Breakdown of Если приложить немного усилий каждый день, можно привыкнуть отвечать без паузы.
Questions & Answers about Если приложить немного усилий каждый день, можно привыкнуть отвечать без паузы.
In Russian, after если you can use:
- a personal verb: Если ты приложишь немного усилий… = If you (specifically) make some effort…
- an infinitive: Если приложить немного усилий… = If one makes / if you make (in general) some effort…
The infinitive makes it sound more general, impersonal, “as a rule”, like giving advice.
Приложить усилия is an idiom meaning to make an effort / to apply effort (literally to apply effort).
приложить is perfective, so it treats the effort as a complete, single action: to put in (some) effort (each day).
The repeated idea comes from каждый день, not from using an imperfective verb.
After quantity words like немного, Russian typically uses the genitive:
- немного воды (gen. sing.)
- немного усилий (gen. pl.)
усилие is a countable noun, and in this phrase it’s normally treated as plural “efforts” → усилий.
Yes, all are natural:
- немного усилий = neutral
- немножко усилий = slightly more conversational/“lighter”
- чуть-чуть усилий = very informal and emphasizes “just a tiny bit”
They all still require genitive: усилий.
By position and meaning, каждый день most directly goes with приложить немного усилий: If you put in a bit of effort every day…
But logically it supports the whole idea: daily effort leads to the habit of answering without pausing.
If you wanted to clearly attach it to the habit-forming process, you could rephrase:
- Если каждый день прикладывать немного усилий, можно… (see also aspect/verb choice)
можно + infinitive here is not “permission” but possibility / feasibility:
можно привыкнуть = it’s possible to get used to it / you can get into the habit.
It’s an impersonal construction: it doesn’t name the subject, so it feels like general advice (“anyone can”).
- можно привыкнуть… = impersonal, general statement (it’s possible).
- можешь привыкнуть… = directly addresses you (you can get used to it), more personal.
- может привыкнуть… would normally mean he/she/it can get used to it (a specific subject), so it doesn’t fit unless you add who.
- привыкнуть (perfective) = to get used to (reach the result)
- привыкать (imperfective) = to be getting used to / to get used to repeatedly or as a process
Here the sentence talks about achieving the outcome: daily effort → you can (eventually) get used to answering without pausing, so привыкнуть fits well.
A process-focused variant is also possible:
- Если …, можно привыкать отвечать… sounds more like you can work on getting used to answering…
привыкнуть/привыкать can be used with:
- к + dative: привыкнуть к паузам (get used to pauses)
- an infinitive: привыкнуть отвечать (get used to answering)
The infinitive is common when the “thing you get used to” is an action.
Because the meaning is about a habit/regular action: answering (in general), not answering once.
- привыкнуть отвечать = get into the habit of answering
- привыкнуть ответить would sound wrong because ответить is a one-time completed reply.
без always takes the genitive case:
- без сахара
- без ошибок
- без паузы = without a pause
Also, без паузы often means without pausing / without hesitation, not necessarily literally “no pause ever,” just “smoothly.”
Yes. When a sentence begins with an если clause, Russian uses a comma between the conditional clause and the main clause:
- Если …, можно … If the order is reversed, the comma still appears:
- Можно привыкнуть …, если …