The tricky Russian phrase & its translation into English

An interesting observation that I have made recently during the lesson with my Russian student whose background is Russian but who spent most of his life in US and therefore lost the language skills. He told me: In Russian you say "насыпать сахар", "насыпать немного соли", which does not have the exact equivalent in English, does it? And he is right - in English we actually say - "to pour sugar", "to pour salt" as well as "to pour sand". However, we can also surely use "put" instead of "pour". But in Russian we would definitely NOT use "pour" with "sand", "salt" or "sugar" - only water and other liquids can be poured in this language, which is actually the verb`s primary meaning and that is why it is completely justified. Anyhow, these are the subtle variations between the English and Russian way of perceiving the world and processes taking place around us. As you can see, I have some very observant students.