Learn Hardcore Russian: Сегодня откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом, хотя никто ещё не обедает. - Today from somewhere in the kitchen it smells like soup, although nobody is having lunch yet.

With the verb пахнуть in the sense “to smell of / smell like something,” Russian normally uses the instrumental to show what something smells of:

Пахнет супом. – It smells like soup.
От тебя пахнет табаком. – You smell of tobacco.
В комнате пахло цветами. – The room smelled of flowers.

So the pattern is: пахнуть + кем? чем? (instrumental) to name the smell. That’s why it’s супом, not суп or супа.

Who or what is the subject of пахнет here? Is супом the subject?

In this sentence, there is no explicit subject. The construction is impersonal:

Сегодня откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом…
“Today it smells of soup from somewhere in the kitchen…”

Here пахнет is in 3rd person singular neuter, which is the default form for impersonal sentences in Russian (like идёт дождь, темнеет, etc.).

Супом is not the subject; it’s an instrumental complement telling us what the smell is.

Compare:

Суп пахнет вкусно. – Here суп is the subject (nominative).
Пахнет супом. – Impersonal: “It smells of soup.” No subject mentioned.

What extra meaning does откуда‑то add to из кухни?

Откуда‑то means “from somewhere” (indefinite).
Из кухни means “from the kitchen.”

Together откуда‑то из кухни is best understood as:

“from somewhere in the kitchen,”
“from somewhere over in the kitchen (not exactly clear where).”

So откуда‑то adds a feeling of vagueness / lack of precision: you don’t know exactly from which part of the kitchen the smell is coming, just that it’s coming from somewhere there.

Isn’t откуда‑то из кухни redundant? It looks like “from somewhere from the kitchen.”

It’s not redundant in Russian; the two parts do different jobs:

откуда‑то – “from somewhere or other” (unspecified source)
из кухни – narrows it down to the general area: the kitchen

So the idea is: “from some (unspecified) place within the kitchen.”

If you say only из кухни пахнет супом, it sounds more neutral: “from the kitchen it smells of soup.”
With откуда‑то из кухни, you add a nuance of “I don’t know exactly from where, but it’s somewhere in the kitchen.”

What case is кухни, and why is that case used?

Кухни is genitive singular of кухня.

The preposition из (“from, out of”) always takes the genitive:

из кухни – from (the) kitchen
из дома – from the house
из школы – from school

So кухни is simply required by из.

Why is it никто ещё не обедает with singular обедает, not plural обедают?

Никто is grammatically singular, so the verb must also be singular:

никто не обедает – literally: “no one is having lunch.”

This is just like English “nobody is” (not “nobody are”).

In Russian, negative pronouns like никто (nobody) and ничто (nothing) normally take 3rd person singular verbs:

Никто не приходит. – Nobody comes.
Никто не понимал. – Nobody understood.

Even if you mean “no people (plural),” grammatically you still use singular.

Why do we need не with никто in никто ещё не обедает?

Russian uses double negation as the normal rule. With negative pronouns like никто, ничто, никогда, you almost always also use не with the verb:

Никто не обедает. – Nobody is having lunch.
Никто ничего не сказал. – Nobody said anything.
Никогда не бывает снега в июле. – There is never snow in July.

Leaving out не (никто обедает) would be wrong in this kind of statement.
You only drop не when there is no verb after the pronoun:

Кто обедает? – Who is having lunch?
– Никто. – Nobody.

What’s the difference between никто ещё не обедает and никто ещё не пообедал?

Both can be translated “nobody has had lunch yet,” but they focus on different things:

Никто ещё не обедает.
- Verb: обедать (imperfective) – process / ongoing action
- Meaning: “No one is (having) lunch yet (right now).”
- Focus: at this moment, the action has not started; nobody is in the process of eating lunch.
Никто ещё не пообедал.
- Verb: пообедать (perfective) – completed action
- Meaning: “No one has had lunch yet (no one has finished lunch).”
- Focus: the result is missing; by now, nobody has completed their lunch.

In your sentence, никто ещё не обедает matches the idea “no one is having lunch at the moment,” which contrasts with the current smell of soup.

What exactly does ещё do in никто ещё не обедает, and where can it be placed?

Here ещё means “yet / still” in a negative context: ещё не = “not yet.”

никто ещё не обедает – nobody is having lunch yet
(it implies that they probably will later)

Typical placements in this sentence:

Никто ещё не обедает. – neutral, common.
Ещё никто не обедает. – the same basic meaning, but slightly more emphasis on “yet”: so far, nobody is having lunch.

You normally do not split ещё не from the verb in weird ways; both of the above are natural.

Why is there a comma before хотя, and can the order of the clauses be changed?

Хотя is a subordinating conjunction meaning “although / even though.”
In Russian, a clause introduced by хотя is a subordinate clause, and such clauses are separated by a comma:

Сегодня … пахнет супом, хотя никто ещё не обедает.

You can also put the хотя‑clause first:

Хотя никто ещё не обедает, сегодня откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом.

The meaning stays the same (“Although nobody is having lunch yet, today it smells of soup from somewhere in the kitchen”), but the emphasis shifts slightly:

Original: main fact = it smells of soup; added contrast = even though nobody is eating.
Reversed: you first highlight the surprising condition (nobody is eating), then the main fact (the smell).

Could we say Сейчас откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом instead of Сегодня…? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can say:

Сейчас откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом.

The difference:

Сегодня – “today” as a whole day / period.
It can suggest this is a feature of today’s situation (maybe it’s soup day, or something special about today).
Сейчас – “right now, at this moment.”
It focuses on the current moment only.

In many everyday contexts, both would be acceptable, but сейчас sounds more like a snapshot of the present moment, while сегодня can sound a bit more like you’re talking about today’s circumstances in general.

Could the word order be changed? For example: Сегодня из кухни откуда‑то пахнет супом or Из кухни сегодня пахнет супом?

Russian word order is fairly flexible, so several variants are possible and grammatical, though they differ in naturalness and emphasis.

These are acceptable:

Сегодня из кухни пахнет супом, хотя никто ещё не обедает.
Из кухни сегодня пахнет супом, хотя никто ещё не обедает.

Both sound natural; the difference is mainly in what you topicalize (put first).

Placing откуда‑то elsewhere is usually less natural; откуда‑то из кухни is the most typical sequence.
Something like Сегодня из кухни откуда‑то пахнет супом is possible but sounds a bit heavier/stylistically marked; it puts stronger emphasis on из кухни, then adds откуда‑то almost as an afterthought.

Could we say Суп пахнет из кухни instead, or use суп пахнет as the subject? How does that change the sentence?

You can make суп the subject, but you usually wouldn’t say суп пахнет из кухни; that sounds odd, because из кухни is a place, not the thing that smells.

Natural “personal” versions:

Из кухни пахнет супом. – Impersonal (like your sentence, but without откуда‑то).
Суп, который варят на кухне, пахнет очень вкусно. – “The soup that is being cooked in the kitchen smells very good.”

If you simply say:

Суп пахнет.

it means “The soup smells” (usually you’d add вкусно / приятно / странно etc.).

Your original impersonal sentence:

(Сегодня) откуда‑то из кухни пахнет супом…

is closer to English “It smells like soup from somewhere in the kitchen”, focusing on the situation / air / environment, not on the soup as an active subject.

What does пахнет супом literally correspond to in English, and why not say something like запах супа instead?

Literally, пахнет супом corresponds to “(it) smells of soup / smells like soup.”

The pattern is:

(Откуда?) пахнет (чем?) супом.
- (From where?) it smells (of what?) of soup.

Using the verb пахнуть is the normal, neutral way to describe smells in Russian.

You can use a noun like запах супа (“the smell of soup”), but that changes the structure:

Запах супа идёт из кухни. – “The smell of soup comes from the kitchen.”
В комнате стоит запах супа. – “There is a smell of soup in the room.”

So:

пахнет супом – focuses on the process/state of smelling (“it smells of soup”).
запах супа – focuses on the smell as a thing (“the smell of soup”).

Your sentence naturally uses the verb construction.