (the tsar-father) for something, there are ways to make your needs known in the sense of "petition." The most common word to use is khodataistvovat: Ya khodataistvoval za nego u ministra.. (I petitioned the minister about his case.) If you want to convey that you went through a lot of trouble petitioning someone, you can use the word khlopotat: Ya khlopotala za neyo vesnoi -- kuda ya tolko ne obrashchalas! No ona v institut vsyo-taki ne postupila. (I ran around for her all spring -- I went everywhere I could think of! But she didn't get in to the institute.)
Finally, there is plain old Proshu! or Proshu vas! which is a kind of all-purpose invitation to do something. Usually when you translate it into English, you have to specify the action. Uzhin gotov. Proshu. (Dinner is served. Please be seated.) So even if you forget the verb in Russian, you can still be polite and people will figure out what you have in mind.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator.
