Bez desyat' desyat' — a Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) colloquial way of telling time in which the numeral following the preposition bez ("before") remains uninflected: bez desyat' desyat' instead of the standard bez desyati desyat' (9:50), bez desyat' pyat' instead of bez desyati pyat'. To an outsider it seems one of the quintessentially Nizhny Novgorod turns of phrase — alongside the word dokhodit used of clock hands, the particle chay, and the verb udelat' meaning "to fix" [1][2][3][4].
The form and the literary standard
In standard Russian, the preposition bez when telling time requires the genitive case. Ushakov's dictionary gives the examples bez pyati shest' (5:55), bez dvadtsati tri (2:40), and bez chetverti chas [4]. In everyday Nizhny Novgorod speech the numeral stays in its base form: bez desyat' pyat' [1][2], bez desyat' desyat', bez dvadtsat' dvenadtsat'. This does not entirely displace the literary form: the correctly inflected bez pyati chetyre is heard alongside these constructions.
Another local expression involves the same minute hand: a Nizhny Novgorod resident will say "Pyat' dokhodit!" ("Five is coming up!") — the verb dokhodit here refers to the clock hands [1].
Counting minutes "before the hour" using bez is itself a feature rare in Europe. A 2025 survey of time-telling patterns across 38 European languages, published in Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, notes that when counting by subtraction the hour is normally named before the minutes in all languages except three — Russian, Lithuanian, and Latvian; these share similar constructions with a "before"-type preposition in which the minutes come first [5].
How it gets noticed
Nizhny Novgorod entrepreneur Yuri Popov, who came from Murmansk in 1988 to enroll at a university, recalled that at first he was thrown off by unfamiliar stress patterns — he kept wanting to say KuznyEchikha for the Kuznechikha microdistrict — as well as by the "purely Nizhny Novgorod ways of telling time," such as bez desyat' pyat' and dokhodit for clock hands. What surprised him most was the verb udelat' in the sense of "to repair": in Murmansk it means exactly the opposite — "to break." [1][6].
In 2023 the expression appeared in an NN.RU quiz, "Balondit' and vaydosit'. How well do you know Nizhny Novgorod slang?": readers were asked to identify how a Nizhny Novgorod resident would say 16:50, choosing from the options bez desyat' pyat', bez desyati pyat', and bez chervontsa pyat' [2].
Elfiya Garipova, a journalist for *AiF-Nizhny Novgorod*, wrote in 2014 that the distinctive "okanye" accent (the full pronunciation of unstressed "o") had almost disappeared in Nizhny Novgorod, and that in everyday speech the city's residents follow the Moscow norm — no wonder the saying goes "Nizhny is Moscow's nearest neighbour" — though visitors still find certain things unusual [3].
Linguist Elizaveta Koltunova (Lobachevsky University) defines a regionalism as a locally used word or expression current in a particular area: it forms an intermediate link between dialects and urban vernacular, belonging above all to the language of towns — mostly smaller ones — and fed by territorial dialects. Nizhny Novgorod Region is among the regions where regionalisms occur most frequently [7].
The "Nizhny Novgorod language": a joke with a history
The expression "Nizhny Novgorod language" is a playful local nickname for regional speech, not a technical term [6]. The joke has deep roots: in Griboyedov's *Woe from Wit*, Chatsky mocks the tone of high-society gatherings [8].
Does the mingling of tongues still reign — / French with Nizhny Novgorod?
The "Nizhny Novgorod Slovral"
In 2021, Yuri Popov self-published *The Nizhny Novgorod Slovral* — a humorous collection of local words aimed at tourists — in a print run of 500 copies. *Rossiyskaya Gazeta* covered the book under the headline "A Dictionary of the 'Nizhny Novgorod Language' Has Been Published," placing the last words in quotation marks. The collection was sold in bookshops and souvenir stores; Nizhny Novgorod residents themselves bought it as a gift item. A second edition, with additions, corrections, and stress marks, was in preparation at the same time [1][6].
In addition to local words, the Slovral' also covers local history: how the Upper Town differs from the riverside districts, where the Otkos is located and why "Sormovskaya Liricheskaya" is the city's unofficial anthem; it also reminds readers that nizhnegorodtsy and novgorodtsy are residents of two different cities. Journalists suggested that a true local could be identified by the phrase "I'm going from Shveytsariya to Strelka via Svoboda," which leaves no Nizhny Novgorod resident puzzled [1][6].
What you have before you is an informative but thoroughly unscientific work, and that is why it bears the name SLOVRAL'.
City words
In 2021, the Yandex.Research service, on the occasion of Russian Language Day, published a list of regional words selected together with linguists from the V. V. Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, based on articles and comments by 6 million users of the Yandex.Dzen blogging platform — 11 billion word usages in total. From the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 31 words and expressions were included [9]. Many of these are also cited by local linguists — Elizaveta Koltunova and Aleksandr Pryanikov, an associate professor at the Arzamas branch of Lobachevsky University [7][10].
| Word | Meaning and usage |
|---|---|
| blondit' | to wander aimlessly, to stroll for its own sake: "in the evening we'll blondit' along Pokrovka" [3][10] |
| udelat' | to fix, to do up; in Murmansk the same word means "to break" [1][7][10] |
| chay | a particle expressing hope or expectation: "You'll come tomorrow, chay?" [3][10] |
| shabry | neighbors; rarely heard nowadays [3] |
| romadit' | to make noise, to chatter loudly: "Don't romadit'!" [3] |
| odyazhka | a slovenly dressed, down-and-out person: "walks around like an odyazhka" [3] |
| pomidora | tomato used as a feminine noun, found even on price tags [7][10][9] |
| durom, nedurom | intensely, excessively, in large quantities [7][10][9] |
| konechka | the terminal stop of a bus route [7] |
| bepeshka, doshik | instant noodles, youth slang terms [7][10][9] |
| avtolayn | a fixed-route minibus taxi [9] |
| viktoriya | strawberry, garden strawberry [10] |
| pesok | sugar, granulated sugar [10] |
| ubrat'sya | not only to tidy up, but also to fit (inside something) [1][10] |
| vaydosit' | to kick up a fuss, to start a row [1] |
| dokhat' | to cough hard [1][10] |
| isplevatʼsya | to feel or express extreme displeasure [7][9] |
| nakryachit' | to deceive, to outwit; in other contexts — to give someone a tongue-lashing [7][10][9] |
| otkhryapat' | to grab and take away, to snatch off [7][10][9] |
| layuchaya (sobaka) | a dog that barks frequently [7][9] |
| usad | a kitchen garden [10][9] |
| znamo delo | of course, naturally [10] |
The Gorky word "chay"
The particle "chay," as Alexander Pryanikov explains, goes back to the archaic verb "chayat'" — to hope, to expect; the same root gives "chayaniya" (hopes) and "otchayat'sya" (to despair) [10]. The people of Gorky were once teased with the saying "Chay primechay, kuda chayki letyat" ("Mark well, where the seagulls fly"), and a song called "Chay" — about how fellow locals recognize each other far from home by this very word — was written to verses by Gorky poet Boris Pilnik [3].
In the rural dialects of the Region, the particle also lives on in combinations with other words: "namo chay," "chay podi" [11].
Dialects of Nizhny Novgorod Region
According to Elizaveta Koltunova, the speech of Nizhny Novgorod residents is distinguished by its melodic quality and long vowels; in the northern districts one encounters tsokanye — "ts" in place of "ch": "vnutsok, petchka," while in the south a pronounced yakanye is clearly heard — "v lyasu." Overall, the Middle Russian okanye dialects predominate in the Nizhny Novgorod area [7].
Koltunova describes the region as a blend of Russian, Finno-Ugric, and Turkic peoples, whose tongues have influenced one another since ancient times. The names of almost all the Region's rivers sound Finno-Ugric — Linda, Lyunda, Vezloma, Vetluga, Kudma; in the south live the Erzya and Moksha, collectively known as the "Mordva," in the north — the Mari; the Mishar Tatars and Chuvash also left their mark, as did descendants of Novgorodians and Belarusians who were exiled to the "lowland territories" in the 16th–19th centuries [3].
Hence the variety: the same concept is called by different names in neighboring districts, and the same word can mean different things [3].
| Word | Where | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| barma | Arzamassky and Bogorodsky Districts | chatterbox [3] |
| bakhorya | Vorotynsky District | chatterbox [3] |
| barya | Pavlovsky District | chatterbox [3] |
| alya-ulyu | Bolsheboldinsky District | moonshine [3] |
| berkut | Dalnekonstantinovsky District | wicker basket [3] |
| berkut' | Navashinskiy District | badger [3] |
| bestsennyy | Vyksunsky District | useless [3] |
| bogadelnya | Pochinki | tool shed [3] |
Who Preserves the Dialect
The local dialect, according to Koltunova, is most commonly found in rural areas, and its best keepers are elderly village women who have spent their whole lives in one place. Urban speech is becoming standardized, and local words are drifting into the category of colloquialisms [3]. In 2025, the linguist noted that in social media, regionalisms appear more often among the older generation, but dialectologists record regional features in the speech of young people as well, even in children's speech. In her assessment, the complete disappearance of local features is not to be expected [7].
The "Dialectal Dictionary of Nizhny Novgorod Region" has been published at the Institute of Philology and Journalism of Lobachevsky State University since 2013, edited by M. A. Agapova, E. A. Koltunova, and I. V. Tolkacheva; the second volume — entries from "Bubanka" to "Vyachit," 197 pages — was released in 2014 [7][12]. It contains many words describing a capable, hardworking person — delyaga, gomoza, gomozilka, starotel, trudovik, "worked from dark to dark" — and words relating to hospitality: the adverbs "gostisto," "vskhozho," "narodno," "polyudno" all denote an abundance of guests [7].
Words are born, live for a time, and depart just as people do. That is why they must be cherished and preserved for the future
Dal's Dictionary
A substantial portion of Vladimir Dal's "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" took shape over a decade in the mid-nineteenth century, when he managed the Nizhny Novgorod Udel Office; in 2021, a bust of him was erected on the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment [6].
Sources
- godliteratury.ru (archive)
- web.archive.org — Blondit' and vaidosit'. How well do you know Nizhny Novgorod slang? A test by NN.RU (archive)
- nn.aif.ru — The Gorky "chai." What is happening to the modern Nizhny Novgorod dialect? (archive)
- gufo.me — bez — Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
- cyberleninka.ru — Expressing clock time in the languages of Europe
- web.archive.org — A dictionary of the "Nizhny Novgorod language" has been published — Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 06.10.2021 — copy in web archive (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — "Doshik" and "bepeshka": the words that give away a Nizhny Novgorod native (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Woe from Wit (Griboyedov) / Complete Works 1911 (WT) / Act I — Wikisource (archive)
- Vremya N — Yandex names characteristic Nizhny Novgorod words (archive)
- NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — It emerged which words are used only by Nizhny Novgorod residents (archive)
- cyberleninka.ru — Particles in Nizhny Novgorod dialects
- search.rsl.ru — Dialect Dictionary of Nizhny Novgorod Region [Text] / Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Lobachevsky University,… (archive)