Dialogue: Ordering in a Café

Ordering in a cafe is a transaction every learner needs early — and it happens to thread together three patterns that mark the jump from A1 to A2. The waiter asks with an imperfective future ("What will you be ordering?"); you answer by handing yourself the order in the dative and dropping the verb altogether (Мне ко́фе — "for me a coffee"); and the offer of extras uses the -нибудь indefinite (Что-нибудь ещё?). The whole exchange shows off how Russian elides verbs where English insists on a full clause. Read the dialogue, then the line-by-line notes.

The dialogue

Line by line

— Что бу́дете зака́зывать?

The waiter opens with Что бу́дете зака́зывать? — "What will you be ordering?" This is the imperfective (compound) future: бу́дете (the вы-form of быть "will be") + the imperfective infinitive зака́зывать ("to order"). Two things to notice:

• Why future, not present? The ordering hasn't happened yet, so Russian uses a genuine future. English can do the same ("what will you have?") but often slips into the present ("what do you want?"); Russian here prefers the polite future.
• Why imperfective? The compound бу́ду/бу́дешь/бу́дет… + imperfective infinitive is the only way to make a future from an imperfective verb. It frames the ordering as an open-ended activity ("what'll you be having?") rather than a single sealed act, which is exactly the gently inviting tone a waiter wants.

The waiter uses вы (the бу́дете form), as staff always do with customers — the polite default for any service interaction.

— Мне, пожа́луйста, ко́фе и бутербро́д.

This is the line that surprises English speakers. The customer says, literally, "To-me, please, coffee and a sandwich" — and there is no verb at all. The structure is:

• Мне — the dative of я ("to/for me"). This is the dative of the orderer: you place yourself in the dative as the beneficiary, "for me…", and the order follows.
• ко́фе и бутербро́д — the items, the (implied) direct objects. Ко́фе is indeclinable so it never changes; бутербро́д is masculine inanimate, so its accusative looks identical to the nominative — which is why no case change is visible here, though grammatically these are accusative objects of an unspoken "give / bring me".
• пожа́луйста — "please", the politeness anchor, dropped in mid-phrase as Russian comfortably does.

The verb ("bring", "give", "I'll have") is simply left out — the dative Мне plus the items is a complete, perfectly polite order. English cannot do this: we need "I'll have a coffee" or "Can I get a coffee". Russian compresses it to two content words.

— Како́й ко́фе?

The waiter clarifies: Како́й ко́фе? — "What kind of coffee?" Here како́й is the question word "which / what kind?", in the masculine form because ко́фе is treated as masculine. (You may also hear Како́й и́менно? "Which exactly?".) Note again the zero copula — there is no "is" — and the verb-free brevity natural to spoken service exchanges.

— Капучи́но.

A one-word answer: Капучи́но. Like ко́фе, it is an indeclinable borrowed noun — it never takes case endings, so it looks the same as subject, object, or anything else. The full sentence would be Мне капучи́но ("a cappuccino for me"), but the bare noun is normal once the frame is established.

— Что-нибудь ещё?

The waiter offers more with Что-нибудь ещё? — "Anything else?" The key word is что-нибудь, the indefinite "anything / something". Russian has two such indefinites and the choice matters:

• что-нибудь = "anything (at all), it doesn't matter what" — used for open, hypothetical, or offered possibilities. An offer ("would you like anything else?") is exactly this case.
• что-то = "something (specific but unidentified)" — used when something definite exists but isn't named.

Because the waiter is offering an open, not-yet-real extra, что-нибудь is correct; что-то would wrongly imply "there's some specific thing you want — what is it?".

— Нет, спаси́бо. Ско́лько с меня́?

The customer declines — Нет, спаси́бо ("No, thank you") — and asks for the bill with Ско́лько с меня́? This idiom repays a close look:

• Ско́лько — "how much / how many".
• с меня́ — с
  • genitive меня́ ("from me"). The preposition с with the genitive means "from / off", so the literal sense is "How much (is owed) from me?" — i.e. "How much do I owe?"

This с + genitive "owed from" construction is fixed and very useful: Ско́лько с нас? ("How much do we owe?"), С тебя́ три́ста рубле́й ("You owe three hundred roubles", lit. "from you 300 roubles"). Beware: с governs different cases with different meanings — here it is the genitive ("from / off"), not the instrumental "(together) with".

Register note: вы to the staff (and the staff to you)

Throughout, both sides use вы. Staff address customers as вы without exception; and you, the customer, also address waiters and cashiers with вы — strangers in a service role. Even though the exchange is brisk and the customer can drop verbs (Мне ко́фе), the politeness markers stay on: пожа́луйста, спаси́бо, and the вы-forms. Brevity is fine; familiarity is not. Reaching for ты with cafe staff would sound rude or oddly chummy. See making polite requests for the wider toolkit.

Vocabulary gloss

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• The polite service question is the imperfective future: бу́дете + imperfective infinitive — Что бу́дете зака́зывать? (never the perfective заказа́ть).
• Order by putting yourself in the dative and dropping the verb: Мне ко́фе = "(for) me a coffee"; change the dative for others (Ему́ чай, Нам два ко́фе).
• Offers and open questions use the -нибудь indefinite: Что-нибудь ещё? — что-то would imply a specific known thing.
• Items are accusative objects (often verbless and case-invisible: ко́фе, капучи́но are indeclinable).
• Ask for the bill with Ско́лько с меня́? — с
  • genitive ("how much from me"); the reply is С вас … рубле́й.
• Keep the вы register and politeness words (пожа́луйста, спаси́бо) with staff, even while clipping the grammar short.