"Cold water"

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

I learned a new phrase the other day from the Russian woman at work—хáлодна вадá. I hope I'm spelling that correctly, it was my first encounter with spoken Russian! It's supposed to say "cold water." I put the accents there to illustrate where I heard the stress, in case I got it wrong.

Comments

[oblomov-jerusal.livejournal.com]

It was probably ХОлодна вода, which means "The water is cold!"

[oblomov-jerusal.livejournal.com]

Oops, I got nuts, it should be холоднА водА. I'm not always consciously aware of the position of stress.

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Or could it be xolodnaja voda? That's what everyone else has said.

[jaspe.livejournal.com]

"холОдная водА" means "cold water"
"холоднА водА" means "water is cold"

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

OK, thank you. I'm not sure which one my Russian co-worker was saying!

[yers.livejournal.com]

what situation did you hear it in?
"холодна вода" is a slightly unlikely construction to hear in modern everyday speech.

and it's not the same as "вода холодна(я)" "the water is cold", it's one of those typically Russian phrases made expressive by syntaxical and intonational means (it's pronounced with a plummeting intonation on the adjective's accented syllable). I would roughly translate "холодна вода" as "now here's cold water".

I'm sure it was "холодная вода" in this case. the -ая ending is very commonly pronounced as virtually one sound, close to э.

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

what situation did you hear it in?

The entire conversation was in English: we were talking about how hot it was in the office and how people always have to go fill their water bottles at the water cooler downstairs. Then she just said (what sounded like) холодна вода and asked if I knew what it meant. I said "no" and she said "It mean's cold water." But I may have just heard her wrong.

Thanks for all the info!