Russian pun of the day: carrying nonsense

Hello my dear students! Today we are going to have a peep at Maxim again! Erm.. To its headlines, to be exact. As we have already noticed, Maxim writers like to play on words in headings, and that’s exactly what we need – witty puns to study Russian!

So here is the Russian pun of the day –

It’s sort of double entendre, a mixing of two different meanings of the same word «нести». The verb «нести» generally means ‘to carry’, ‘to bear’, ‘to bring’. When we use this verb with a pronoun ‘you’ («ты») it gets the form «несёшь»: «ты несёшь».

We like to use the verb «нести» when talking about predictions and suppositions. Like «Этот год принесёт нам….» (‘This year will bring for us…’) or «Что это тебе принесет?» (‘What will it give you?’) Don’t worry if you don’t know some of these words, they don’t play any role right now.

Well, I must admit: in the middle of 2016 this picture is a bit outdated. But the Russian pun is not 🙂

In this case we are addressing the year 2014: hey, what are you bringing? «Что ты несешь?» — («что» means ‘what’).

Ok, that’s enough about the first meaning of «нести», I don’t want you to get bored. Let’s go back to our Russian pun of the day.

Another meaning is ‘to talk nonsense’ or ‘to babble on about’. When someone is saying complete rubbish, don’t hesitate to interrupt and say «Что ты несёшь!» Notice that even if it looks like a question (because starts with ‘что’), it’s not a question – we even replaced a question mark with an exclamation mark. You are not asking, technically you are stating it.

Thus it makes the heading «2014. Что ты несешь?!» contain two sentences ‘What are you brining to us?’ and ‘What a lot of nonsense you are talking!’ Like no one expects anything remarkable from this year.

Something like that.

Enjoy!

Listen to Russian pun of the day: carrying nonsense