Thread: the word 'remember'

Despite learning russian for 5 years, still not sure how to translate the word 'remember'

Yeah! Despite learning English for 20 years, I still often have difficulties with translation of 'remember'

This is over my head how one word could be utilized for both actions: 'put in memory' and 'retrieve from memory'

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

Yeah! Despite learning English for 20 years, I still often have difficulties with translation of 'remember'

This is over my head how one word could be utilized for both actions: 'put in memory' and 'retrieve from memory'

Hmmm... I think "remember" is normally understood to mean "successfully retrieve from memory," and quite rarely would mean "put in memory" (for which "memorize" is a better word). Admittedly, sometimes there could be ambiguity. I mean, if someone said "I will remember that," 99% of the time I would take the meaning to be "I will not forget that" or "I will not fail to retrieve it from memory" -- but probably not "I will carefully memorize that."

So "I will remember that" COULD in rare cases be translated with something like Я это запомню ("I shall memorize that") or Я это выучу наизусть ("I shall learn it by heart"), but usually it means Я это не забуду.