Я пришёл к тебе с приветом…

I have come to say good morning...

We will try to build a fully meaningful sentence, starting small and adding more words and meaning. For this exercise, I have picked a classic poem by Afanasy Fet.

Image by yours truly.

---

Я пришёл.

I came.
I have come.

There is only one past tense in Russian; therefore, the verb “пришёл” can be translated either as the past tense or as the present perfect.

---

Я пришёл к тебе.

I came to see you.
I came to your place.
I have come to see you.
I have come to your place.

The collocation “к тебе” literally means “to you”, but colloquially it may also mean “to your place”. The collocations “у тебя” and “у меня” can be translated as “at your place” and “at my place”, respectively.

---

Я пришёл к тебе с приветом.

I came to greet you.
I came to say Hi.

In this context, the collocation “с приветом” may have several meanings.
Firstly, it may mean that the speaker came over to say hello or came with good intentions, in a good mood.
Secondly, it may also mean that the speaker wanted to pass along greetings from someone else.
Lastly, “с приветом” is an idiomatic expression describing someone who is not in their right mind — similar to crazy or insane — though not necessarily in a clinical sense. Keep this last thing in mind, OK?

---

Солнце встало.

The sun has risen.

Literally, word for word, “солнце встало” means “the sun has stood up”, as opposed to “солнце село”, which literally translates as “the sun has sat down”, but actually refers to a sunset in Russian.

---

Let’s connect two clauses together.

Я пришёл к тебе с приветом,
Рассказать, что солнце встало…
Listen to the lines read by Anastasia Konechnaya.

I came to you with greetings,
To tell you that the sun has risen...

Rupert Moreton offers his own rendering of these two lines:

I have come to say good morning
to declare that night is ending…

I will post links to Fet’s original and to Moreton’s translation, as well as to Anastasia’s video, in my notes.

---