The Russian Language

for English Learner

May 2009 (Incomplete Work) by pfournar@gmail.com If you want to collaborate send me an email!

Table of Contents
1 Basic facts about Russian Language................................................................................................5 Basic grammatical features .............................................................................................................5 Basic phonetic features ...................................................................................................................6 2 Russian alphabet...............................................................................................................................7 The Handwriting Russian Alphabet...............................................................................................10 BGN/PCGN Romanization of Russian..........................................................................................11 3 Stress...............................................................................................................................................14 Word stress on the whole and applied to Russian language .........................................................14 Russian stress has the following features .................................................................................14 4 Pronunciation..................................................................................................................................16 Russian Pronunciation Guide.........................................................................................................16 Palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard).............................................................................16 How to mark the softness of consonants ..................................................................................17 "", "", "", "", ""...........................................................................................................17 The letter ""........................................................................................................................17 Consonant......................................................................................................................................17 Paired Consonants (Plain, Palatalised)......................................................................................17 Unpaired consonants.................................................................................................................18 Palatalised Consonants - Palatal Indicators..............................................................................18 Noisy consonant ( ) ..................................................................................................18 Velar consonant ( )..............................................................................................................18 Vowels............................................................................................................................................18 Hard-Indicating Vowels (A, O, , , )...................................................................................19 Soft-Indicating Vowels (, , , , )....................................................................................21 Ikanie....................................................................................................................................21 Quick reference on "soft-indicating" vowels.......................................................................22 Alphabet.........................................................................................................................................23 Additional features of Russian pronunciation ..............................................................................25 5 The Russian Spelling System.........................................................................................................27 Hard and Soft Vowels. ..................................................................................................................27 Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants.....................................................................................28 The Combination of +V (y+vowel).............................................................................................28 The soft sign ().............................................................................................................................29 The 7 Consonant Rule (not but ). ............................................................................................29 The 5 Consonant Rule ( or ).......................................................................................................29 The Hush Rule (not or but and )..................................................................................29 Upper or Lower Case?...................................................................................................................29 Suffixes ()....................................................................................................................30 6 Useful Russian Words.....................................................................................................................32 7 Pronouns.........................................................................................................................................35 Classes of Russian pronouns..........................................................................................................35 Personal Pronouns..........................................................................................................................36 Possessive Pronouns......................................................................................................................38 Demonstrative Pronouns................................................................................................................39 The Interrogative Pronouns...........................................................................................................42 Reflexive Pronouns........................................................................................................................46 8 Verbs...............................................................................................................................................48 Introduction....................................................................................................................................48 Aspect............................................................................................................................................49 Usage of Russian Verbs.................................................................................................................50 The General Nature of the Russian Verb ......................................................................................52

Stem..........................................................................................................................................53 What Are Conjugations?...........................................................................................................54 Present- Future and The Conjugations......................................................................................56 The Past Tense Endings ............................................................................................................58 The Rules of Stem-Ending Combination..................................................................................58 Infinitive ........................................................................................................................................61 Forming the infinitive...............................................................................................................61 Uses of Infinitive.......................................................................................................................62 Indicative Mood ............................................................................................................................63 Conjugations of Verbs* (..Maybe I have to merge some headings)..............................................65 Present Tense ................................................................................................................................68 Ending of Present Tense ................................................................................................................69 Examples........................................................................................................................................70 A Full Example.........................................................................................................................71 Palatalization..................................................................................................................................71 Where Does Palatalization Occur?............................................................................................73 Past Tense ......................................................................................................................................74 Future Tense ..................................................................................................................................75 Some Conjugated Russian Verbs...................................................................................................76 Verbal Accent in Russian...............................................................................................................78 Verbs of Motion.............................................................................................................................80 Part 1 - Motion verbs without prefixes. - To Go.......................................................................80 Part 2 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion................................................................................82 Part 3 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion -To Carry................................................................82 Part 4 - Prefixed verbs of motion..............................................................................................83 The Imperative Mood....................................................................................................................85 1st Way To Form Imperative.....................................................................................................85 2nd Way To Form The Imperative...........................................................................................86 Subjunctive Mood..........................................................................................................................88 Reflexive Verbs..............................................................................................................................89 Genuine Reflexives...................................................................................................................90 Optative Reflexive Verbs..........................................................................................................90 9 Nouns..............................................................................................................................................91 Cases..............................................................................................................................................91 Russian Nouns Genders.................................................................................................................92 Exercise.....................................................................................................................................93 Russian Genders' Table.............................................................................................................94 Plural Nouns..................................................................................................................................96 The Nominative Case.....................................................................................................................97 The Accusative Case......................................................................................................................97 Accusative Case Form .............................................................................................................97 Instrumental Case (With, By)........................................................................................................98 Declension.....................................................................................................................................99 Noun Declension Table.............................................................................................................99 Mnemonic Rules of Cases.......................................................................................................100 I Declension - Masculine Paired Consonants.........................................................................101 I Declension - Masculine Unpaired Consonants.....................................................................101 I Declension Neuter.............................................................................................................102 II Declension - Feminine (and some masculine and epicene).................................................103 III Declension Feminine only..............................................................................................104 Russian Names - ................................................................................................105 Examples: ..........................................................................................................................107

10 Prepositions................................................................................................................................109 Prepositions Governing the Nominative Case ............................................................................110 Prepositions Governing the Genitive Case..................................................................................111 Genitive Prepositions Indicating Non-Existence....................................................................112 Genitive Prepositions Indicating Closeness............................................................................112 Genitive Prepositions Indicating Origin..................................................................................114 Miscellaneous Genitive Prepositions......................................................................................116 Prepositions Governing the Accusative Case..............................................................................117 The Accusative with Verbs of Motion.....................................................................................117 Other Prepositions Governing the Accusative........................................................................118 Prepositions Governing the Prepositional Case ..........................................................................119 Prepositions Governing the Instrumental Case ..........................................................................121 11 Numerals.....................................................................................................................................123 Russian Cardinal Numbers..........................................................................................................125 Rules of Numerals.......................................................................................................................125 Russian Ordinal Numbers............................................................................................................127 12 Participles ..................................................................................................................................128 The Present Active Participle.......................................................................................................133 The Present Passive Participle.....................................................................................................133 The Past Active Participle ...........................................................................................................134 13 Adjectives 1................................................................................................................................135 Common Adjective's Endings......................................................................................................136 Long and Short Forms of Adjectives...........................................................................................138 14 Adjectives 2................................................................................................................................140 Normal Adjectives.......................................................................................................................140 Normal Adjectives - Hard (-, -, - (but not -))........................................140 Normal Adjectives - Soft (-)..........................................................................................141 Short Adjectives......................................................................................................................142 Comparative Adjectives...............................................................................................................142 Method 1 : More / Less...........................................................................................................142 Method 2 : Comparative Adjectives........................................................................................143 3. Without ........................................................................................................................143 Superlative Adjectives - Most......................................................................................................144 15 Appendix.....................................................................................................................................144 Vocabulary...................................................................................................................................144 Index of Conjugated Russian Verbs.............................................................................................155 Language Review........................................................................................................................157 Russian Names........................................................................................................................157 Russian Greetings...................................................................................................................158 Please and Thank-You.............................................................................................................159 Really Small Russian Words...................................................................................................159 Using the Russian Language...................................................................................................160 Conclusion..............................................................................................................................162 A. Verbs.......................................................................................................................................162 (verb, imperfective aspect, transitive)........................................................................162

1 Basic facts about Russian Language

Russian language belongs to Indoeuropean family, Slavic group, East Slavic branch. It derived from Old Russian language in 14th-15th centuries from which also Ukrainian and Byelorussian derived. About 250 million people around the world speak Russian, including 180 million people on the territory of the former USSR. Its closest relatives are the remaining two East Slavic languages: Ukrainian and Byelorussian, Byelorussian being the closest (I must admit, that in Belarus beyond the countryside people speak only Russian, not Byelorussian, so Byelorussian is possibly endangered language). Other relatives include Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene from South Slavic branch and Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Polabian (extinct) from West Slavic branch. On the vast territory of Russia you will see almost no dialectal divisions, almost all people speak common literary language, only old people might still use local dialects which vary little from place to place. Russian is rather synthetic than analytic language and being a synthetic language it is flective, not agglutinative, that is it uses a lot of prefixes, suffixes and flections and it can express in one word what analytic language like English has to use three words for; but unlike agglutinative languages, like FinnoUgrian and Turkish ones, the same flection might express a lot of different grammatical categories and different flections might express the same grammatical category.

Basic grammatical features

there are three persons, two numbers (singular and plural), though there was dual number in Old Russian there are three genders: masculine, feminine and neutral there is no article nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, participles do decline there are 6 cases: Nominative, Genitive (the so-called Genitive-II is used with some nouns), Dative, Accusative, Instrumental and Prepositional (Prepositional-II is used with some nouns, though not with the same ones as Genitive-II) (Russian lacks Vocative case which is present in Ukrainian and in many other Slavic languages). there are 3 classes of noun declension adjectives decline according to case, gender and number and agree with nouns in case, gender and number there are short adjectives that do not decline verbs conjugate according to person, number, tense, voice and mood there are two classes of conjugation, 3 tenses (Past, Present and Future) and 3 moods (Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative) verbs have two aspects: Imperfective and Perfective, similar to English Present and Perfect infinitives, e.g. to do - to have done, to go - to have gone, but these two forms in Russian both consist of one word participles exist in 4 forms: Present Active, Past Active, Present Passive and Past Passive there are short participles corresponding to two Passive forms of regular participles that like short adjectives do not decline

there are adverbial participles that do not decline and exist in Present and Past forms word order is free, moreover, by changing the word order any word in a sentence can be emphasized

Basic phonetic features

pronunciation is almost phonetic, that is there is one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds, but not at all since there is a lot of specific moments which have to be studied there is no division of vowels into long and short ones but consonants are divided into palatalized (soft) and non-palatalized (hard) ones unlike English there are no diphthongs stress is free and moving, that is it can fall on any syllable of the word and on different syllables within the paradigm (the set of the word forms) of the same word

2 Russian alphabet
Here you will get familiar with all those strange unreadable symbols you may have seen on the TV screen or elsewhere. You will understand that they are quite readable as well as Latin symbols. Primarily Russian letters will be introduced as small pics in a table since you still might not have the Cyrillic support on your computer, but after the table and in all following lessons only Cyrillic font will be used in writing Russian words. In the following table all of the 33 letters (both in upper and lower case) which Russian alphabet comprises are presented, along with their rough English equivalents. More detailed consideration of pronunciation rules is still to follow.

i, y

u, ju

e, je

ts

a, ja

o, jo

ch

zh

sh

shch

Note that these are only transliteration, not pronunciation rules. All present-day Russian letters are derived from ancient Cyrillic alphabet by means of excluding some out-of-date letters and simplifying their writing form. The first reform of Russian alphabet was undertaken in 1708-1710 by Peter the Great and then in years 1735, 1738 and 1758 by the Russian Academy of Sciences. But 3 remaining unnecessary letters remained until 1917 when they were finally abolished. Special care should be taken of the letter "", introduced in 1797 by Russian author N.Karamzin, since it is used nowhere except for the teaching aids, you won't see it anywhere in Russian papers, it is even not present on the Russian keyboard, it is always replaced with the letter "", and as these letters are pronounced differently it will be difficult for a learner to know which sound to pronounce when seeing the letter "" in a word. In fact, all the words with the letter "" should be learned by heart, and there many of them. So to help learners I will use the letter "" in writing words. By the way, there is no "" letter in Ukrainian, combination "" is used instead, so there is no such problem as described above in Ukrainian. You probably noticed that letters "" (hard sign) and "" (soft sign) have no Latin equivalents. That is because these letters are never pronounced in Russian, the former one is used only as a partitive letter between the prefix and the root of the word, e.g. (to have eaten), the latter is used as a softening sign telling that the consonant after which it is written must be palatalized (softened), compare (particle used in retelling the other person's words) - (moth). Soft sign is also used as a partitive sign but mainly in the root of the word, e.g. ((he) drinks), it is used to underline some grammatical features (feminine gender, imperative mood) as well. The letter "" can never start a word except for the very rare words borrowed from Korean, Kazakh and Siberian languages. The letter "" also very rarely starts a word. There a lot of peoples that use cyrillic alphabet, mainly those inhabiting the territory of the former USSR. Among the Slavic languages 4 languages use cyrillic alphabet: Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. However their alphabets are slightly different from the Russian one. In the next table the names of all Russian letters are presented Letter Name Letter Name (short ) Letter Name Letter Name (hard sign) (soft sign)

You can get an mp3 with all these names

in a row here.

The Handwriting Russian Alphabet

BGN/PCGN Romanization of Russian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia BGN/PCGN romanization system for Russian is a method for romanization of Cyrillic Russian texts, that is, their transliteration into the Latin alphabet as used in the English language. There are a number of systems for romanization of Russianthe BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for anglophones to pronounce. It is part of the larger set of BGN/PCGN romanizations, which includes methods for twenty-nine different languages. It was developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use. The portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944, and by PCGN in 1947. This romanization of Russian can be rendered using only the basic letters and punctuation found on English-language keyboards: no diacritics or unusual letters are required, although the interpunct character () can optionally be used to avoid some ambiguity. In many publications a simplified form of the system is used to render English versions of Russian names, typically converting to yo, simplifying -iy and -yy endings to -y, and omitting apostrophes for and . Edward Allworth, for instance, uses a romanization system based upon BGN/PCGN in his 1971 book Nationalities of the Soviet EastPublications and Writing Systems; he transliterates and always to e and respectively and substitutes an i for the y of , and , which makes the system also close to a version of the ALA-LC system without diacritic marks. The following table describes the system and provides examples.
Russian Romanization letter () () () () () A (a) B (b) V (v) G (g) D (d) None None None None None Special provision Examples = Azov = Tambov = Barnaul = Kuban = Vladimir = Ulyanovsk = Groznyy = Volgodonsk = Dzerzhinskiy = Nelidovo

()

Ye (ye)

1. Word-initially; 2. after vowels; 3. after ; 4. after ; 5. after .

1. = Yelizovo 2. =
Chapayevsk;

3. = Mayyer; 4. = Yuryev; 5. = Syezd.

= Belkin

E (e)

All other cases

 ()

Y (y)

1. Word-initially; 2. after vowels; 3. after ; 4. after ; 5. after .

1. = Ylkin; 2. = Yey; 3. <insert an example

with "">;

4. =
Gromady;

5. =
Podymnyy. () () () () Zh (zh) Z (z) I (i) Y (y) () All other cases None None None = Ozrnyy = Zhukov = Luzhniki = Zvenigorod = Vyazma = Irkutsk = Apatity

Before , , , or . Used primarily for romanization of nonRussian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this = Kayafa digraph is optional.

Y (y)
() () () () () () K (k) L (l) M (m) N (n) O (o) P (p)

All other cases

None None None None None None

- = Yoshkar-Ola = Biysk
= Kirov = Yeniseysk = Lomonosov = Nelidovo = Mendeleyev = Kamenka = Novosibirsk = Kandalaksha = Omsk = Krasnoyarsk = Petrozavodsk = Serpukhov = Rostov = Severobaykalsk = Skovorodino = Chaykovskiy = Tambov = Mytishchi = Uglich = Dudinka = Furmanov = Ufa = Khabarovsk = Prokhladnyy = Tsimlyansk = Yeltsin = Cheboksary = Pechora = Shakhtrsk = Myshkin = Shchlkovo

()

R (r)

None

() () () () () () () () ()

S (s) T (t) U (u) F (f) Kh (kh) Ts (ts) Ch (ch) Sh (sh) Shch (shch)

None None None None None None None None None

 ()

Y (y)

This letter does not occur in the beginning of a word. Before , , , or . Used primarily for romanization of nonRussian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this = Vyudit digraph is optional.

= Rtishchevo = Podyezdnoy

()

y Y (y)

After any vowel. Used primarily for romanization of nonRussian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this - = Suyk-Su digraph is optional. All other cases. This letter does not occur in the beginning of words of Russian origin. This letter does not occur in the beginning of a word. After any consonant except . Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional. All other cases - = Yttyk-Kl = Tynda = Tyumen = Dvukhelementnyy = Elektrogorsk = Radioelektronika = Yubileynyy = Klyuchevskaya = Yakutsk = Bryansk = Sootvetstviye

()

() E (e)

() () ()

Yu (yu) Ya (ya) Ts (ts)

None None Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional. Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

() Shch (shch)

3 Stress
Word stress on the whole and applied to Russian language
Here we will be speaking only about the word stress since there is also the logical stress which accentuates certain word in a sentence. The word stress is a way of differentiating the certain syllable of the word from the others by any means. These means can be different. Generally there are 4 types of stress:

quantitative - the length of the vowel of the stressed syllable is longer than the lengths of unstressed vowels dynamic - the stressed syllable is more powerful, intensive and loud in pronunciation, sometimes this type is falsely called expiratory since the strength of the syllable is thought to depend on the amount of exhaled air, but these are different phenomena not determining each other quality of the vowel - the stressed vowel gets clear and distinct and therefore acquires special quality tonic - pitch of the stressed syllable is higher

There are languages which don't have word stress. Syllables do not differ at all. These are Even, Evenk, Kalmyk and others. But the most languages do have it. Each language usually has not only one type of stress, but different types play a certain role in a language. For example, in Japanese and Swedish the tonic stress plays the main role. It did in Ancient Greek as well but it is displaced by dynamic stress in contemporary Greek.

Russian stress has the following features

the main type of stress is the quality of the stressed vowel: even if all the words in a sentence consist of one syllable and therefore each syllable is stressed one can feel that they are stressed not comparing the stressed syllables with unstressed ones (because there are no unstressed ones) but because of special quality of the stressed vowels, for example (It was raining all the day). Another example: (pencil). Here the last syllable is stressed, the last vowel is the most clear, the last but one is weaker and the first one is very unclear which even can be omitted in hurried speech, the first vowel as well as the second one can be compared to the always unstressed schwa in English Russian stress is quantitative: the length of the stressed vowel is known to be 1.5 times longer than that of the vowel preceding the stressed one. This type of stress is possible in Russian because there is no opposition between long and short vowels unlike f.ex. Finnish and German where short and long vowels are different phonemes (for example, in Finnish, word "tuli" (fire) cannot be stressed by lengthening the first vowel because we will get another word with another meaning - "tuuli" (wind); by the way it may be interesting that there is word "tulli" (customs) in Finnish as well) Russian stress is also dynamic, because the strength of the vowel depends on its quality there is no tonic stress in Russian (there must be no confusing it with

rising and lowering tone in a phrase which does exist in Russian in certain types of sentences) Now as we have considered the phonetic nature of stress let's consider its placement in a word. There are two types of stress regarding the association of it with a certain syllable of the word: fixed stress - the stress is always associated with a certain syllable of the word, for example in Finnish, Hungarian, Czech, Latvian stress always falls on the first syllable, in Polish it falls on the last but one syllable, in French it falls on the last syllable free stress - the stress can fall on any syllable of the word, but each word, of course, has its definite stressed syllable. This type of stress is in Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Lithuanian. Languages either with fixed or free stress can have one of two following types of stress: stable stress - the stress does not change its place within the paradigm (the set of word worms) of the word while being declined or conjugated and in all derived words as well, i.e. if a noun has its ending stressed it will have its ending stressed in all possible cases, the same is true for root or prefix moving stress - the stress does change its place within the paradigm of the same word, for example, if a noun in singular form has its root stressed then it can have its ending stressed in plural form. Note, that languages with fixed stress can have moving stress, for example in Polish word "polski" (Polish) the first (last but one) syllable is stressed which belongs to the root, but in Genitive case "polskiego" the second syllable (also last but one) is stressed which belongs to the ending, not to the root Russian language has free and moving stress which is the most difficult to study. You must learn the stress of each word otherwise you might be not understood or misunderstood. So in this course I will mark the stress of each word by making the stressed vowel bold, for example (town), (cow), (milk), (pipeline), (palaeontology). You see that in these words stress falls on different syllables, from 1st to 5th. But please don't fall into despair, Russian stress is very simple compared to Lithuanian where the stress is free and moving and in addition there are 3 different types of stress marked with acute, grave or circumflex each of which changes the intonation of the word. Even Russian people can hardly deal with the stress, there are a lot of common errors, for example a lot of people say instead of ((he) phones), instead of (agreement, contract), instead of (cakes) etc. And for this reason there are pronunciation dictionaries in Russia usually intended not for transcribing the words but mainly for marking their stress; all the forms of each word that can make people doubt are included in such dictionaries and there are very many of them, for example in the entry "" (to give) there are 34 forms of this verb. There are words which have two accepted in the literary language ways of stressing, for example and (curds) are both right. You should note that changing the stress in some words leads to totally different meaning, e.g. (castle) and (lock), (Instrumental case of - road) and (expensive, dear), (narrower) and

(already), (Instrumental case of - sweat) and (then, afterwards). As already mentioned above, Russian has moving stress, but however some words have stable and some words have moving stress, for example words (dog), (lemon), (fire) have stable stress since all their forms and words derived from them have their stress on the second vowel of the root (, , respectively) and words (hand, arm), (mountain) have moving stress, since their plural forms (hands, arms) and (mountains) have their stress on the root and not on the ending. The place of stress in a word can change during historical evolution of the language, for example word (music) was in 19th century pronounced as .

4 Pronunciation

Russian Pronunciation Guide

Here all aspects of Russian pronunciation will be considered. Right on this chapter you will find only basic pronunciation rules which might be enough for you to pronounce Russian words more or less correct. Now let's discuss each letter of the Russian alphabet in their alphabetic order and see in what ways it can be pronounced. As already mentioned in Basic facts about Russian language Russian language is almost phonetic that is there is one-to-one correspondence between the letters of the alphabet and the sounds. But this almost means that there are some exceptions. The most important of them are discussed here. Well, first to be mentioned, there is no division into long and short vowels in Russian, that means that it is no matter how you pronounce a vowel: long or short, it won't change the word's meaning.

Palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard)

Almost all consonants in Russian appear in two forms: palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard) ones. The term palatalised means that while pronouncing the sound the middle part of your tongue is lifted toward the hard palate and makes what is being uttered sound in a higher pitch what is perceived by us as softness. You can determine where your hard palate is by pronouncing the sound [j] like in "yes": it is where your tongue touches the upper jaw. Try to compare sounds [n] and [n'] ( ' denotes palatalisation) in words "not" and "new": in the first one you pronounce [n] because the next [o] vowel is on open vowel and does not require your tongue to lift while pronouncing [n]; on the contrary, in the second word you pronounce [n'] because your tongue automatically adjusts to the pronunciation of the next [j] consonant and lifts toward the hard palate. You see that soft and hard consonants appear in both Russian and English but the difference is the following: in English for example you can't pronounce [n'] before [o] like in "not", you can pronounce it only in certain positions before the

sounds with the similar articulation (e.g. [j] or [i:]), but in Russian the sound [n'] can appear before every sound no matter how it is articulated. For example, there are two absolutely different in meaning words in Russian differing only in palatalisation or non-palatalisation of [n] consonant: "" [nos] (nose) and "" [n'os] (past masculine form of "" (to carry), carried). Another example is "" [mat] (mate) and "" [mat'] (mother). How to mark the softness of consonants Now you see that palatalisation bears word differentiating function in Russian so you must manage to pronounce every Russian consonant in both hard (which is easy) and soft (more difficult) forms to be understood properly. As mentioned above you should always pronounce soft consonants by lifting the middle part of your tongue toward the hard palate. The problem is how to mark the softness of consonants in writing. This problem is solved differently in different languages: in Polish letter "i" is placed right after the consonant letter to denote its palatalisation, SerboCroatian has special letters for each palatalized consonant since there are only four of them in it; if it were the same way in Russian we would have to use 15 additional letters in the alphabet which would be an unbearable burden on the language, so Russian uses two variants of vowel letters instead:
"", "", "", "", ""

Russian uses "" after a consonant letter to mark both its softness and vowel [a] after it (compare (mother) and (to crumple)), "" - to mark the softness of preceding consonant and vowel [o] after it (compare (bullock, ox) and ((he) was leading)), "" - softness of the consonant + vowel [u] after it, "" - softness of the consonant + vowel denoted by letter "" after it. Besides, letter "" always denotes the softness of preceding consonant plus vowel [i] after it as well (e.g. (one)) but the same vowel [i] can also be expressed by the letter "" apart from the consonant (e.g. (to look for)), so "" has no counterpart while "", "", "", "" do have it.
The letter ""

If there is no vowel following the soft consonant softness is marked by the letter "" (soft sign), e.g. (mother), (ring).

Consonant
Paired Consonants (Plain, Palatalised)
All but six of the consonants of Russian occur in two varieties: a plain variety and a palatalised variety (pronounced PALatalized). For example, the plain variety of is pronounced somewhat like the p in English poor, and the palatalised variety of is pronounced somewhat like the p in English pure. Similarly, the plain consonant is pronounced somewhat like the n in the middle of English cannon, while the palatalised is pronounced somewhat like the n in the middle of English canyon. The consonants that occur in two varieties are called paired consonants.

Unpaired consonants
There are also six unpaired consonants, i.e. consonant sounds that do not come in both a plain and a palatalised variety. These are the sounds (noisy consonant) and the sound /y/ (as in 'boy' and ). The difference between Russian palatalised consonants and English consonants followed by y (as in canyon) is that palatalisation (pronounced PALataliZAtion) is produced simultaneously with the consonant, whereas in English the y-sound is a separate consonant. In other words, a palatalized in Russian is a single sound and takes no longer to say than a plain , while in English the combination ny is two sounds and takes longer to say than n alone.

Palatalised Consonants - Palatal Indicators

The Russian alphabet does not represent palatalised consonants with separate consonant letters. Instead, palatalisation is indicated by the letter that follows the consonant. Thus, the consonant letter followed by the letter indicates that is palatalised (), while followed by the letter indicates that is plain (). (English uses a similar device: the difference between 'soft g' and 'hard g' is indicated by the letter that follows, not by two separate consonant letters, e.g. the first g of George and gorge.) Notice in the above example ( vs. ) that the vowel sound is considered to be the same, though the vowel letters differ. There are five basic vowel sounds in Russian, but ten vowel letters; five of these letters (called plain indicators) are employed to indicate that the preceding consonant is pronounced in the plain fashion, and the other five (called palatal indicators) are employed to indicate that the preceding consonant is pronounced in the palatalised fashion. The whole system looks like this (In Accented Cyrillic Font, may not appear better): Vowel sounds /i/ /e/ /a/ /o/ /u/ Plain Palatal , , , , , Examples Indicators Indicators

Noisy consonant ( ) Velar consonant ( )

Vowels
(See also Hard and Soft Vowels) Russian pronunciation rules are rather simple as compared to English. For example, there are no words in Russian that sound the same but have different

spelling like English might and mite. By and large, Russian words will sound correctly if you simply read them letter-by-letter. In this lesson you will learn ten Russian vowels and several basic pronunciation rules. You will find that almost all Russian vowels have pretty close English sounds. In general, Russian vowels are divided into two basic types: "soft-indicating" and "hard-indicating" vowels. The "hard-indicating" vowels are , , , , . Russian "soft-indicating" vowels are formed from their "hard-indicating" counterparts by adding an English sound of "y" at the beginning. Thus you will get such "softindicating" vowels as , , , , . Notice, that vowel groups are marked as "soft-indicating" and "hard-indicating" because they indicate whether the following consonant is "hard" or "soft". In this sense, the Russian pronunciation system should be looked at as a unity of vowels and consonants. For now, do not worry if you do not understand what "hard" and "soft" mean. Just try to learn the pronunciation of vowels and memorize what group ("soft-indicating" or "hard-indicating" ) each of them belongs. If you really want to learn Russian vowels, you should practice. Here we give guidelines on pronunciation of five "hard-indicating" Russian vowels. They are accompanied with exercises so that you could practice them with real Russian words.

Hard-Indicating Vowels (A, O, , , )

A as in Ah
This vowel is pronounced in two different ways depending on stress. When stressed, it is close to the sound of the English word Ah, but shorter. When unstressed, it is pronounced like u in the word nut. Practice these words: mah-ma mother pah-pa father vah-ta cotton va-dah water mahs-la butter

You've probably noticed that the letter o is pronounced like unstressed a in the words and . This is an important rule of the Russian pronunciation. Rule #1 In unstressed positions, Russian letter O is pronounced like unstressed Russian A. In other words, it souns like English u in nut.

O as in law
You already know that unstressed letter o is pronounced like unstressed a. But when it is stressed, is sounds like English aw in law. Practice these words:

 kot cat

toch-ka dot

ma-la-ko milk

ston groan

ok-na windows

This vowel does not have an equivalent in English. Try to invest some time in learning it and differentiating from other sounds. To get Russian sound , you should place your tongue in the position right between the positions of English sounds i in kit and u in sugar. Then make a new sound of . Note that this sound is different form the English i in bit. Now practice these words: dim fog bit everyday life bil was mi-lo soap mi we

as in wood
The letter sounds like oo in wood. In unstressed positions, it is pronounced a little bit quicker than in stressed positions. Practice these exercises: stool chair goo-bah lip moo-zi-ka music zvook sound

as in net
This sound is close to e in pet. Practice these words: e-tat this een-ter-net Internet temp tempo shest pole

Quick Reference On "hard-indicating" Vowels

Russian letter A (stressed) A (unstressed) O (stressed) O (unstressed) (stressed) (unstressed)

Symbol ah a o a i oo e Ee

Pronunciation as Ah, but shorter as u in but as aw in law as u in but no English equivalent as oo in wood as e in pet as ee in meet

Soft-Indicating Vowels (, , , , )
The basic rule to make a "soft-indicating" Russian vowel is to combine a sound of English y with corresponding "hard-indicating" vowel. For example, to get Russian you should say y + a as if they are one whole (ya). Here I will introduce you into five "soft" vowels of the Russian language , , , , . You will also learn a rule of the Russian pronunciation called ikanie.

as in yahoo
This vowel is pronounced like English ya in yahoo. Practice these words: ya-ma hole ryat row yakh-ta yacht mya-sa meat

E as in yes
The Russian sound of e is easy, because it is close to ye in English yes. Do not confuse it with English letter e, which sounds like Russian . Practice these words: myes-ta place lye-ta summer pyes-nya song vye-see-la marrily

Ikanie
In the word , an unstressed e sounds like an abbreviated Russian . This rules is called ikanie and it also applies to unstressed and . Rule #2 In unstressed positions, Russian letters , , are pronounced like an abbreviated Russian .

 as in yonder
This letter is pronounced like yo in yonder. As you can see, is formed from y sound and vowel o: y + o = . Now practice these words: yozh hedgehog yol-ka fir-tree plyon-ka film, tape

Rule #3 The letter is always stressed in Russian words.

as in meet
This letter is pronounced like ee in meet. Practice these exercises: eeg-lah needle een-dee-ya India peek-neek picnic leest leaf

as in you
The letter denotes the same sound as the English word you. Practice these words: yook south Jupiter plus sign

yoo-pee-tyer plyoos

Quick reference on "soft-indicating" vowels

Russian letter (stressed) (unstressed) (stressed) (unstressed) (always stressed) (stressed)

Symbol ya ee ye ee yo yoo ee

Pronunciation as ya in yahoo as ee in meet, but very short as ye in yes as ee in meet, but very short as yo in yonder as the word you as ee in meet

Alphabet
Now let's go to the alphabet. In the following list Russian letters are on the left, their rough pronunciation on the right. 1. - like "a" in "part" but shorter, e.g. (winter), (to give), (yes). 2. 3. - like "b" in "bone", e.g. (banana) (hard), (birch) (soft) - like "v" in "vast", e.g. (gate) (hard), (carpet) (soft)

4. - like "g" in "get", e.g. (town), (cucumber) (both hard), (genius) (soft) 5. - like "d" in "day", e.g. (water) (hard), (to do) (soft) 6. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [je] in "yes", e.g. (fir), (diet), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant (except "","" and "", e.g. (woman), (six), (prices), and other consonants in some foreign words, e.g. (phonetics)) and is pronounced almost like Russian "", i.e. like "e" in "let", e.g. (to sing), (newspaper) 7. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [jo] in "yawn" but shorter, e.g. (hedgehog), ((he) gives), ((he) beats), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant (except "" and "", e.g. (silk), (yellow)) and is pronounced like stressed Russian "", i.e. like English "o" in "corn" but shorter, e.g. (honey), (carpet). Note that "" is always stressed in Russian. 8. - like "g" in "rouge", e.g. (yellow), (to live) (both hard); "" is very seldom pronounced in soft form so in the previous examples letters "" and "" did not soften it. 9. - like "z" in "zest", e.g. (to call) (hard), (green) (soft) 10. - like "ee" in "teen" but shorter, e.g. (winter), (to drink). Note that the consonant preceding "" is always soft except for letters "", "" and "" which are always hard in Russian (in these cases letter "" is pronounced identical to ""), e.g. (life), (wide,

masculine), (circus). 11. - when beginning a syllable (very seldom) like "y" in "yes" or like "j" in German "ja", e.g. (iodine), (coyote), when terminating a syllable - like "y" in "may" ("" is pronounced like a semivowel in this case so it is called " " ( short)), e.g. (my), (T-shirt). Note that "" can have only soft form since it is a palatal sound, i.e. it is pronounced with the tongue touching the hard palate, so it is already palatalized and can't be pronounced without palatalization. 12. - like "k" in "kick" but not aspirated, e.g. (cow), (juice) (both hard), (paintbrush) (soft) 13. 14. 15. 16. - like "l" in "look", e.g. (pigeon) (hard), (forest) (soft) - like "m" in "moon", e.g. (to wash) (hard), (place) (soft) - like "n" in "not", e.g. (she) (hard), (they) (soft) - like "o" in "port" but shorter, e.g. (milk), (house)

17. - like "p" in "pay" but not aspirated, e.g. (dad) (hard), (beer) (soft) 18. - no exact counterpart in English but it is like rolled "r" in "rock" in Scottish pronunciation, e.g. (to work) (hard), (river) (soft) 19. - like "s" in "say", e.g. (advice) (hard), (family) (soft) 20. - like "t" in "time", e.g. (that, masculine) (hard), (shadow) (soft) 21. 22. - like "oo" in "moon" but shorter, e.g. (chair), (moon) - like "f" in "fast", e.g. (torch) (hard), (coffee) (soft)

23. - no exact counterpart in English since English "h" is pronounced as a pharyngeal sound and Russian "" is articulated by the back part of the tongue touching the soft palate, it is rather like German "ch" in "Buch", e.g. (bad) (hard), (cunning, crafty) (soft) 24. - like "ts" in "cats" (but pronounced as one sound) or like "Z" in German "Zeit", e.g. (father), (Gipsy) (both hard). Note that this consonant never appears in soft form in Russian unlike Ukrainian and Belorussian. 25. - like "ch" in "check", e.g. (tea), (black) (both soft). Note that this consonant never appears in hard form unlike Belorussian 26. - like "sh" in "shock" but not so soft, e.g. (soul), (noise) (both hard). Note letter "" never denotes soft consonant since there is another letter "" for this purpose 27. - this letter denotes long and soft "" like "sh" in "she" but a bit softer and longer, e.g. (pike), (raincoat). Of course this letter can't appear in hard form like "" can't appear in soft form 28. - this letter is not pronounced in Russian, it is usually a partitive sign between the prefix and the root, it can only appear between a consonant and letters "", "", "", "" which are then pronounced as at the beginning of the word or after a vowel, i.e. with consonant [j] preceding a vowel: [je], [jo], [ju], [ja] (in stressed position). Example: (to

drive up), (advertisement) 29. - no exact and even similar counterpart in English, this sound is very hard to describe, you should pronounce [i:] as in "mean" then lower the middle part of your tongue a bit and bring your lips to neutral position, then you will hear somewhat similar to Russian sound. But better listen to the examples: (soap), (to breathe), (forget), (rat) 30. - this letter like is not pronounced in Russian, like "" it is a partitive sign between the parts of the word, also like "" it can appear between a consonant and letters "", "", "", "" which are then pronounced with a consonant [j] preceding them, e.g. (drunken), ((he) beats). But "" can also appear at the end of the word, e.g. (moth), (horse). In both cases the consonant preceding "" is pronounced soft (except for "", "" which never appear soft) 31. - like "e" in "set", e.g. (this, masculine), (mayor) (quite rare in Russian) 32. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [ju] in "mute" but shorter, e.g. (south), ((they) sing), ((they) sew), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant and is pronounced like Russian "", e.g. (beak), (to smell). 33. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and like [ja] in "yard" but shorter, e.g. (box), (drunken), in other positions it marks the softness consonant and is pronounced like Russian "", understand), (five). letters "" and "" (beacon), of the preceding e.g. (to

Additional features of Russian pronunciation

There are two additional features of Russian pronunciation which even a beginner should know of:

vowels in non-stressed positions are reduced more or less depending on a particlular vowel: vowels [u], [] and [i] are not reduced very much (compare (hand,arm) - (hands, arms), (to breathe) ((he) breathes), (winter) - (wintry)); vowel [a] is reduced pretty much: in the syllable right before the stressed one it is pronounced like "u" in "cut" (1st level reduction), e.g. (lock), in all other syllables except the stressed one and the one right before stressed it is pronounced yet weaker (2nd level reduction), e.g. (caravan) (here we have two unstressed syllables); vowel [o] which is denoted by letter "" is reduced very much in non-stressed syllables: in the syllable right before stressed it gets identical with the vowel [a] in its 1st level reduction, elsewhere with the vowel [a] in its 2nd level reduction, e.g. (milk), (expensive, dear).

(akanie), (okanie), (ikanie)

So you see: whenever you meet letter "" in non-stressed position you should pronounce it as if letter "" were in its place (this process is called (akanie) and is dated back to the 13th century, it influenced mostly territories to the west and south of Moscow, on the contrary to the north-east of Moscow we can still hear a lot of people pronouncing [o] non-reduced in non-stressed syllables, it is called (okanie)); vowel [e] (denoted by "") and vowel [a] before soft consonants (denoted by "") are in non-stressed syllables reduced to a vowel very similar to [i], e.g. (tree), (wooden), (nine), (ninety) (this process is called (ikanie))

noise consonants (in Russian they are denoted by the following letters: "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "") are assimilated in the presence of voice when coming in clusters, i.e. if there is a cluster of these consonants, consisting of at least two consonants, then all of them are pronounced voiced or unvoiced solely depending on the last consonant of the cluster being voiced or unvoiced respectively. This process is called regressive assimilation since the last consonant of the cluster influences all the previous ones; in English we can meet progressive assimilation, for example when forming the plural of a noun you choose endings [s], [z] or [iz] depending on the quality of the preceding consonant (compare "books", "tables", "matches"), or in forming the Past Simple form of regular verbs you choose [t] or [d] ending for the same reason (compare "looked" and "saved") so that the first consonant of the cluster influences the following one. Examples of regressive assimilation: [fkomnati] (in the room) ("" is pronounced as unvoiced [f] in this consonant cluster since the last consonant of the cluster is unvoiced [k]), [addat'] (to give back, perfective aspect) ("" is pronounced as voiced [d] since the last consonant of the cluster is voiced [d]), [lotka] (boat), [zgar] (from the mountain). Exception: voiced consonant [v] (denoted by "") does not influence the previous consonants of the cluster though it gets influenced by the following noise consonants, compare [svojstva] (feature, property) ([v] does not influence the previous consonants neither in the first ("") nor in the second ("") cluster) and [f/sh/] (lice) ("" does get influenced by the following ""). Another feature is that all noise consonants are devoiced at the end of the word (of course if there is no word immediately following it and beginning with the voiced noise consonant, you could see it in one of the previous examples: ), e.g. [got] (year) ("" gets devoiced), [vrak] (enemy) ("" gets devoiced), [maros] (frost) ("" gets devoiced)

5 The Russian Spelling System

The Russian spelling system is far simpler than that of English. The system is basically this: one sound, one letter; one letter, one sound. There are a few disparities, but only a few. To give you an idea of just how few: they are all just below on this one page. Russian kids learn them by the end of first grade; if you are past this stage, you should pick them up with no difficulty. Right? Hard and Soft Vowels. Russian has a system of 'soft' or 'palatalized' consonants which parallels that of the regular consonants. (Soft consonants are pronounced as though you were pronouncing that consonant and a 'y' simultaneously.) Fourteen Russian consonants come in soft-hard pairs and, if the Russian alphabet assigned a distinct consonant for each, we would have to memorize fourteen additional consonant letters. However, because they want their language to remain the simplest language in the world, the Russians decided to use the following vowel to indicate whether the preceding consonant is hard or soft. Since the Russian language has only 5 distinct vowel sounds, this system requires only 5 additional letters. This saves the Russian-language learner 9 letters to memorize! Here are the 10 vowel letters which indicate whether the preceding consonant is 'hard' or 'soft'. Remember, each vowel of the pair is pronounced identically, except for the and the . The approximate pronunciation is given to the right. Russian Vowels Sound Hard Soft (roughly) 'Ah!' 'Eh?' 'Eee!' 'Oh!' 'Ooo!'

The vowel letters in the left column occur only after 'hard' consonants; those in the right column appear only after 'soft' consonants. You must remember that, after applying all the other rules of Russian, especially when adding noun, verb, and adjectives endings, you must be sure to convert any 'hard consonant' vowel to its 'soft' alternate, if the suffix begins with a vowel and is added to a stem ending on a consonant. Also, if any word ends on a vowel from the right-hand column, then its stem ends on a soft consonant, so when changing the endings on such words, you must consistently use the vowels from the 'soft' column. The following table shows what I mean. [For best results in studying this table, focus on one word at a time and follow the change in each word. Begin with the forms in the left columns; they provide you with the basic vowel used after hard consonants. The right-hand column shows you the rule for converting the basic vowel to the vowel used after a soft consonant.]

Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants after soft Exampl consona es nts - - - - - C + > C + > C + > C + > C + >

after hard consonants C+ C+e C+ C+ C+

Examples

"C" = any soft consonant in the table above. To compare the use of the 'soft' vowels after soft consonants (C) and the 'hard' vowels after hard consonants (C), examine the table below. is the nickname for "Eugene" or "Eugenia" and means "wife". Table shows some of them in their various case forms. Hard & Soft Consonants Nominativ e Genitive

Accusativ e Instrumen tal

The Combination of +V (y+vowel)

Russian orthography does not allow spellings with (jod) plus a v owel, that is, +, +, +, +, +. Instead, the "soft" vowels are also used to indicate these combinations, as the following table illustrates. Jod + Vowel Combinations

- -

'of a table' 'tables' (Pl)

'of a genius' 'geniuses' (Pl) 'by the genius' 'to the genius'

- 'with a table' - The soft sign () 'to a table'

In their attempt to simplify their alphabet for us, the Russians developed a spelling system that leaves us another problem: how to indicate the softness of consonants at the end of words or before other consonants, i. e. when no vowel follows. If the consonant is hard--no problem: "table". However, if the consonant is soft, a soft sign () must be added to distinguish the soft consonant from its corresponding hard variant, e.g. "mother", "door", "day"; "only", "fate", "request". The 7 Consonant Rule (not but ). Also remember that after (velars) and (hushes) never write but always , e.g. "students" but "coeds", "elevator operators" but "women elevator operators". The 5 Consonant Rule ( or ). After (noisy consonants, don't confuse it with hushes that have not ) write o if that syllable is accented and e if it is not, e.g. "in a big nice house". (The light letters indicate accent placement.) The Hush Rule (not or but and ). Finally, after (hashes) never write or but always and .

Upper or Lower Case?

The use of capitalization in Russian is different from English. All proper names (including names of towns, rivers, seas, oceans, and continents) are capitalized in Russian the way they are in English, but if a common noun is part of the name, it is not capitalized. Examples: , , , , -. Names of nations and languages are not capitalized, e. g. , , . Names of months and days of the week are not capitalized, e. g. ,

, . In titles, only the first word is capitalized (but names are still capitalized, of course), e. g. , , . The first word in a sentence is always capitalized. The pronoun is not capitalized unless it is the first word in the sentence. The pronoun is capitalized only in personal correspondence.

Suffixes ()
The root defines the basic meaning of the word, e.g. the words , , , , , , and all have to do with learning. The prefix may add a nuance to the basic meaning, e.g. and signify that the process was completed. The ending shows how the word functions in the sentence, e. g. to answer the question ? you'll say , but to answer the question ? you'll say . The word remains the same, but the grammatical construction, and the endings are different, because the word now serves a different function. A suffix is the part of the word that is between the root and the ending. Like prefixes, they create words with the same basic idea, but somewhat different specific meanings. The Suffix - For example, the suffix - creates a word that means "the person or thing that carries out the action indicated by the root," like , , , , , etc. Like some of the prefixes, many suffixes present a spelling problem because they're rarely stressed, and so you cannot trust the vowel sound that you hear. For example, you may hear the sound -- in the suffix of the word , but the word is spelled with -e-. You can remember this suffix as one that creates adjectives with affectionate, diminutive overtones. The suffix -does the same, and may sound as if it has an -a- in it. These two suffixes are never spelled with -- or --. Here are a few common suffixes whose spelling you should remember: --: , --: , (there're no - words in Russian, and only three - words, e.g. ) --: --: , (always -- after - -, i.e. noisy/sibilant/hissing consonant)

--: , (-- after a non-noisy/sibilant/hissing consonant) ---: , ---: , --: , , --: ---: --: , --: , --: , --: , ---: --: , , , ---: --: (words in - do exist, but they never mean "someone who does what the root signifies") --: , (there's no -- suffix in Russian) ---: , ---: , ----: , ----: , -/-: , , , , , The adjectival suffixes --, --, --, --, --, are always spelled with two 's. Two verb suffixes deserve special attention. The suffixes in and may sound similar but these verbs behave very differently when conjugated: compare and . If you are not sure about the spelling of a -- verb, you can tell the two types apart by conjugating them: -- and --: / , / (the suffix changes form -- to -- when conjugated) -- and --: / , / (the suffix stays the same). And It is very useful to remember that there are many verbs with the suffixes -and -- and none at all with the suffix -o-. This will help you to spell, e.g. (-a- verb) and (-- verb, e. g. , , ).

6 Useful Russian Words

Personal pronouns
, , I you we you they

he, she, it

Possessive pronouns
, , my your his, her, its our your their

Numbers
zero eleven twelve twenty one twenty two twenty three thirty forty fifty hundred two hundred three hundred

one two

thre thirtee e n

fourtee four n five fifteen

four hundred five hundred six hundred seven hundred

six

sixteen

s sevent eve sixty een n eigh eightee t n nine seventy

eight hundred nine hundred Thousand

ninetee eighty n twenty ninety

ten

Days of the week

Russian week begins on Monday and ends on Sunday . Note that all the days are written with the small first letter in Russian.. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Months
Note that all the months are written with the first small letter in Russian. January February March April May June July August September October November December

Colours
, white black red green blue yellow orange brown violet gray

7 Pronouns
Pronouns are words that are used as substitutes for nouns. They do not name objects, their characteristics or quantity but only refer to them. There are nine types of pronouns in Russian.

Classes of Russian pronouns

1st person , Personal 2nd person , 3rd person , , , Reflexive Possessive Demonstrative , , , , , , , ; , , ; ; , , , ; , , , , , , , , , ; -, -; -, ; -; - , , , , , , , , , , , ; , , , , , , I, we you (sing), you (plural) he, she, it, they myself, oneself my, your (familiar), our, your (polite/plural), (reflexive) my etc. that; this; these; such; so much/many who, what, what/which, whose, which, how much/many, to what extent someone, something, some, some; somebody, something; some; someone who, what, what/which, which, whose, how much/many, to what extent nobody, nothing, there's nobody to, there's nothing to, nobody's, to no extent oneself, all, everybody, each/every, other/some, another, any

Interrogative

Indefinite

Relative

Negative Determinative

Personal Pronouns
Here we take a look at the personal pronouns. They are:

, , , , ,, ,
Case Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative Singular o oa e oo Plural o

Instrumental

Prepositional () () () () ()

() () ()

The personal pronouns do not change by number, they belong to either singular or plural number. , , , , are always singular. , , are always plural. Finally, you have to remember to insert and before all the third person pronouns when the occur after prepositions. Without Prep . I saw him. . I saw her. . 'I saw them. The First Person As you may know, the first person grammar term refers to someone who is the author of the narration. Therefore , are the first person pronouns; they refer to the speaker. (started to climb the hill slowly). refers to someone who is actually saying this sentence. In addition, the pronoun refers to people who perform an action along with the speaker. : , , , (We were all eating apples: I and Misha and Tolya and Dima). refers to all people who were performing an action. The Second Person The second person describes someone who was addressed by the utterance. In other words, it is the person you are talking to. Therefore , are the second person pronouns; they refer to one ore more interlocutors. , (Lena, you sing so well). substitutes for Lena, the person being addressed. With Prep . I'm leaving his place. . I'm leaving her place. . I'm leaving their place.

 (When will you visit a friend?). substitutes for the person addressed. The Third Person The third person pronouns , , , refer to the person or thing being talked about. (He became interested in the game). (She was the only child in the family ) (They stood up and greeted).

Possessive Pronouns
Russian Possessive pronouns change according to gender, number and case. These pronouns are adjectival since they occur in attributive position before the noun they modify and agree in case, number, and gender with the noun. Here they are. The pronoun has been given first. possessor singular 1 () nom inan anim acc gen dat inst prep 2 () inan anim 3m () 3f () 1 () inan anim plural 2 () inan anim 3 ()

Oh, by the way. . .the possessive reflexive pronoun , , ; is declined the same as and . It is used when the referent of the possessive is identical with that of the subject, e.g. "I took my (own) book".

Note that English possessive pronouns have two forms: my - mine, her - hers, your - yours. In Russian, there is only one form of possessive pronouns. For instance, both "my" and "mine" are always translated as .

Demonstrative Pronouns
We are assuming at this point that you have mastered (more or less) the personal and possessive pronouns. The next type of pronoun you need to have under your belt before you can babble away incessantly in Russian are the Demonstrative Pronouns. Here comes everything anyone could ever want to know about them. First you need to realize that, just as it turned out that you knew all the endings on the possessive pronouns, you already know all the endings on the demonstrative pronounsthey are the same as those of the possessive. That is, the demonstrative pronouns follow the pronominal principle that the nominative-accusative endings are the same as nouns of the same gender and all other endings are the same as the corresponding adjective endings. The Nominal And Adjectival Demonstrative Pronouns Take a look at "this" and "that" in Russian. Declension Masc. sg. nominative accusative genitive dative prepositional instrumental Fem. sg. Neut. sg. Plural (pl. of ) , ,

The thing to notice is that except for the plural, and are declined identically. In fact, like all adjectives, the feminine declension had only one ending, - for all the singular cases other than nominative-accusative. You only have to look out for the plural: in the plural uses a different vowel than the adjectives (and ), e rather than or . Also notice that uses the soft variant in the plural even though it declines like a hard stem in the singular. The demonstratives and may be used as nouns or adjectives. In Russian you may say either 1. . That is my frog. 2. . That is my tractor. 3. . Those are my snails. or (used as adjectives) 4. That frog is mine. 5. That tractor is mine.

6.

Those snails are mine.

These tables tell several interesting stories. 1. First, comparing (1-3 with (4-6), notice that in Russian there is no difference between the attributive forms like "my, your, his" and predicate forms like "mine, yours, his". There is only one set of possessive pronouns in Russian while English has one for attributive position and another for predicates. 2. Second, getting back to the demonstratives, when and are used as nouns in the subject of a sentence, they remain singular even if the predicate is plural (3). However, when the demonstratives are used as adjectives, they must agree with the noun they modify as in (4-6). 3. Finally, notice in (1-3) that while the default demonstrative in English is that, e.g. That is my book, in Russian the default demonstrative is , as in the Russian correlate . So when you need to distinguish between "this" and "that", use the Russian demonstratives like the English ones. But if you just need a demonstrative and it doesn't matter which, in Russian say .

The Adverbial Demonstratives In addition to the noun and adjective demonstrative pronouns, there is a series of adverbial demonstratives meaning "that place (= there)", "that time (= then)", "that way (= thus)", "that kind of", etc. Here is the complete list (why they are called "T-K Pairs" here will become evident in the syntax review):

T-K Pronominal Pairs

Demonstrative Pronouns Interrogative Pronouns
, , ; that, those , , that kind of thus, so , , there, thither, thence then that many for that reason ?, ? who, what ?, ?, ? what kind of ? "how" ?, ?, ? where, whither, whence ? when ? how many ? why

The demonstrative adverbial pronouns are used pretty much the same as their English counterparts. The obvious exception to this is the retention of forms for "there", "thence", and "thither". These words were still in English when Shakespeare wrote, so you are probably familiar with them even though you don't use them yourself in speaking. There, like Russian , indicated a place where an immobile object is located. Thither indicated a place to which some object moves while thence indicates a place from which some object (uh, like

a person) moves. Obviously these two are used with spoken or implied verbs of motion, e.g. ? "Where are you off to?" or ? "Where are you going?" Or, in the other direction, ? "Where did you come from?" as opposed to ? "Where are you (currently)?" The demonstrative adjectives are like no English pronoun; they are used to elicit a quality expressed in an adjective. For example, if you ask, ? "What kind of woman is she?" you expect an adjective as an example, e.g. // "She is smart/good/contemplative." The remainder of the demonstrative pronouns are pretty much like their counterparts in English. Before we check our mastery of these concepts, there are a couple of tricks you can do with demonstratives that might come in handy. Some Tricks Demonstratives Do For You True to their name, demonstrative pronouns exhibit a pronounced presence in the Russian language. They serve a lot of functions other than demonstrating. Two very common places you find them is in the expressions for "the same" and "the wrong". Here's how they work. Saying "the Same" In Russian. To say "the same N" in Russian, you need only add the particle after the appropriate form of the demonstrative pronoun. For example, if someone snooty says that s/he saw the latest French film, (), , "I saw, you know, that French film", to put them in their place retort: () "I saw the same film"you just add to the . If some tells you that they've been to Monte Carlo, all you have to say is () : "I've been to the same place". Neat, huh? And, as usual, simplissimo! Saying "Wrong" In Russian. To say "the wrong N" in Russian, you need only add the particle before the appropriate form of the demonstrative pronoun. For example, if that same snoot who went to Monte Carlo buys a new book for a course, you can get her goat by saying, A , "You got the wrong book". Or let's say you see some guy who's been bugging you coming out of the mens' room and there is a womens' room next door, just say, "You went to the wrong place" and test his self-confidence. Now that we have the basic principles of the demonstrative pronouns, here is an achievement recognition opportunity to appease our egos.

The Interrogative Pronouns

In Russian, just like in English, the interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. The interrogative pronouns are:

Interrogative Pronouns
, , , , , , who, what whose what/which how where, where to, from where when why

, , which / what kind of

, how much/many, to what extent

All the languages of the world have exactly two types of questions and that includes Russian. The first type is called a 'yes-no' question. 'Yes-no' questions beg the answer "yes" or "no" and do not require an interrogative pronoun. In English, for example, if I ask you, Did you do your homework? I expect a crisp, clear answer of either yes or no, not, Uh, well, you know, uh, like, my mother doesn't, like, like me answering questions like, like, that. Sometimes I'm disappointed but my intent in asking a 'yes-no' question is clear. In other situations, however, we need to know who did what to whom if not even when and where and how and why. The boldface words in the previous sentence are the English interrogative pronouns Let's Look At Several Examples ? Who has come? ? Who are they? ? What is this? ? Whose cap is this? ? Whose is that cap?

 ? Where is Ivan going? ? Where are you from? ? When is Pavel going to (his) parents? ? Where did their parents live before? ? In what kind of house did they live before? ? How old are you? (formal) ? How do they call you? ? With whom are you lunching? In this lesson you will learn about the usage and meaning of Interrogative Pronouns. We will first study the pronouns , , and their forms. Then we will take a look at the pronouns , , , followed by and .

, , The interrogative pronouns (what kind of), (which), (whose) change by gender, number and case like adjectives. Besides, you should distinguish between animate and inanimate forms when using the accusative case. This is demonstrated in the tables below. Change by gender and number
masculine feminine neuter "" , "" , plural (any gender) "" ,

Change by cases
Case Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instrumental Prepositional

, , The interrogative pronouns (who), (what), (how many/much) change only by cases.
Case Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instrumental "" "" ""

Prepositional

"Who" Questions To form a "who" question use a past, present or future tense singular masculine verb after . Note that only the tense of the verb can change in "who" questions. For example: Question 1 -- past tense, masculime, singular ? (Who was smiling?) Possible answers . . . (A girl was smiling. A boy was smiling. Children were smiling.) Question 2 -- present tense, masculime, singular ? (Who is smiling?) Possible answers . . . (A girl is smiling. A boy is smiling. Children are smiling.) "What" Questions Use the interrogative pronoun followed by a neuter singular verb in the form of the past, present or future tense. Let's say we want to ask about a recent event. Question (neuter, singular, past tense) ? What happened? The interrogative pronoun (what kind) is used in exclamatory sentences: ! (What a hot day it is today!) This pronoun is also used to ask about features and quality: ? (What weather is going to be tomorrow?) ? (What kind of books did you buy?) The interrogative pronoun (what/which) is used to aks about something in a sequence of similar objects. For example, here are the ways to ask about time. ? What time is it? ? At what time? , , , The pronouns , , , are used to aks about the owner of an object. ? (Whose cap is this?) ? (Whose umbrella is this?)

This pronoun is used to ask about the number of things or people. ? (How many residents is there in this city?) ? (How many books did you read?)

Conclusion In other situations, however, we need to know who did what to whom if not even when and where and how and why. The boldface words in the previous sentence are the English interrogative pronouns; their Russian counterparts are listed on the right-hand side of the following table, taken from the demonstrative pronoun page.

T-K Pronominal Pairs

Demonstrative Pronouns
, , ; that, those (Possessional Pronouns) , , that kind of thus, so , , there, to there, from there then that much/many for that reason

Interrogative Pronouns
, who, what , , , whose , , which, what kind of how , , where, where to, from where when how much/many why

Notice that this table has a new member, "whose", that has no demonstrative correlate. That is because the answer to this interrogative pronoun must always be a personal pronoun: , , , , , , . Here are some sentences illustrating how they are used in actual questions. ? ? | Who opened the door? | What opened the door?

 ? ? - [like]? ? ? ? ?

| Whose frog is that? | What kind of woman is she? | How do you say 'like' in Russian? | Where did you find him? | Where did he get to? | Where did you get him from? | When was he born?

? | How much do you want for your car? ? | Why do you want it so much? Remember that the nominal (, and the adjectival pronouns (, ) are sensitive to case just like lexical nouns and adjectives. The following examples illustrate this. ? ? ? ? What is your frog sitting on? To whom did you give your frog? Which knife does he eat with? Whose turkey is he going with?

Reflexive Pronouns
The Russian Personal Reflexive Pronoun Most languages have a special pronoun which is used exclusively in predicates to replace a pronoun that would refer to the same object as the subject refers to. In English these pronouns usually contain self, e.g. I love myself, she loves herself, they love themselves. Unfortunately, in English these pronouns have the same form as the nominal emphatic pronouns which simply emphasize some noun the the clause, e.g. I did it myself. In this sentence myself merely emphasizes the fact the I did it and not someone else. This function is expressed a different way in Russian. The genuine reflexive is expressed in Russian by .

Russian Personal Reflexive Pronoun

Case Genitive Accusative Dative Example . . Gloss He saw himself in the mirror. She bought herself a present. They think only about themselves. She is satisfied with herself. . He is in his room right now.

Prepositional . Instrumental .

The Russian Possessive Reflexive Pronoun In addition to the personal reflexive pronoun, there is also a possessive version in Russian: , , , . Again, this pronoun is used to refer to a possessor identical with the subject of a sentence. English has no correlate of the possessive reflexive pronoun; in English the regular possessive pronoun is used regardless of whether the reference is identical with the subject. Again, since it is reflexive in this sense, it cannot be used in the subject but only in the predicate of a clause.

The Russian Possessive Reflexive Pronoun

Case Genitive Accusative Dative Example . . . Gloss He lives with his brother right now. He saw his in the mirror. She bought her brother a present. She is satisfied with her students.

Prepositional . They think only about their friend. Instrumental .

The possessive reflexive pronoun , , ; is declined the same as and .

The Russian Reciprocal Pronoun Finally, Russian contains a set of reciprocal pronouns corresponding to English each other: . There are only a couple of things you need to remember about this pair. First, only the second one declines and it follows the noun declension of masculine nouns. Second, when used with a preposition, the preposition stands between them, e.g. "They are always dreaming about each other". If you keep these two quirks in mind, your reciprocals will always properly reciprocate.

The Russian Reciprocal Pronoun

Case Genitive Accusative Dative Example . . Gloss They run away from each other. They bought each other presents. They think only about each other.

. They saw each other in the mirror.

Prepositional .

Instrumental . She is satisfied with her students. Notice that the quantity negative pronoun, , has a different meaning, "several, a few", which is much more prevalent than its quatificational meaning.

8 Verbs
Introduction
The Russian verbal system differs from that of other European languages in one important way: it is built primarily on the distinction of Aspect rather than Tense. Tenses Russian verbs have only three Tenses: Past, Present and Future. However this is complicated by existence of the category of Aspect. Aspects There are two main types of verbs called Aspects: Imperfective and Perfective. When you are talking in the present tense there is only one, the Imperfective. You only need to think about aspects when you are speaking in the Past or Future tense. It usually causes difficulties for English speakers as verb aspect in English is completely different from that in Russian. Aspects are used to indicate if an action was completed successfully or is ongoing. To do this in English we use extra verbs like had and have. For example, in the phrase I ate., the action is completed. However, in a phrase like I have been eating, it is implied that action is not yet completed. Aspects are used to illustrate this difference, however their use in Russian is much more defined.

Conjugations There are only two types of Russian verb Conjugations. It's the way a verb changes to agree with the person. it's referring to -- in English we say "I am" but "you are." The difference in the verb form is its conjugation. The conjugation patterns sometimes have different names, but we'll simply call them Conjugation I and Conjugation II. Another way which might be good is the "--" Conjugation and the "--" Conjugation, respectively. Motion Verbs In addition to being either of these, motion verbs are also broken down into two groups: Determinate and Indeterminate. The reason why this is complicated for English speakers is that we think of the verbs purely in terms of tense (or the time frame of the verb itself). For example, we have the present progressive -- "; I am writing a letter", "I write a letter" the simple past -- "; I wrote a letter" and the past progressive "I was writing a letter...". Russian doesn't have these tenses; it is more concerned with whether the action is completed or not.

Aspect
As mention, Russian verbs have two Aspects: Imperfective Aspect (HCB ) and Perfective Aspect (CB - ). Aspect is the verbal category which refers to the view of the speaker toward the action he/she is describing. In most instances, a Russian speaker has a choice of two verbs to describe the same action but from a different view, or focus. So, aspect is a system of verb pairs. For example, the English verb "to look" has the
corresponding Russian verb pair - .

Verbs that are Imperfective focus on the process of an action, while Perfective verbs focus on the result of the action. Perfective verbs answer the question " ?" (, , ), while Imperfective verbs answer the question " ?" (, , ). Imperfective Perfective - Incomplete, ongoing, or repeated actions - Actions completed successfully.

Using an Imperfective aspect verb you can form the present tense, the past tense and the future tense. Using a Perfective aspect verb you can only form the past tense and the future tense. The following chart summarises the characteristics and uses of the Perfective and the Imperfective aspect: Imperfective Aspect Perfective Aspect

Action as process Repeated or habitual actions Simultaneous actions

Action as completion Single or momentary actions Consecutive actions

Actions which do not terminate in a result Actions which emphasise completion It is possible for perfective and imperfective verbs to have equal vocabulary meaning, as the following verbs do: (impf.) - (pf.); - ; - . But it is more common for them to have some shades of meaning, for example: (impf.) (pf.) - (pf.); - ; . Forming Russian Aspect Perfective verbs are formed from imperfective verbs with the help of:

prefixes ( - , - ) suffixes ( - , - ) accent ( - ) stem change ( - , - , - )

On the other hand, imperfective verbs are formed from perfective verbs with the help of such suffixes as -, -, -, - ( , - , - , - ).

Usage of Russian Verbs

Past
TENSE AND ASPECT USAGE EXAMPLE SENTENCES

Used to designate an action that began and ended at a particular time in the past; the result is not important for the speaker

Used for an action that occurred over period of time but was completed in the past; the . action, not duration, is emphasized Used for an activity that took place regularly in the past .

PAST TENSE, IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT

Used for actions occurred over period of time , simultaneously but were completed in the . past Used when the result of an action is nullified, i.e. an opposite action occurred Used for an action that occurred over period of time but was completed in the past. The duration is emphasized , . (i.e. ) .

TENSE AND ASPECT

USAGE Used to emphasize the result of an action that began and ended at a particular time in the past

EXAMPLE SENTENCES . , .

PAST TENSE, PERFECTIVE ASPECT

Used for a past action that had a result before another past action that also had a result

, . . (i.e. ) .

Used when the result of an action remains Used to designate an action that began and ended at a particular time in the past; the time during which the result was achieved is emphasized

Present
TENSE AND ASPECT USAGE EXAMPLE SENTENCES

Used for a present state of affairs

. .

Used for a general fact

. . 12:00.

PRESENT TENSE, IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT

Used for habitual actions

Used for future timetables and arrangements

. . . 2 .

Used for a specific action that is occurring Used for an activity that takes place over period of time specified

Future
TENSE AND ASPECT USAGE EXAMPLE SENTENCES . . . Used for an action that will be finished at a particular time in the future .

Used for an action that will be ongoing or FUTURE TENSE, repeating at a particular time in the future, IMPERFECTIVE but it is not known whether will be finished of ASPECT not

FUTURE TENSE, PERFECTIVE ASPECT

The General Nature of the Russian Verb

The Russian verb is always composed of two parts: (1) a stem and (2) a conjugational ending. Two basic types of stems and two types of endings determine the present-future form. Neither stems nor endings occur alone, but always in conjunction with one another.

Stem
In linguistics, a stem (sometimes also theme) is the part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants. The two major types of verb stems are Consonant Stems and Vowel Stems.

Consonant Stems are those verb stems which end on a consonant. There are two significant types: 'wimpy' consonant stems and 'tough' consonant stems. (You'll see in the next section why they are wimpy or tough; for the time being, just remember them.) - "live" - "become, begin" - "swim, float, sail" - "do, make" - "go" - "can, may" - "carry (on foot)" - "row"

Wimpy consonant stems end on , , or .

Tough consonant stems may end on any other consonant.

Vowel stems are those verb stems which end on a vowel. There are two significant types of these: front-vowel * and back-vowel ** stems. - "watch, look" - "see" Front-vowel stems end on either or . - "talk, tell" - "buy" Back-vowel stems end on , , or . - "wait-for" - "write" - "return" - "stick, impale"

*A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. ** A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.

Stem Exceptions Because the Russian language is so easy, it runs the risk of becoming boring to learn. For that reason, the Russians have spiced their language with a few

interesting exceptions. Clever as they are, however, the Russian exceptions are based on a rule that you will do well to remember. Most Russian exceptional verbs have two stems, a present-future stem and a past stem. The present-future stem underlies the present-future tense, the imperative (except for the -verbs), and the present participles. The past stem underlies the past tense, the infinitive, and the past participles. The exceptionality of these verbs is that some letter or group of letters is present in one of these stems but not in the other.

- ()
'give'

- ()
'eat'

(/) , , ;

(/) , , ;

Past Tense

- ()

- ()

- ()
'ride' () , , ;

'be' 'go, walk, move' () () Past Tense , , ; , , ;

- ()
'want' ()

- ()

- ()
'take' () , , ;

'run, move' () Past Tense , , ; , , ;

What Are Conjugations?

A verbal conjugation comprises the set of endings added to any verb in a language to distinguish the grammatical categories of Person, Number, and

Gender. In Russian, Gender is indicated only by the Past Tense conjugations. In the Present Tense, however, each verb must bear one of six verbal endings indicating whether the subject of the verb is singular or plural, and whether it is the speaker (1st Person), the listener (2nd Person) or some object not participating in the conversation. The English language has lost all but one of its Present Tense conjugation endings, the -s of 3rd Person Singular: Singular Plural 1st Person I work we work 2nd Person you work yall work 3rd Person he work-s they work

Russian, however, like most other European languages, maintains a separate suffix for each of these forms. Singular 1st Person - 2nd Person - 3rd Person - Plural - - -

The set of suffixes for a given stem is referred to as that stem's 'conjugation'. Russian has two such sets, Conjugation I (First conjugation) and Conjugation II (Second conjugation).

Present- Future and The Conjugations

There are two sets of endings used on Russian verbs to mark the present tense of imperfective verbs and the future tense of perfective verbs: those of the First or E-conjugation and those of the Second or -Conjugation. The endings of the two conjugations are almost identical except for the initial vowel of all the endings. In the First Conjugation that vowel is e except in the 1st person singular and 3rd person plural, where they have or . In the Second Conjugation the vowel is everywhere except also 1st person singular and 3rd person plural where they contain , , a or . The First (E) Conjugation The First (E) Conjugation The Present-Future Endings First Person Singular () Second Person Singular () -/- First Person Plural () - Second Person Plural () Third Person Plural () - - -/-

Third Person Singular ( ) -

First () Conjugation Endings are added to (the accent is underlined): - : "I will become" - : "I live" - : "you're going" : "(s)he's carrying" - : "they can" : "you're waiting" (2) back-vowel stems (, , *), unless the vowel is - preceded by or : "(s)he's writing" : "we will return" but : "you're hearing" but : "(s)he's knocking" but : "we keep, hold"

(1) consonant stems like (, , , , )

The Second () Conjugation The Second () Conjugation The Present-Future Endings First Person Singular () Second Person Singular () -/- First Person Plural () - Second Person Plural () - -

Third Person Singular ( ) -

Third Person Plural () -/-

Second () Conjugation Endings are added to (the accent is underlined): (1) front-vowel stems (, ) - "buy"( ) - "look" ( ) - "go" - "hold, keep" - "hear"( ) - "knock"

(2) stems on -a preceded by or

When using the Second () Conjunction, sometimes the last letter of the stem (infinitive without "") for the first person singular () changes. Change this letter according to the following table (Remember, this only applies to the 1st Person Singular ()) : becomes (to walk) : becomes c becomes ct becomes becomes
{ (to want) : (1st ()/2nd () Conjugation)} (to write) :

, , , , add the (to love): letter Reminder. The Spelling Rule 1, "Never write , , or after the letters ', , , , , , ' instead use , , ".

The Past Tense Endings

The Past Tense of a verb indicates that the action indicated by the verb occurred in the past. The Past Tense ending for both conjugations is - + gender marker, -o for neuter, -a for feminine, nothing for masculine, in the singular and - in the plural. The past tense of - "say, tell" is --, as shown below. () "he/it said" () "she/it said" () "it said" () "they said" The stem does not change if the past tense ending is added to a vowel stem; however, this ending doesn't like consonants and usually makes some adjustments to consonant stems which we will examine further along.

The Rules of Stem-Ending Combination

The simplicity of the Russian language has been mentioned before in this grammar. Unfortunately, Russians cannot control every aspect of their grammar and one aspect of verb formation causes a few problems. While vowels and consonants get along quite well in Russian, vowels don't like other vowels and most consonants don't get along with each other. This means that when endings are added to stems, so long as the stem ends in a vowel and the ending begins with a consonant, or vice versa, the process of building a verb from stems and endings is a simple matter. When you add an ending beginning with a vowel to a stem ending on one, however, one of them has to go--and it is usually the one on the stem. Consonants are different, however; they are stronger than vowels and all but four of them put up a fight. The weaklings are ; like vowels they simply vanish from the stem in the presence of a vowel on any ending. The remainder manage some sort of resistance, and sometimes they pay the price and sometime the invader on the ending pays. This page will give you the specific rules for adjusting the vowels and consonants when combining endings and stems. The General Rule Of Combination The basic rules for combining endings with stems of all forms in both conjugations are simply these: (1) When an ending beginning with a vowel is attached to any stem ending on a vowel, the stem vowel is removed. This rule of combination will be coded red in the following examples. The Basic Spelling Rules are coded yellow. (You can control the motion of the verb forms on some browsers by pressing the button in the scroll bar on the right of the screen.) "s/he/it returns" "I look, watch" (2) When an ending beginning with a consonant is added to a stem with a wimpy consonant ( ), the stem consonant is removed.

"lived" "to become, begin" (3) When an ending beginning with an tough consonant (all others beside the wimpy ones fingered above), either the stem consonant or the ending consonant may be dumped, or the stem consonant may be significantly altered. The rules of combat are laid out in the concomitant rules to follow. Concomitant Rules Concomitant Changes In The Present-Future Tense And Imperative: 1. () is dropped before the present-future endings (but not in the imperative where there is no ending for these verbs): () get up () find out but ! Get but ! Find but ! Give! up! out! 2. ()/() are replaced by and , respectively, before the present-future ending. "pack" "worry" 3. (e) is dropped in consonant stems, but retained in stems ending on -a in the present-future tense. () "I will lock" ()- "I will (s)elect" 4. In the Imperative, replaces in the non-syllabic stems like - : ! "drink!", - : ! "beat!" Concomitant Changes In The Past Tense And Infinitive: 1. and are removed before -: and so on: , , "led, took". 2. After all other fixed consonants, - is dropped if no vowel follows it (in cases of the zero masculine gender marker). but - - - "could" but - - - "hauled" 3. Before a which is removed from a monosyllabic or asyllabic stem: replace with - > "to wash" replace with - > "to shave" replace with - > "to drink" EXCEPTION: - : , , , "sang" 4. In non-syllabic roots (stems without any affixes), and are replaced by before consonant endings. give :

-, -, - but "to begin" -, -, - but "to squeeze"

Concomitant Changes Of Fleeting Vowels: Fleeting vowels realize themselves in Russian prefixes before non-syllabic verb stems or in verbs stems which themselves have fleeting vowels when the fleeting vowel is not present. ()-: but , etc. "come down" ()()-: but , etc. "gather" ()()-: but , etc. "call away" Fleeting vowels in verb stems which end on the vowel a are realized in the present-future forms and not in the infinitive and past tense. For consonant stems on p, the rule is reversed: the vowel is pronounced in the past tense and infinitive but not in the present future. The following table illustrates.

Infinitive Past Tense

()- > ()- > ()- > ()- >

Present-Future Tense
()- > ()- > ()- > ()- >

This completes the basic system of the Russian verb. Ready to show off your mastery? Here are a few exercises to see how well you are doing.

Infinitive
Every changeable Russian word has the initial form. For example, the nominative singular form is initial for nouns (). The infinitive is the initial form of verbs. The infinitive is a specific verb form that answers such questions as " ?" (, ) and " ?" (, ). The infinitive only designates an action or condition but does not show tense, person or number. Therefore all dictionaries give Russian verbs in the infinitive form. Note: The infinitive is an unchangeable verb form.

The Infinitive Endings The infinitive form of most of Russian verbs ends in - or -. These endings are called suffixes of the infinitive (, ). Some infinitive forms end in - that is not a suffix but a part of the root (, ). The part of a word without the suffix - or - comprises the stem (, ). The Infinitive corresponds to verb phrases beginning with to in English, e. g. I want to read (Russian: ). Whenever an auxiliary is used in Russian, the main verb must be an infinitive whether it is in English or not, e. g. I must read versus Russian .

Forming the infinitive

Here are the rules for forming the Russian infinitive: - is used after fixed consonant stems on or . The consonant of the stem is then dropped. - (- I can) becomes "can, may" - (- I bake) becomes "to bake" - is used after fixed-consonant stems which are end-accented. As you can see, , , , , are regularly replaced by c before the - or - of the infinitive. - becomes "to lead, accompany" - becomes "to haul, carry (by vehicle)" - becomes "to row" - is then added to the consonant stems on and the e of the stem is realized, as in ()- : "to die". Elsewhere the infinitive ending is -: -- : . Like the past tense ending -, this ending, too, does not like consonants (too much like itself) and so changes them to suit its liking.

Uses of Infinitive

to construct compound future tense . with present tense verbs which designate the beginning, continuation or ending of an action . . .

with the words , , , , e e. with adverbs and adjectives . .

with such verbs of motion as , , , , .

Note: The infinitive is never used with the verb .

Test Yourself a. At what proverb the infinitive form of a verb is used? 1. . 2. , . b. What of the following is characteristic of the infinitive? 1. shows tense 2. shows aspect 3. designates action 4. none of the above c. Indicate what sentence uses the infinitive in combination with a verb of motion. 1. . 2. . 3. . Answers: a.1, b.3, c.1 ("", "", "" are nouns)

Indicative Mood
All forms of the Russian verb, except the infinitive, change in number. There are singular and plural verb forms. To illustrate this, let's look at past, present and future tense forms of the indicative verb "" (to go). Change of the verb in person and number Singular Past tense Present tense Future simple tense Future compound tense Plural

The concept of the indicative mood was mentioned above. The indicative mood ( ) is used to talk about actions which occurred in past, occur presently, and will occur in future. For example, . The schoolboy is learning his lessons. . The schoolboy was learning his lessons. . The schoolboy will be learning his lessons. Russian verbs also change in person. The grammatical term "person" refers to those who take part in speech eiher directly or indirectly. The first person verbs designate that the action is being perfomed by a speaker, as in , , , . Here the verbs ([I] read), ([I] converse), ([I] listen), and ([I] lie) mean that the person who is speaking performs the actions. The second person verbs designate that the action is being performed by a collocutor. , , ! ; , , , , --

 : ! In this excerpt from a poem by Pushkin, the verbs ([you] slpash), , (sink), (raise), (ruin), and (splash out) are used to show that the actions are performed by the wave.

The third person designates that the action is being performed by someone or something that is being talked about, i.e. by an indirect participant of speech. For example, , , , . Here ([it] stands) and (burn) refer to the object which is spoken about, namely (the cherry). In Russian, verb endings indicate person and number of the verb. Remember: Second person singular verbs are to be written with , for example: ([you] read), ([you] are proud), ([you] aim).

Test yourself: a. Define the person of the verbs in the following sentences? 1. , ! 2. . 3. . . First person B. Second person C. Third person b. Define if the following verbs are to be written the "" letter or without? 1. ... 2. ... 3. ... 4. ... . with "" B. without "" Answers: a.1-B 2-C 3-A; b. 1,2,3,4-A (, , , )

Conjugations of Verbs* (..Maybe I have to merge some headings)

Changes, which Russian verbs undergo depending on person and number, are called conjugation. There are two conjugations in Russian, called the 1st Conjugation and the 2nd conjugation (or E-Conjugation and Conjugation, respectively). The 1st Conjugation (E-Conjugation) The 1st conjugation verbs are those, which have the letter "" in their endings, for example: (to read)
(you - singular) (he) (we) (you - plural)

The 2nd Conjugation (-Conjugation) The 2nd conjugation verbs have the letter "" in their endings. (to believe)
(you - singular) (he) (we) (you - plural)

You will need to determine the conjugation of the verb in order to write correct personal endings. Usually, there is no problem with this for verbs which have stressed endings. For such verbs the same letter is used in writing as in speaking. For example, in words , the same letter is written as is heard. Remember: Conjugation is typical only for present and future tense verbs used in indicative mood. Past tense verbs change only by gender and number. However if the stress is on the base rather than ending, choosing correct ending will be a bit challenging. You will need to determine the conjugation of the verb by looking at its infinitive and applying the following rule. The 2nd conjugation verbs with unstressed ending are:

1. those, which end in -, like , , . Exceptions are: , , , , , etc. 2. seven verbs ending in -: , , , , , , + all verbs derived from them, like , , , , , etc. 3. four verbs ending in -a: , , , + all verbs derived from them, like , , , , etc. The 1st conjugation verbs are the remaining verbs (not mentioned in points 1. to 3.).

Table Of Conjugations

Conjugation -

Verbs ending

Exceptions 4 verbs (2nd conj.) 7 verbs (2nd conj.)

1st conjugation

- , - , - and others - (3 verbs): - (to shave) - (to spread e.g. cloth) - (to be based on) rarely used - - (7 verbs): (to look) (to see) (to hate) (to suffer; to bare) (to offend) (to twirl) (to depend) 3 verbs (1st conj.)

2nd conjugation

- (at) 4 verbs: (to speed along) (to hold) (to hear) (to breath)

1st conjugation /- , -

2nd conjugation /-

// /

//

Note: There are some verbs of mixed conjugation, which can have the endings of both the 1st conjugation and the 2nd conjugation. These are the verbs , and those derived from them (, , etc.): The Verbs ,
(to want) Singular 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Plural

(to run) Singular 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Plural

And two more verbs rarely used with ending . (to breath), (to try): (to breath) ending ,

(to try) ending In this case we have suffix between the root and the ending. To conjugate verbs like this we need to change it for suffix .

Test Yourself: a) Assuming that 1st conjugation verbs end in -(-), -, -, -, -, - (-), what is the conjugation of the following verbs? 1. __ 2. __ 3. __ 4. __ (A. 1st conjugation B. 2nd conjugation C. can be both A. and B) b) The verbs of what tense conjugate, i.e. change in person and number? 1. Present tense verbs 2. Past tense verbs 3. Future tense verbs
Answers:

a) 1B ( ), 2A ( ), 3C ( ), 4C ( ); b) 1 and 3

Present Tense
The Russian present tense form is very simple. Verb forms like "I am working" , "I do work", "I have been working" do not exist in Russian. Instead, the form similar to that of English present simple tense is used.
I I I I work do work am working have been working

The present tense is used to express:

--> She is driving to work

Actions which are happening at the time of speaking Actions which occur regularly Habitual actions

-->The earth goes round the sun

8 -->I get up at 8 o'clock every morning

-->I have been living in Moscow for a whole year

Actions which began in the past and are still happening or just stopped

Ending of Present Tense

The endings of the present tense verbs (like "" in the above example) change depending on person and number. In order to find correct ending you need to perform the following steps. I. Determine the conjugation of the verb. The 1st () Conjugation includes verbs that have the following letters before the infinitive ending in -:
class I *, (, ) class II e () class III () class IV () *except the combinations , , , (- "hear" ( ))

The 2nd () Conjugation includes verbs that have before -

class V (, )

II. Determine the stem of the verb. First, remove the last character from the verb form for I (), for example --> . Second, remove the last three characters from the verb form for familiar you (), for example --> . Then, compare two remainders. If they are the same, this is the stem you need. If they are different, use as the stem that remained from familiar you form.

III. Determine the ending to be added to the stem using this table.
Person / / First Conjugation (-) - / - - - Second Conjugation (-) - / - - -

- - - / -

- - - / -

Examples
1st Conjunction's Example To form the verb for each person you need to drop the last two letters of the infinitive (normally ""), and add the appropriate ending ("", "", "", "", "" or ""). // To work. (infinitive, dictionary form) I work You work He, She, It works. We work You work. They work.

2nd Conjunction's Example Verbs where the infinitive ends in "" use the second conjunction. There are also other verbs that use this conjunction. The second conjunction uses the endings "" (or "") "" "" "" "" "" (or ""), which replace "".

//

To speak. (infinitive, dictionary form) I speak. You speak. He, She, It Speaks. We speak. You speak. They speak.

A Full Example
Infinitive: () 'read' () 'read' Present Tense Past Tense Future Tense // //

/ /

Palatalization
The Table identifies the consonants which undergo palatalization in Russian today. Once you have mastered the alternations caused by palatalization, you will need to learn where these changes take place. The sounds to the left of the angle bracket ">" are replaced by the one to the right of it when palatalization occurs.

Russian Palatalization
Labials Dentals Velars Palatals > > > > > > > > + > Examples Glosses I step I love + > I graph + > I put + > I roar + > + > + > I hide I see I carry I look-for

> () + >

The mutant consonants ( ) are easy to spot because they are unlike any Latin or Greek consonants and larger than other Russian consonants. They are sometimes called 'hushes' because of the sounds they represent. Historically, all were once soft, hence the rule which forces us to write and and never or after them. However, now and are hard and so any following them are pronounced exactly like even though it is not written. is now pronounced like a soft in Moscow but it and are always pronounced soft everywhere.

Where Does Palatalization Occur?

Now that you are familiar with the sounds that palatalize and how they palatalize, you need to know in which environments these sounds palatalize. Palatalization is not triggered by other sounds alone but specific sounds in specific morphological contexts. Here are the contexts. The Present-Future Conjugations Palatalization applies throughout Conjugation verbs ending on a: the Present-Future of the First ()

(>/)* to write
*See the above Table First () Conjugation stems ending on the velars , , , before only, undergo palatalization, i. e. everywhere except in the 1st person singular and 3rd person plural:

(//>//) may, can

Second () Conjugation stems (those ending on and ) palatalize in the 1st person singular only:

(>)* to see
*See the above Table

Past Tense
The Russian past tense is used to talk about actions and situations which took place at any point in the past. There is only one past tense form in Russian compared to numerous forms in English. She ate/ She did eat/ She had eaten/ She was eating/ She has eaten / The Suffix Combining the stem of the infinitive with the suffix forms the past tense verbs. Example (freeze): -- + --> -- -- + --> -- Note: Use the same vowel ('', '', '') in the past tense verb form as in the infinitive form before -. For example, - , , - . Exception There is an exception in forming the past tense form for some verbs which have the infinitive ending in -, -, -. The suffix is not used to form the past tense form of such verbs if they are used with singular masculine subjects (i.e. nouns and pronouns), like in --> , --> However, the suffix is used for the same verbs if they are used with singular feminine and neutral, as well as all plural subjects. For example, --> , , --> , , Past Plural (-) The past tense verbs change by number. The ending - is an indicator of plural number ( --> ). It is the same for all genders. Only singular forms of the past tense verbs change by gender. Singular masculine forms have no ending after the suffix ( ). An indicator

of singular feminine forms is the ending ( ). An ending o is used with singular neutral forms ( ).

Past Tense
Singular Masculine (-/-) Feminine (-) Neuter (-) Plural (-)

/ / / /

Future Tense
In Russian, past tense and present tense, as well as future tense refer to the indicative mood. Future tense denotes that the action marked by the verb will happen after the moment of speaking. Future tense has two forms: simple and compound. Future simple forms are formed by the verbs of the perfective aspect with the help of personal endings.
She will read She will have read

Future compound forms are formed by the verbs of the imperfective aspect. This group is called compound, because it consists of two words: future simple tense form of the verb "" (to be) and the infinitive of the perfective verb. The Russian compound future tense is remarkably similar in structure to the English simple future tense.

She will read She will be reading

The verbs in the form of future tense change in person and number. Singular First person Third person . Second person . Plural . .

() . .

Test yourself: a) Define tense and aspect of the verb. 1. . 2. , , . A. Present tense, imperfective aspect B. Future tense, perfective aspect b) Define the tense of the verbs in the sentences? 1. .

2. . 3. . 4. . A. Present tense B. Future tense C. Past tense Answers:

a) 1B, 2A; b) 1C, 2A, 3B

Some Conjugated Russian Verbs

/ - Love Imperfective Aspect English Infinitive Present Tense
1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

Perfective Aspect

love

Past Tense
Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural

Future Tense
1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

 / Work Imperfective Aspect English Infinitive Present Tense

1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

Perfective Aspect

work

Past Tense
Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural

Future Tense
1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

Verbal Accent in Russian

There are two basic types of accent in Standard Contemporary Russian (for nouns and adjectives as well as verbs): (1) fixed and (2) variable. If the accent falls on the same syllable of every form in a conjugation, it is fixed. Fixed accent may be fall on the same syllable of the stem or on the ending. If the position of the accent is not the same throughout the conjugation, it is said to be 'variable', and shifts between the first syllable of the ending and the last syllable of the stem. Invariable (fixed) Stem Accent Many verbs in Russian exhibit accent on one syllable of the stem where it remains no matter which ending is attached to the verb: present-future, past, imperative, infinitive. The following table illustrates the fixed accent pattern in the first and second conjugations with - 'do, make' and - 'leave (something)'. The accented syllable is indicated in the table below by boldface type. ! c 'do, make' 'I do' 'you do' 's/he does' 'we do' 'yall do' 'they do' 'to do, make' 'was doing' 'Do (it)! 'done' ! 'leave (something)' 'I leave' 'you leave' 's/he leaves' 'we leave' 'yall leave' 'they leave' 'left' 'Leave (it)!'

'to leave'

'left'

Invariable (fixed) Ending Accent The accent of other verbs is fixed on the ending throughout the conjugation, so that regardless of the form, the first (or only) syllable of the ending is always accented. Among the Conjugation I verbs, - "take, lead" is such a verb and among those of Conjugation II - "forgive" is a good example. As a rule of thumb, strong consonant stems have end accent while stems on tend to have stem accent. "lead, take" "I lead" "forgive" "I forgive"

 ! Movable Accent

"you lead" "s/he leads" "we lead" "youse lead" "they lead" "to lead" "Lead!" "he led" "she led" "conducted"

"you forgive" "s/he forgives" "we forgive" "youse forgive" "they forgive" "to forgive" "Forgive (me)!" "he forgave" "she forgave" "forgiven"

Variable accent is found most frequently among vowel stems. It falls on the suffix in (1) 1st person singular, (2) the infinitive, (3) the imperative, (4) the past tense (on the vowel preceding ), and moves one syllable back onto the stem in the other present-futute tense forms and in the past passive participle. - "may, can" - "love" By now you should have a firm lock on the (as usual) very simple principle of Russian verbal accent.

Verbs of Motion
Some people think learning about the verbs of motion is one of the hardest concepts in the Russian language. The truth is, it is not so difficult if you just try to understand them one step at a time. However it is quite an important concept, as motion verbs are among the most used in any language. We have broken this into several parts, so just learn one part at a time if there is too much information in this lesson. A Verb of Motion, as the name suggests, is simply a verb that will take you from one place to another. For example verbs like go, walk, run, swim or fly. The reason they are special in Russian is that Russian uses special prefixes or different forms to explain even more with one word. The verbs denoting motion are a special case in Russian. Instead of the usual aspectual pair of forms, verbs of motion have three aspectual forms: Perfective Aspect Imperfective Indefinite Aspect (Progressive Imperfective/Return trip/Multidirectional) Imperfective Definite Aspect (Iterative Imperfective/Onway/Unidirctional) Don't fret! There is a system to help you remember these forms. The perfective is always formed by simply adding the prefix - to the progressive form. The iterative imperfective usually ends on - or -. We will first discuss these verbs without the use of prefixes, then we will discuss the prefixes later. (A prefix is the couple of letters you put at the front of a word to add to its meaning).

Part 1 - Motion verbs without prefixes. - To Go

Lets start by looking at the words that could correspond to the English word go. Essentially there is no word in Russian that is like the English go. Instead Russians always indicate how they are going somewhere. Here are the two most important words. / - To go by foot (walk). (View Conjugations) / - To go by transport (drive, train, bus, etc.). (View Conjugations)

The first thing you will notice is that there are two similar Russian words corresponding to one English word. This is because Russians also indicate weather they are going in one direction or making a return trip. As it is often the case in Russian, you are able to say a lot with few words. Each verb conjugates in the normal way, click on the link next to the verbs to view the fully conjugated forms.

Multidirectional (Indefinite) Verb The verb on the left (, ) is the Multidirectional (return trip, in general) verb. Technically known as the Indefinite. Use the multidirectional form when are talking about actions in more than one direction, for example a return trip. Also use this form when you are talking in general about going to somewhere, or when there is no motion, or the number of directions is irrelevant. Examples (, ): . - Everyday I go to the cinema. (Talking in general) . - We walked around the town. (moving in a number of different directions) . - Yesterday we went to London. (by transport) (the return trip is implied) Unidirectional (Definite) Verb The verb on the right (, ) is the Unidirectional (one-way) verb. Technically known as the Definite. Use the unidirectional form when you are going in 1 direction, or talking specifically about going in 1 direction. This form often corresponds to the continuous tenses in English, ie when you say 'I am' or 'we are'. Examples (, ): . - I am going to work. (by foot) . - We are going to Moscow. (by transport) . - Tomorrow we are going to London. (by transport) ? - Where are you going? (by foot) You should now be comfortable using these motion verbs in the present tense.

These are to two most important verbs of motion, and you will find them very useful even as a beginner-intermediate Russian speaker.

Part 2 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion

Now that you are comfortable with the concept learnt in part 1, you can easily apply this same concept to the other verbs of motion. With these verbs the action is more specific than with the first two verbs you have learnt. There are no new concepts to learn in this part. Here are the verbs, click the link to see how they are congugated. / - To Run. (View Conjugations) / - To Stroll. (View Conjugations) / - To Drive. (View Conjugations) / - To Climb. (View Conjugations) / - To Fly. (View Conjugations) / - To Swim, To Sail. (View Conjugations) / - To Crawl. (View Conjugations)

Part 3 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion -To Carry

The last set of unprefixed verbs of motion are verbs that indicate the concept of carrying. These verbs are a little different because there is an object that is transported or carried. For example the train transports passengers to Moscow. You will normally see these words translated as to carry, but there meaning is more general and they could mean to transport or to take. You should translate them back to English depending on the context. Lets have a look at these verbs: / - To Carry (by vehicle). (View Conjugations) / - To Carry, To Wear (View Conjugations) / - To Lead, To Accompany. (View Conjugations) / - To Drag, To Pull. (View Conjugations) Let's have a quick look at how each one is used: / - Generally this word corresponds 'to transport'. Or 'to take' by some means of vehicle. For example in a sentences like The train transports passengers to Moscow or Ivan takes his daughter to school. / - Generally this word corresponds to 'to carry' when the person is carrying the object by walking. It's used in sentences like "The driver carried our bags to the taxi". This verb can also mean 'to wear', but it isn't really a used like a verb of motion in theis sense. / - This word generally means 'to lead', or 'to take on foot' where the object itself is also walking. For example "The dog leads the blind man to the shop". The verb has a number of other uses, where is may not be considered to be a verb of motion. These verbs work the same was as those above, either multidirectional or unidirectional. Initially dont worry too much if you are not sure exactly when to use each of these verbs, this is something that is best learnt naturally as you

read or hear them in real situations. As long as you are aware of the different concepts involved. In simple conversation it is less likely you will use these words compared to the verbs in part 1.

Part 4 - Prefixed verbs of motion

This brings us to one of the most hated parts of Russian for learners. However it is not so difficult at all. To all of the verbs above it is possible to add different prefixes. By placing a few extra letters at the front of these verbs, you can increase its meaning. This normally adds a direction to its meaning. For example you could change the meaning of walk to walk in. As you can see in the above example we normally achieve this in English by adding an adverb after the verb. Words like in, down, through or across. Often it is also possible to do this by using a different verb, walk in could be replaced by enter. Now that we know what we are trying to do in English lets have a look our how we can do it in Russian... If you find the concept of prefixes difficult you could just remember each of these verbs. Treating each verb as its own word, rather than a set of related verbs. This would be good for learners with a good memory for words. Other learners, who may be more conceptually minded, may choose to remember how all the pre-fixes work. We think its best to do a little of both. Once you understand this concept, you might find that you can suddenly decipher a whole lot of Russian verbs, and the language may really open up to you. Lets take a look at these prefixes. - - in - - out - - as far as, reach - - drop in, stop by - - around - - away - - across - - approach - - arrival - - through, pass - - down from - - from

Now let's see some examples of the prefixes in use. This is how you can use them with the promary motion verb: / . (Note that becomes when used with pre-fixes.) / - to go in, to enter / - to go out, to leave, to exit / o - to go up, to ascend / - to get to, to get as far as, to reach

 / - to drop in, to stop by / - to walk around, to bypass / - to walk away / - to go across, to turn / - to approach / - to arrive, to come / - to go by, to go past / - to go down, decend / - to go from, to leave, depart OK, now here is the interesting bit: As these new verbs already indicate direction, they loose the concept of unidirectional or multi-directional that we learnt above. Instead the first word above is the imperfective aspect, and the 2nd is the perfective. (refer to the section on aspects for more info.). So in the present tense you will always use the first of these verbs above. This part is difficult. It is a good idea to have an understanding of how the prefixes work. If you hate grammar you could simply remember each word, for example = enter. However, if you do understand some of the concepts and you came accross a word like "" you could work out that it meant "to fly in". Here are a couple of examples of how you could use the prefixes with different verbs: . - The plane arrives (arrives by flying) in Moscow . - The plane departs (fly from) Moscow

The Imperative Mood

The verbs of or wish.

imperative mood designate inducement to an action, order, appeal, advice

. Don't go there. , . Please, sing us a song.

Adding the suffix - to the base of a future-tense verb forms the singular imperative verb.
--> -->

Adding the ending - to the singular imperative verb form forms the plural imperative verb.
--> -->

The imperative mood can also be formed with the help of particles , , .
. Let them go quicker. . Let him set me free. . Well, tell her where the book is.

Remember: In the end of imperative verbs, the letter "" is to be written after consonants. The "" remains even before "-" and "-". For example: , , , . Exceptions: , , , .

1st Way To Form Imperative

1. The imperative is also referred to as the 'command' form, because you use it when you want to 'order' one (singular) or more (plural) persons to do something. 2. To form the imperative you need to know two forms of the present/future tense of the verb: the first person singular and third person plural. 3. The stem for the imperative will be the same as the stem for the third person plural, and the accent will be on the same syllable as in the first person singular. 4. If the stem in the third person plural ends in a vowel, to form the imperative you add the ending - for the singular (when you command one person), and the ending - when you command more than one person. 5. The accent will be on the same syllable as in the first person singular: Present tense - - - Imperative 2nd plural -

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular

- - - - 6. If the stem ends in a consonant, then you need to look at the accent of the first person singular before you form the imperative. 7. If the stem ends in a consonant and the accent is on the ending of the first person singular form, you add the ending - for the singular form and - for the plural: Present tense - - Imperative - -

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular 2nd plural - - - - 8. If the stem ends in a consonant and the accent is on the stem of the first person singular form, you add the ending - for the singular form and - for the plural: Present tense - - Imperative - -

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular 2nd plural - - - - 9. If the stem ends in a consonant cluster we use the endings -, - (unaccented), instead of the expected -, - : Present tense Imperative

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular 2nd plural - - - - 10. The imperative of some verbs is irregular, and you simply have to memorize it: Present tense Imperative 2nd plural

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular

- - - - 11. To form the imperative of reflexive verbs you follow the same rules. Add the reflexive particle after you have formed the imperative: Present tense - Imperative 2nd plural -

1st singular 3rd plural 2nd singular - ->

2nd Way To Form The Imperative

The Imperative Mood is used in issuing a command or order, e. g. Give me that book! or Open the door!. Here are the rules for forming the Imperative Mood in Russian.

Nothing is added to (a) stems ending on or (b) those whose accent always falls on the stem (fixed stem accent on the stem). In fact, if a stem with fixed stem accent ends on a vowel, the vowel is removed. (Keep in mind, however, if the preceding consonant is a soft one, you have to insert a soft sign () to mark it when no vowel follows.) - : ! "Drink your milk!" - : ! "Do that!" - : ! "Open the door!" - : ! "Put it here!"

There is one exception to the rule above. If a verb stem has fixed stem accent but its final consonant is part of a consonant cluster (2 or 3 consonants together), - is added despite the rule above. -- : ! "Remember that!" - : ! "Finish your work!"

- is added to stems with movable accent and those with accent fixed on the endings. A good way to check for both of these types is 1st person singular; i.e. if the stem has end accent or movable accent the 1st person singular ending will always be accented.

- () : ! "Tell!" (movable accent) - () : ! "Speak (up)" (fixed ending accent)

Finally, don't forget that the final consonant in stems ending on -aalways undergo palatalization regardless of whether they use the ending or not--but only stems ending on -a-, no others. - : ! "Tell (me)!" - : () "Cut (it)!" - : ! "Put it away!" or "Hide it!"

Subjunctive Mood
Verbs of subjunctive mood designate actions which one wants to happen, or just possible ones, under certain circumstances. A sentence containing subjunctive verbs shows that an action has not happen, but it could have happened if certain circumstances took place. Look at an example:
, . I would have gone to the movie, if I had had a ticket.

Adding the particle "", either near a verb, or at any other place in a sentence, forms the subjunctive mood of a verb. Remember: The particle ""
and a verb are to be written separately: , .

The verbs of subjunctive mood change in number:

- singular plural

At the same time, singular verbs change in person.

- he would have moved - she would have moved - it would have moved

In other words, the verbs of subjunctive mood are usually predicates and agree with a subject in person and number.
subject

predicate

Remember: The verbs in subjunctive mood do not change with tenses.

Reflexive Verbs
Russian reflexive verbs are different than English reflexive verbs, because in English you can go without mentioning the direct object, for instance I shaved (you dont need to say I shaved myself) but in Russian you cant make that expression without inserting the myself the Russian way. Russian uses a suffix (-, or ) on the verb to indicate where a direct object is identical with the subject. So to express a reflexive form in Russian, a reflexive particle (-) is added after consonants and (-) after vowels to the verb. Russian has a certain number of verbs that can be used as reflexive verbs or regular verbs; also, many times Russian uses reflexive verbs where English doesnt. Normal Transitive Verb . Alexandra is bathing the kids. . Boris Sergeevich is shaving his brother. . Masha is dressing her daughter. . Pasha is washing up the dog. . The chimpanzee is combing her friend. Reflexive Correlate . Alexandra is bathing (herself). . Boris Sergeevich is shaving (himself). . Masha is dressing (herself). . Pasha is washing up. . The chimpanzee is combing herself.

Despite their name, reflexive verbs do much more than reflect the reference of the subject in the object of a sentence. In fact, reflexive verbs are responsible for five distinct grammatical functions. The reflexive suffix - may mark any of the following functions: 1. Genuine Reflexive 2. Passive Voice 3. Reciprocal 4. Optative Voice 5. Middle Voice -. . . . He is bathing (himself). Rules are followed here. They met in the garden. I'm not sleepy. The mosquitos are biting.

The suffix - is a reduction of the reflexive pronoun but it is reduced even more after vowels. The full suffix is pronounced only after consonants; after vowels, it is pronounced (and spelled) -. Take a look at the conjugation of , a verb that only occurs with this suffix.

 (,)

"I'm afraid" "you're afraid" "s/he/it's afraid" "he was afraid" "it was afraid"

"we're afraid" "yall're afraid" "they're afraid" "she was afraid" "they were afraid"

Genuine Reflexives
Real reflexive verbs are verbs whose subject and direct object are identical, that is, refer to the identical thing in the real world. In English we often ignore the difference. We use the same verb to say, The barber shaves my brother and My brother shaves, even though there is an understood direct object in the second sentence whose reference the same as that of the subject, my brother. Other verbs require a reflexive pronoun in English, e.g. He cut his brother versus He cut himself. You can't simply say, He cut in English in this case to mean "he cut himself" as we can say He shaved. In Russian it is never possible to ignore reflexivity. Because Russian has such an strong case system, distinguishing subjects and objects is very important. However, as in all languages, repetition is frowned upon, so, Russian uses a suffix on the verb to indicate where a direct object is identical with the subject. That suffix is -. Here are some examples to illustrate the point. Normal Transitive Verb . Alexandra is bathing the kids. . Boris Sergeevich is shaving his brother. . Masha is dressing her daughter. . Pasha is washing up the dog. . The chimpanzee is combing her friend. Reflexive Correlate . Alexandra is bathing (herself). . Boris Sergeevich is shaving (himself). . Masha is dressing (herself). . Pasha is washing up. . The chimpanzee is combing herself.

Optative Reflexive Verbs

The optative mood is one which suggests a desire or inclination to do something. In English we say I would like to V or I feel like V-ing in the same situations where the optative would be used in languages with this mood. Russian optatives are always impersonal constructions with the subject in the dative case followed by the 3rd person singular form of the verb. In English, we would say I'm sleepy, for example, meaning I feel like sleeping; Russians would say . Here are some more examples to consider. (Notice that this mood is usually used in the negative.) . . . Ivan doesn't feel like working today. I don't like to stay home. I don't feel like writing now.

The very most commonly used in this construction is "want". () "I don't feel like . . ." is a milder form of () "I don't want . . . " and is used as frequently as the stronger alternate. Another way of expressing the optative in Russian is with the conditional: "I feel like eating kasha" or "I wouldn't mind eating some kasha".

9 Nouns
A noun is a thing, name or place. Example: dog, cat, Moscow, cup, paper, pen. Russian nouns change their forms and get different endings by using the 6 Cases and 3 Genders which help us know the role a noun is playing in a sentence. These Cases are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional. Once you understand how cases work, you need to know the endings on the nouns (and adjectives) which mark these cases. First, keep in mind that the ending signifying a given case depends upon the Declension Class of the noun. Russian Nouns have Gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). It's a grammatical category. The number of a noun is either singular or plural. Finally, a noun can be either animate or inanimate.

Cases
Cases are a grammatical way of determining what a noun does in a sentence. In English we do this by having a strict word-order. In Russian we use 6 cases. Like German and some other languages, Russian has something called cases, basically theyre changes that occur to nouns and their endings, to show what role theyre playing in a sentence. There are 6 cases in Russian: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and prepositional. Before going into details lets review them very quickly:

The nominative case (the subject of the sentence) answers the questions "who?/what?". (I speak Russian, Russia is a nice country) the blue font shows the position of the Russian nominative case The Russian nominative is the basic form found in dictionaries for nouns. The nominative case is used for the subject of the sentence. Its the basic case and also the easiest, the only changes required are for the plural (add the letters , , or ). The accusative case designates the object of an action. (I speak Russian). The blue front shows the position of the accusative case.

The genitive case refers to things belonging to other people. Just like when you use (of) or (the possessive s). In Russian the possessor always follows the object possessed, while in English it may be both, (the story of Edward, or Edwards story). The Russian genitive usually answers the question (of whom? ?/ of what? ? Whose?... ?). ? (whose car is this?). (that's Nadia's car./ That's the car of Nadia).

The dative case refers to things given or addressed to a person (object). (Give it to me). The Russian dative case is used as the indirect object of a sentence. Peter is teaching Russian to John, John is the indirect object and therefore takes the dative case, and it usually answers the question as (to whom? ? / for what? ?). The instrumental case is used to refer to an instrument that helps to make something. In general the Russian instrumental case is used to indicate how something is done or the means by which an action is carried out, usually in English its expressed by the prepositions "by, with". I learn Russian with books, and I practice it by chatting. The prepositional case is used after the prepositions (about), (in), (at) to refer to a place. Nouns take the prepositional case when theyre used to refer to a place, or time... (these prepositions are used sometimes with other cases). The nouns answering the question "where" are often used with the prepositions and . Russian Case Example . Ivan wrote a letter to (his) friend with a pen. Russian Nouns Case Analysis Nominat ive Subject Ivan Verb Accusat Instrume ive Dative ntal Object Ind. Obj. By/With

Russian Nouns Genders

In Russian, as with many other languages, each noun is assigned a gender. Gender is a grammatical category that indicates the sex of the object referred to by the noun (its 'referent'). Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral). In the cases of words like father these relate to physical gender. In the case of other objects like pen, cup, house, there is no physical meaning attached to the gender. However you will still need to know the gender because it affects how words are formed. Luckily, unlike many languages, in Russian it is almost always possible to tell what the

gender of a noun by its spelling. This is not true in some other languages where you just have to memorise them. When you use a noun as the subject of a sentence, it will be in its dictionary form. In this form you can easily work out its gender. If the noun is in another part of the sentence the ending is changed to suit the case. From the dictionary form of a noun, here is how you can tell what the gender is: Masculine gender Nouns ending in a consonant ( is consonant) or -. (passport), (document), (brother), (bread) The ending of masculine nouns in the nominative case is called zero ending (0). Masculine Exception is words ending in -, -. These words denote persons of the masculine gender: (grandpa), (father), (uncle). The gender of a nickname is masculine if the noun refers to a male: , , . Feminine gender Feminine nouns end in -, - or -. (sister), (mother), (girl friend), (family) (newspaper), (Russia), (daughter) Neuter gender Nouns ending in -, -, . (letter), (window), (tree), (radio), (metro), (building) Keep in mind that both masculine and feminine may end in - . You should memorize these words. There are very few exceptions to these rules. But there are five notable exceptions, this occurs mainly because of physical gender. - (Daddy, Papa) Is Masculine - (Uncle) Is Masculine - (Grandfather) Is Masculine - (Man) Is Masculine - (Coffee) Is Masculine

Exercise
1. For each of the following Russian nouns, work out their gender. a. - (dog) b. - (bar) c. - (lemonade) d. - (beer) e. - (water) f. - (toilet) g. - (cake) h. - (magazine)

i. - (newspaper) j. - (building) k. - (radio) l. - (television) m. - (England) n. - (letter) o. - (passport) p. - (visa) q. (school) Answers
1. (a) F, (b) M, (c) M, (d) N, (e) F, (f) M, (g) M, (h) M, (i) F, (j) N, (k) N, (l) M, (m) F, (n) N, (o) M, (p) F, (q) F.

Russian Genders' Table Russian Gender's Table

Masculine ending examples consonant , , , , , (should remember) -, - - persons of masculine gender or Russian male names (teacher) - should remember ending , (grandpa) person of masculine gender, - Russian male name Feminine -, - , , , (should remember) Neuter -, - , ,

exceptions

exceptions examples

(daughter), (oven)

Plural Nouns
Nouns can be used in the singular and in the plural number. Some nouns have the singular form only: (clothes), (origin). Some nouns have the plural form only (macaroni), (trousers). Nouns in plural in Nominative Case ending in -, -, -, -. Masculine and Feminine Nouns have the ending -, -. Neuter nouns ending -, -. Masculine and feminine nouns endings -, -. - - if noun in singular ending in , , , , , , , , or - or in other cases preceded by consonants , , , , , , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Exceptions: some masculine nouns ending in -, -. - - - - - - Neuter plural ending -, - - - - - ending - in singular change to - in plural - - - -

Remember Special Cases: - - - - - - - - -

The Nominative Case

The nominative case is used for the subject of a sentence. In the sentence I love her, the word I is the subject. The nominative case is the dictionary form for nouns, so there is nothing special to learn here. The only time you need to change the ending is to form the plural. In English we make a plural by adding s. In Russian, in the nominative case, you make a plural by using the letters , , or . Some examples: (student) becomes: (students) (newspaper) becomes: (newspapers) - (building) becomes: (buildings)

The Accusative Case

To form simple sentences like I want a dog, you need to use the accusative case also. The accusative case is used for the object of a sentence, in this case the word dog. The only time we use the accusative case in English is with pronouns. We use me instead of I and him instead of he. Russian uses the case for all nouns. Russian is very free about word order. For example, in Russian it may be possible to change the order of the words in a sentence, without changing the actual meaning. This doesnt work in English because we rely on the subject always coming first. However, in Russian it still makes perfect sense because the object will still be in the accusative case. It is normal in Russian to use the same word ordering as English.

Accusative Case Form

Here are the rules for forming the accusative case from the dictionary (nominative) form. Masculine Nouns: 1. If the noun in inanimate, there is no change. 2. If noun is animate and ends in a consonant, add . 3. If noun is animate, replace , with . 4. If noun is animate, replace , add . Feminine Nouns: 1. Replace with .

2. Replace with . Neuter Nouns: 1. Inanimate nouns do not change (almost all neuter nouns are inanimate).

Instrumental Case (With, By)

In Russian, the instrumental case is used to indicate how something is done. In English we commonly use the words "by" or "with" to do this. You would use the instrumental in a sentence like "we went there by car".

Forming the Instrumental Case Masculine Nouns: 1. If the noun ends in , , , or , then add if unstressed, if stressed add . 2. Other consonants, add . 3. Replace , with , if stressed . 4. Replace , add , if stressed . Feminine Nouns: 1. If the stem of the noun ends in , , , or , replace with 2. Otherwise, replace with (or rarely ) 3. Replace with , if stressed . 4. Replace with . Neuter Nouns: 1. Add The phrase "if stressed" in this case, means if the end of the word is stressed. The exceptions for , , , or are to comply with the spelling rule.

Declension
Nouns can be classified as to the form of the endings that can be tacked onto them. For example, in English some nouns take the plural ending -s (cat-s) and some take -es (ditch-es), thus forming two classes of nouns. (Although we dont call them declension classes, this is the principle upon which such classification is made, i.e. On the form of the endings.) Russian nouns are classified into four groups, based on the form of the endings that can be added to them. These groups are called declension classes. The endings also depend on the Russian Spelling Rules (see Russian Spelling System).

Noun Declension Table

Masculine Nominative Accusative Genitive - //
Inanimate: like nom. Animate: like gen.

Feminine Neuter -/ , - -/ -/- -/ -/ , - -/ , -

Plural
Masc: -/ Neu: -/ Fem: -/ Inanimate: like nom. Animate: like gen. Masc: -/ , but -//// gets - Neu: - / Fem: - /

-/

Dative -/ Prepositional - Instrumental -/

-/ -/ , - -/ -/ - , - -/ -/ / -/ , - -/

Mnemonic Rules of Cases

Russian Accusative Case For a masculine noun: For a feminine noun: Neuter Almost all neuter noun is inanimate, so no change is necessary when the noun in inanimate, no change is necessary. replace with . when the noun is animate and ends with a replace with consonant, add . when the noun is animate, replace , with . when the noun is animate, replace , add . Russian Genitive Case For a masculine noun: For a feminine noun: For a neuter noun: replace with . replace with . for nouns ending in a consonant add . replace with . replace , with . replace with . replace , add . replace with . Prepositions associated with the Russian genitive , , , , without, for, up to, from, -, , , , ,

Russian Verbs wait, reach, wish, ask, want

because of, , at, , except for, , near to, , on, , behind, with, , Russian Dative Case

For a masculine noun:

For a feminine noun: For a neuter noun: replace with replace with

for nouns ending with a consonant, add . replace with . replace , with . replace with . replace , add . replace with . Prepositions associated with the Russian Dative

Russian Verbs (dative)

, to, , similarly to, , owing to, give, advise, , on, , according to, , contrary to, help, like, Russian Prepositional (Locative) Case For a masculine noun: For a feminine noun: For a neuter noun: - simply add - replace with . - replace with . - replace with . - no need to replace if its ending the word. - replace with . Russian Instrumental Case For a masculine noun - for nouns ending with , , , , add if unstressed, if stressed add . - for other consonants, add . - replace , with , if stressed . - replace , add , if stressed . For a feminine noun neuter noun - for stems of nouns end with , , simply add , , replace with - for the rest replace with - replace with , if stressed . - replace with .

I Declension - Masculine Paired Consonants

SG N A G D L I PL N A G D L I 'student' 'table' 'bullock' 'teacher' 'dictionary'

I Declension - Masculine Unpaired Consonants

SG N A G D L I PL N A G D L I 'person' 'pencil' 'hero' 'American' 'scenery'

I Declension Neuter
SG 'window' N A G D L I PL N A G D L I 'field' 'building' 'freak'

II Declension - Feminine (and some masculine and epicene)

S G N A G D L I PL N A G D L I room sister murdere article book r lecture

III Declension Feminine only

S G N A G D L I PL N A G D L I church square door mother daughte r

* / but 2.2.3 Exceptions within declensional paradigms:

The major exceptions to the I declension given above are (1)the word - path (N/A: , G/D/L: , I: ) (2)neuter nouns ending in the grapheme : (SG: N/A: , G/D/L: , I: ; PL: N/A , G: , D: , L: , I: -time) Other neuter nouns with this declension include: -name, -banner, -flame, -udder, -seed, -burden, -tribe, -stirrup, -crown of the head

(3)masculine family names with the suffixes -ov, -in require the adjectival desinence in the instrumental singular (/ -Pushkin; / -Ivanov) (4)feminine family names with the suffixes -ova. -ina utilize the pronominal declensional paradigm: this Akhmatova Axmadulina N A G D L I (5)Plural family names require adjectival desinences in all non-nominative case forms: Bulgakovs N A G D L I (6)There are several word forms in CSR that are formally adjectival but semantically behave as nouns. Included in this group are many Russian family names. Note the following examples: dining room, cafeteria bathroom bakery meat/vegetable pie shop 30 fitting room beauty salon Family names: , -Tolstoy, -Vjazemsky, -Annensky -Gorky,

Many Russian adjectives in the neuter nominative form may also behave as nouns semantically: the past the present the future

Russian Names -
One Russian person has three names: first name - , last name - ,

and patronymic name - . First Name First names have many forms in Russian. In informal situations, and with children, Russians use a host of imaginative variations of a person's . For example, can appear as , , . , , , , and so on. can be called , , , , . This is like using Nick for Nicholas or Mike for Michael, but the list can be very long, as Russians use the large range of suffixes available to them. Here is the list of some Russian names with most common nick and affectionate forms. Given name Nick name Men's Names , , , , Affectionate name
used to address a child as well as one's nearest and dearest

used in informal situations and to used in formal situations and in one's ID address a friend

, , , , , ,

Given name
used in formal situations and in one's ID

Nick name
used in informal situations and to address a friend

Affectionate name
used to address a child as well as one's nearest and dearest

Women's Names , , Notes Some given names have male and female variations. For example: and are used for men and boys, and - for women and girls. Their nick names and diminutives used for both male and female variations. Some given names have no short (nick) names. For example: , , , , , , . Though they all have diminutives. Patronymics And Last Names Patronimics names are used to address someone who is your senior or to denote respect. Adult Russians who are on formal terms will call each other by their first name and patronimic. Young people will address older people in this way. Patronimic name is formed from one's farther first name with the appropriate suffixes added: - or - for men and -, or - for women. Examples: Ivan, Peter's son , , , , , , , ,

Michael, Sergey's son Olga, Sergey's daughter

Anna, Peter's daughter

Russian last (family) names take on a feminine ending for women. For example: Notes Some Russian last names are derived from first names historically. For example, the most widespread Russian last names are and . They should not be confused with patronimics. The suffixes will help you to distinguish them. Here are some examples of full Russian names (first name + patronimic + last name). Note the difference between patronimic and last name suffixes. Vladimir Putin but Ludmila Putina

10 Prepositions
Russian prepositions extend and specify the meanings of the case system. For that reason, while cases may appear without prepositions, prepositions must be accompanied by a case. This means that prepositions in Russian may not appear alone, as adverbs or conjunctions, as they may in English. In English, all the following are grammatically acceptable:

English Preposition-Adverb-Conjunction
John saw me before the ball. John had seen me before. John had seen me before I met my wife. Preposition Adverb Conjunction

In Russian only the first two constructions are possible, Preposition + Noun or Pronoun, either of which must bear the appropriate case ending.

Russian Prepositions, Etc.

. Preposition before . Adverb before , Conjunction before . Notice in the Russian table that the preposition +Gen cannot serve as an adverb at all and when it serves as a conjunction, it must have a dummy pronoun, bearing the genitive case marker, -. This is because conjunctions introduce entire sentences and sentences cannot bear case. Russian is forced to use dummy pronouns to reflect the case required by any preposition which is used as a conjunction. The major linguistic principle to remember in connection with prepositions is this: Prepositions must always have an object noun or pronoun which bears the case governed by the preposition. To help you remember this ruleand to learn the cases associated with the Russian prepositionsall prepositions will be presented with the case they govern in the discussion of them which follows. Moreover, they will be presented according to the case the govern, beginning with the first case, the nominative.

Prepositions Governing the Nominative Case

Only two Russian prepositions are used with the Nominative case and those are used semi-idiomatically. 1. The preposition +Nom is used only in questions with the interrogative pronoun , where it is a synonym of the adjectival pronoun in the sense of 'what kind of', as the following examples illustrate. ? What kind of woman is she? ?

? ? What kind of student is Volodya? 2. The other preposition which governs the nominative case is +Nom, used exclusively with plural objects to indicate joining an organization of some type, as illustrated in the following examples. . Masha recently became worker. . Dima has become a politician.

Otherwise, the nominative case is used only to mark the subject of the clause or sentence. (Of course, it also is used to mark the citation form of a noun or adjective listed in the dictionary or used as a label on an object in the real world.)

Prepositions Governing the Genitive Case

There are more prepositions associated with the Genitive case than any other case. In fact, the genitive has become the default case for new prepositions. The best way to approach mastering them all is to sort them out into semantic families or classes. That is what we will do here. The Genitive case historically has been associated with three core meanings: non-existence (negation) closeness the origin direction ("from somewhere") These three core meanings and a few others are associated with the use of the genitive without prepositions and so it comes as no surprise that they are associated with prepositions which govern the genitive. Let us begin our survey of the genitive prepositions with a review of all of them, then we will examine each one individually. There are about 24 altogether, listed below in the semantic order of the list above.

The Genitive Prepositions

Non-Existence and Negation +Gen ()+Gen without against, opposite +Gen +Gen except instead of Closeness +Gen +Gen by, at near +Gen +Gen along by, near +Gen +Gen past, by near, around ()+Gen +Gen among around Origin ()+Gen ()+Gen (out) from (down) from ()+Gen +Gen (away) from after -+Gen -+Gen from behind from under because of &tc. +Gen +Gen

outside +Gen for (benefit) +Gen as far as

inside +Gen for the sake of +Gen on the eve of

Now let's take a closer look at how the genitive prepositions operate in phrases.

Genitive Prepositions Indicating Non-Existence

The genitive case is associated with non-existence and negation. That is why the objects of sentences with negated verbs are placed in the genitive case if non-existence is implied. The prepositional meanings "without", "against", "except", and "instead of" also imply negation or non-existence of their objects. All these prepositions require the genitive in Russian. 1. The preposition +Gen is very simple, even for Russian. In virtually every context it means "without". Its antonym is ()+Ins "with". . She did that without difficulty. . He went out without his cap. . Without a doubt he will get it done. 2. The preposition +Gen is a bit more complicated for it may mean either "opposite" or "across from" in the physical sense of location or "against" in the sense of "if I am not for it I am against it". In this sense it is the antonym of +Acc. This same preposition may also be used to indicate spatial location, in which case it means "opposite (of)"; however, in this sense young Russians are more likely to use +Gen. Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean. . I'm not against that. . He fought against capitalism. () . He always sits opposite me. () . They live across from us. 3. The preposition +Gen means "except" or "but", when but is used as a preposition. . I don't know anyone except you. . Everyone came but him. 4. The preposition +Gen (Don't confuse it with the adverb "together"!) means "instead of" or "in place of". Here are some examples. . . Let her sing instead of me. In place of physics he chose music.

Genitive Prepositions Indicating Closeness

There are 8 genitive prepositions indicating closeness or nearness in various forms. Some of them have other functions, as well. Here are the ways in which each is used. 5. The preposition +Gen basically means "by, near" or "at". It is historically

related to +Loc and in some dialects these remain the same preposition, the consonant used before words beginning with a vowel, the vowel used before words beginning on a consonant. If the object of is inanimate, it means "by, near", as in the top two examples in the table below. a. If, however, the noun is animate, the meaning can also be "at someone's". So, rather than "near Masha" or "by Masha", is more likely to mean "at Masha's". b. It is also possible for this preposition to simply imply possession, e.g. simply means "Masha's tooth aches". If the prepositional phrase is used in the predicate with (an optional) , this possessive construction may be interpreted by the English verb "have", e.g. () "I have a Big Mac", that is, literally, "there is a Big Mac by me". c. Finally, +Gen can also be used to indicate the origin of something in certain contexts. means "I found out about that from Sasha." Here are some more examples to work on. Their house is right by the river. . That is Darya at the wheel. . Yesterday I was at Masha's. . We all waited at his place. . He has everything. . Her sister got sick. . I bought the car from Leo. . I borrowed money from him. 6. +Gen has the same meaning as the adjective it is derived from: "near, close". . Their house is near the woods. . Darya lives near Natasha. 7. The preposition +Gen means "along(side), down" and is used with verbs of motion and nonmotional verbs. The kids were running down the street. . Along the river stretched a row of oaks. 8. The preposition +Gen means "by, near" and may also be used as an adverb (not all prepositions may): "he stood nearby". . Their house is by the river. . Darya lives next to us. 9. +Gen means "past, by" and is often used with verbs prefixed with -: . Dima walked by the church. . The ball flew past his hands. 10.The original meaning of +Gen was "around" in the physical sense. However, like the English preposition "around", it has taken on the metaphoric meanings of (1) "near" and (2) "approximately". . Borya found the money near the

factory. . Vanya always sits near me. . Natasha arrived around two o'clock. 4 . She lives about 4 kilometers from here. 11.()+Gen comes from the same Old Church Slavonic stem as "Wednesday" (the day in the middle of the week) and the Russian variant "middle". Today it means "among" if its object is plural but also retains the original meaning of the phrase it is derived from, "in the middle of", with either singular or plural objects. () . In the middle of the field stood a birch. . Among the girls I saw my friend. 12.The preposition +Gen derives from "circle", so it originally meant "in a circle (of)". Today, however, it is used only in the physical sense of the English preposition "around". . Around me everything was quiet. . Everyone was sitting around the table.

Genitive Prepositions Indicating Origin

There are six genitive prepositions which indicate the origin or source of their objects: ()+Gen "(out) of", ()+Gen (down) from, ()+Gen "(away) from", -+Gen "from behind, because of", -+Gen "from under", and +Gen "after". In its drive for simplicity, Russian has avoided a single preposition meaning simply "from" in favor of three other more specific prepositions already in the language. That is, the first three prepositions in this list may mean either "from" in general or, specifically, "out of", "away from", and "down from", respectively. Clever, huh? This strategy reduces the number of Russian words needed to speak clearly. For more about how they pair with prepositions referring to the direction toward something, go here. 13.The threesome ()+Gen "(out) of", ()+Gen "(down) ()+Gen "(away) from" are interesting for several of reasons.

from",

First, notice that they have a fleeting vowel. Remember that the o is inserted if the preposition is followed by a pronoun or one of a select group of nouns that begins with a consonant cluster containing the same or a similar consonant (, , , , , for and , or for ). Second, all these prepositions may also be used to refer to time. That use will not be discussed here but on a separate page on Time Expressions in Russian. Finally, these three prepositions form a class with the prepositions indicating where an object is at and where it it moving to. This class is best explained with the following important table, which you may have seen elsewhere in the grammar.

Prepositions Expressing Basic Motions

Object is
Inanimate Animate

? ()+Gen (out) of ()+Gen (down) from

? +Prep in/at

? +Acc (in)to +Dat to(ward)

+Prep on/at +Acc (on)to

()+Gen (away) from +Gen by/at

This table shows that Russian lacks prepositions meaning specifically "from", "at", and "to". Rather it uses ambiguously the prepositions meaning specifically "out of", "off of", "away from" and "in", "on", "by", and "into", "onto", "up to" , for expressing "from", "at", and "to". Which set of 3 is used depends on the animacy of the noun serving as object of the preposition and whether it is a flat place or an object with an interior. The important point to remember is that if a noun uses any one of these prepositions because it is flat, has an interior, or is animate, it uses all three in the set. The sets cannot under any circumstances be mixed.

To express "from" when the noun is animate, you use +Gen, e.g. "from Ivan's", "from Tatyana's". To say "from" a place that humans or animals normally phycially go inside of, you say, +Gen: "from home", "from school". There are a couple of exceptions. To say "from" under all other circumstances (if the noun refers to a flat, open space or if it is abstract), use +Gen, e.g. "from the field", "from class".

14.The instrumental prepositions +Ins "under" and +Ins "behind" have genitive prepositions compounded with , indicating the direction "from": -+Gen "from under" and -+Gen "from behind". There are no genitive prepositions corresponding to the other two directional instrumental prepositions, +Ins "over, above" and +Ins "before, in front of". Both of these prepositions have alternative meanings. In addition to "from under", -+Gen is occasionally used to indicate the use for which an object is intended: - "a jar for jam" or "an empty jam jar". If the jar contains jam, the simple genitive is used: . -+Gen can also mean "because of" when referring to an unfortunate or disappointing result: - "because of the snow, we were late for work". (If the result is positive or fortunate, Russians use +Dat.) - . The cat jumped out from under the couch. - . - . On the table is the pitcher (we use) for kvas. The cat jumped out from behind the couch.

- . I made a mistake because of him. 15.The preposition +Gen "after" has something of a temporal origin sense. It is used everywhere and only where English after is used and so requires no comment. Here are two examples. . She returned home after work. . He always studies after class.

Miscellaneous Genitive Prepositions

In addition to the more or less semantically ordered prepositions governing the genitive case, there are six which do not fit the large semantic categories. Some of them are semantically related, however; +Gen "inside" and +Gen "outside" are antonyms and +Gen and +Gen both imply a beneficiary. The other two, +Gen and the borderline preposition +Gen are simply left over. 16.The pair +Gen "outside" and +Gen "inside" are recently derived from adverbs since it is still possible to create adjectives from both of them: "external, outer" and "internal, inner". Their usage today pretty much follows that of English inside and outside. . He operates outside the law. . Inside the house everything was clean. 17.The prepositions +Gen "for" and +Gen "for the sake of" both indicate a beneficiary of something; however, +Gen, just as English for, may be used to mark the purpose of something or for which something is done and, also just as in English, it is more often used when high purposes rather than ordinary ones. . She does everything for me. . That is a container for kvas. , . For God's sake, don't spit on the floor. . He perished for the sake of his country. 18.The preposition +Gen has two meanings. It's temporal sense is simply "before" or "until", the antonym of +Gen. But it also can mean "as far as", differing from +Dat in that it implies "reaching" something as well as going up to it. If the verb of the clause contains the prefix -, too, often the entire phrase may be replaced by the English verb reach. . He often studies before class. . They reached Moscow by evening. 28 . The temperature went up to 28 degrees. 19.The preposition +Gen "on the eve of" is a marginal preposition because the noun "eve, time just before an event" still exists in the language, so in the spoken language it may just be a prepositional phrase itself, that is, . It is common for prepositional phrases and participles to develop into prepositions, however, since their meanings are often similar. . On the eve of the Revolution Lenin was in Finland.

Prepositions Governing the Accusative Case

Let us begin our review of the prepositions governing the accusative case by simply checking out all twelve of them and their general meanings.

Accusative Prepositions
+Acc (in)to +Acc (on)to +Acc [to] behind +Acc [to] under +Acc up to +Acc about +Acc about +Acc against +Acc through +Acc through, across

Now let's take a closer look at each of them and see how they work in sentences.

The Accusative with Verbs of Motion

The accusative case is associated with the direction of a motion, so the most prominent prepositions which demand the accusative case are those prepositions used with verbs of motion to indicate the direction of the motion. Four Russian prepositions govern the accusative case to indicate motion toward a place and either the prepositional or instrumental case to indicate presence at that place.

Accusative with Motion Verbs

?
+Acc '(in)to' +Acc '(on)to' +Acc [to] 'behind'

?
+Prep 'in, at' +Prep 'on, at' +Inst 'behind'

?
+Gen '(out) from' +Gen (down) from -+Gen 'from behind'

+Acc [to] 'under' +Inst 'under' -+Gen 'from under' To indicate the presence of an object at a place, use these prepositions with the prepositional or instrumental cases. Many of these prepositions are used in time expressions as well. +Acc can also mean "for", the antonym of "against (something)". +Acc has three minor uses aside from indicating direction 'under'. a. It can mean "designated for" when used with a verb of motion: "that barn is earmarked for hay". b. +Acc can also refer to the nature of something artificial or fake: "artificial walnut furniture". c. Finally, it may refer to an approximate time: "arrive near evening".

Other Prepositions Governing the Accusative

1. The prepositions +Acc and +Acc mean "about", but in different senses. +Acc means "about" in the same sense as + Prep. . . Vanya talks about Natasha all the time 2. +Acc is not quite so simple. The most colloquial way of indicating that a number is approximate in Russian is to reverse the number and the noun that it quantifies, for example, . There were forty people there. . Five students came. . There were about forty people there. . About 5 students came.

This creates a problem, though: how does one say "about one", since Russians do not use the number "one" () to indicate one thing normally. would usually be taken to mean "a certain week" rather than "one week". means the same thing. To say "about one" in Russian you use the preposition +Acc, which otherwise indicates approximate number or size: . . She is like her sister in size. He spent about a week with us. a turnip the size of a basketball. Tom (the size of a) Thumb

3. The preposition +Acc means "up to" in the sense indicating the extent of an object's involvement measured against some other object. Here are some examples. . She stood in water up to her waist. . I'm up to my neck in work. The preposition +Acc is also used in the distributive sense of +Dat when the noun refers to more than one object: / "Dad gave the kids two apples/500 rubles apiece". 4. The preposition +Acc means "against" in the sense of coming in physical contact with another object. . She hit her head against the wall. . The waves beat against the shore. . He was leaning against the wall. 5. The preposition +Acc indicates the object "through" which another passes. The moon glowed dimly through the fog. He always looks through his ! fingers (the other way) at that! Laughter through tears 6. The preposition + Acc has two major functions. The first is to indicate the sense of "through" synonymous with +Acc, which Russians also use to indicate the path "across" something. In this latter sense it is omissible if accompanying a verb with the synonymous prefix - "across". - . They somehow managed to get through the woods. . I quickly crossed the street. . I quickly crossed the street. +Acc is also used in time expressions to indicate the duration of time before the beginning of an action. Click here for an explanation. .

Prepositions Governing the Prepositional Case

The prepositional case is so named because it is is used only with prepositions, and only four prepositions are currently used with this case: +Prep "in, at", +Prep "on, at", ()+Prep "about", and +Prep "on (one's person), during". Notice that the first two have two meanings "in, at" and "on, at". This is because the Russian people have discovered away of ridding their language of any preposition meaning "at": they simply use these two prepositioins (and u+Gen) to mean "at". Because the meanings are so similar (as you will soon see), there is never any confusion. To keep the 'two' meanings distinct in the English-speaking mind, you need only to remember where you are (easy enough if you're under 50). For example, if you are at home and someone says, , then they mean "Sasha is at school". Since the two places are totally different, Russians can use the general meaning of +Prep. If you are already at school, standing out on the sidewalk, say, then the same sentence will mean "Sasha is inside

the school". Clever, huh? And it works every time. Here are some more examples; the 'at' examples are coded in blue. (See the section on case for and explanation of the case endings.)

The Locative (Place) Prepositions The Preposition +Prep

. . . . . . Sasha is in her room. I left the keys in the car. Valya works at the hospital. Borya is sleeping on the couch. Valya likes to take the bus. Vasya wasn't at the lecture. I left my coat at the concert.

. Borya is at college now.

The Preposition +Prep

You might have noticed something unusual about the phrases with +Prep meaning "at". While the phrases with +Prep meaning "at" refer to an object that people are normally inside when they are 'at' it, +Prep is usually used with abstract nouns like concert, lecture, class, meeting. The reason has to do with the rule for choosing between +Prep and +Prep. The basic principle is this: f The 'At' Rule for Russian In expressing "at" in Russian, choose +Prep if the location is an inanimate object which human beings are normally inside when they are 'at' it; otherwise, chose +Prep. (If the object of the preposition is animate, y+Gen is used.)

The rule as stated predicts that if the object is on something people are usually on when they are 'at it', e.g. "in the field", "on the street", or if the object of the preposition refers to an abstract concept like concerts, lectures, etc., +Prep will be used. +Prep and +Prep are also used in various time expressions which require special explanation. They are also used with the accusative case when modifying verbs of motion. Just to spice up what might otherwise be a boringly simple system, the Russians tossed in a couple of exceptions. The preposition ()+Prep means "about" and is used pretty much the same as about is used in English. The preposition +Prep has two common

meanings. The first is "on one's person", as in "I don't have a pen on me". The other meaning is "in the time of, during the tenure of", as in "That happened in the time (during the reign of) Peter I." Here are a few more examples.

Other Prepositional Case Prepositions

. ? ? . All they talked about was work. What are you thinking about? Do you have any money on you? During Stalin's time is was horrible.

No other prepositions currently govern the prepositional case. So let's move on to the prepositions governing the last case, the instrumental.

Prepositions Governing the Instrumental Case

The basic function of the instrumental is to indicate the means by which an action is carried out. This is what the instrumental alone signifies, usually corresponding to the English prepositions with or by. However, the instrumental is also associated with the sense of accompaniment in many languages and Russian is one of them. To indicate the person or things that accompanies someone in Russian, a preposition is required: c+Ins 'with'. We will see how it works below. Finally, the instrumental has come to be associated with five specific place relations: 'behind', 'before', 'above', 'under' and 'between/among'. All of these meanings require prepositions, too. Here are the instrumental prepositions.

The Instrumental Prepositions

()+Ins (along) with +Ins above, over

+Ins between, among +Ins in front of, before

+Ins under, beneath +Ins behind 1. ()+Ins. It is important to understand that the English preposition with has two distinct meanings which are expressed in two different ways in Russian. with may indicate the means or instrument by which an action is carried out: He made the table with his hands/by hand. Notice that this meaning is also borne by the preposition by in some contexts. The other meaning is accompaniment; the object of with in this sense merely accompanies the noun modified by the prepositional phrase: He made the table with Sue or Sue arrived with her toolbox. This is a crucial distinction in Russian for the instrumental alone (without a preposition) expresses the former sense and the preposition ()+Ins marks only the second, sociative meaning. The preposition ()+Ins is also used in a related sense to indicate the manner in which something is done when manner may be expressed by a noun, e.g. "He ate the fish with a notable unwillingness". Both of these senses of ()+Ins are antonyms of +Gen "without". . Volodya came with his friends. . Alla arrived with flowers. . He can walk only with difficulty. . She dresses with taste. 2. +Ins. This preposition means either "between" or "among" Russian does not distinguish between two objects and more than two objects in this sense as the English prepositions do (although, don't forget +Gen "among"). As usual, Russian dispenses with the little quirks that makes learning English so difficult. . That's a secret between us. . There is complete agreement between them. 3. +Ins. To express the relation "over" or "above" the Russians use +Ins regardless of whether the verb is a verb of motion or not. . Her picture hangs over the fireplace. . Storm clouds hung over the city. . He hung his rifle over the fireplace. . A bird flew over the house. 4. +Ins. To express the relation spatial "before" or "in front of" the Russians use +Ins, also regardless of whether the verb is a verb of motion or not. But +Ins is also used to indicate responsibility for something, where English uses to. . In front of our house is a pretty garden. . Dima got in line in front of his friend. Debt to one's family Responsibility to one's native land 5. +Ins. This preposition has several marginally related functions:

a. To express the relation spatial "under" or "beneath" the Russians use +Ins if no motion is involved. The same preposition requires the accusative case if it accompanies a verb of motion. . The dogs are lying under the porch. . The kids went to the movies in the rain. b. +Ins can also mean "near" in the physical sense. (+Acc has the same meaning in reference to time.) . Seryozha lives near Moscow. . She has a dacha near Voronezh. 6. +Ins. This is another multifunctional preposition. Its basic meaning is "behind" and "beyond", but is a busy little fellow that does a lot more than that. a. To express the relation of being spatially "behind" or "beyond" something, Russian employs +Ins if no motion is involved. The same preposition requires the accusative case if it accompanies a verb of motion. . Pasha is standing behind me. . His fields are beyond the woods. . Darya lives outside town. b. +Ins is also used to express "for" in two senses, explained elsewhere. c. +Ins can also mean "at" in the sense of "occupied with". . I often find them reading. . He watches TV at dinner.

11 Numerals
Numerals (numbers) designate quantity or order in counting. They are divided into ordinal, collective, fractional and cardinal numbers. Cardinal numbers designate the number of people or things, and answer the question ?

(How many/much?). For example, - 25 pencils The good news is that Russian cardinal numbers only change by cases and do not have gender (except , , ) or number (except ). The numeral agrees with the related noun by gender, number and case, as in: (feminine singular nominative) (masculine singular nominative) (neuter singular nominative)
All other numerals, when used in phrases and sentences with the genitive noun, should be put in the nominative. For example, - two friends ( is the genitive noun) - five tables ( is the nominative numeral) - twenty metres The numerals from 5 to 20 and the numeral 30 change by cases just like nouns of the third declension do. Declension of the numerals , , Case Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instumental Prepositional as Genitive as Nominative as Genitive as Genitive as Nominative as Genitive as Genitive as Nominative as Genitive

The numerals (40), (90) and (10) have only two forms for all the cases:

the nominative (, , ) the genitive, dative, instrumental, prepositional (, , )

When declining the numerals from 50 to 80 and from 200 to 900, two parts of the word change. The example demonstrating that such numerals have two parts is (seventy). Declension of the numerals , , Case Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instumental Prepositional ()

When declining composite numerals like (624), each word must change. Declension of the numeral Case

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instumental Prepositional

as Nominative ()

The numeral (1,000) declines like nouns of the 1st declension type. The numerals (1,000,000), (1,000,000,000), (1,000,000,000,000) decline like nouns of the 2nd declension type.

Russian Cardinal Numbers

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - (20+1) 22 - (20+2) 30 - 40 - 50 - 60 - 70 - 80 - 90 - 100 - 200 - 300 - 400 - 500 - 600 - 700 - 800 - 900 - 1,000 - 1,000,000 -

As you see on the table above Russian Cardinal numbers are very easy to form, for example the numbers 11-19 are simply formed by adding to the numbers 1-9. (one small exception is number 14 where you need to drop the ending in 4 ), The Russian numbers 21-99 are formed by placing numbers from (1-9) after (20-30-40-5090), note that theyre not connected. Now you can form some Russian numbers easily, example: ( 267). Zero is (nol), a billion is (milliard)

Rules of Numerals
Students are always comparing languages they speak with the one they're learning, even if teachers tell them not to. Well, why not? Finding a consistent pattern can be really useful. These patterns are not always given as rules in textbooks, but they help all the same. For a Russian-speaker memorizing "numeral-plus-noun" stuff is a piece of cake: one dog - two (or more) dogS. But if you are an English-speaker studying Russian, you'll have to memorize a bit more. Here are some tips to help you build the "noun section" of your

vocabulary faster and more effectively. Tip 1. Did you notice that in Russian it's NOT ENOUGH just to remember how to pronounce "two dogs" (cats, birds, etc.) to be through with plural? For example: 1 dog - ; 2 dogs - ; 3 dogs - ; 4 dogs - ; 5 dogs - ; 6,7,8, 920 dogs - 6,7,8, 920 . Take almost any countable noun - with 2,3,4 there will be one ending in plural, and with 5 or more - another. When memorizing a noun, you'd better remember two forms of its plural as well. How to? Just count the things you're memorizing, say, up to 10 (if the noun is countable, of course). Not only will you remember its two plurals, you'll memorize the word itself more effectively. Tip 2. The same when numbers bigger than 20 end with 2, 3, and 4. If the number ends with 1, use singular form. For example: 21 dogs - ; 22 dogs - ; 23 dogs - ; 24 dogs - ; 25 dogs - . More examples: 51 - ; 123 dogs - ; 1,184 dogs - ; 4,357,962 dogs - (I guess it's a bit too many).

If you already learn cases, the rules are:

For 1 and numbers more than 20 which end with 1 - use nominative singular. E.g. , For 2, 3, 4, use the genitive singular ending. E.g. ; ; . For numbers more than 20 which end with 2, 3, 4, also use genitive singular. E.g. ; . For all other numbers, use genitive plural. ; ;

Numerals have plurals, too - that's why the rule is the same with words like thousand, million, billion (, , ). It's absolutely the same what to count - dogs or thousands Because these nouns are of the same gender and get endings in different cases according to the same pattern. Russian word "" (thousand) is feminine (so is "", by the way), but "" and "" (million and billion) are masculine. Well, I meant GRAMMATICAL gender - masculine, feminine or neuter. Your teacher probably told you that unlike English, in Russian nouns have grammatical gender. In short, it means that "computer" is "he", "keyboard" is "she", "application" is "it", and nobody knows why. So, Tip 3 Remember gender as well! It will help you not to mix endings up when you'll be using this word.

When nouns form plurals, they must be in Genitive case. Masculine, feminine and neuter words most likely will have different endings in Genitive and belong to different declension patterns (patterns of changing endings when put in different cases). Sometimes even nouns of the same gender can belong to different declension patterns. (If you haven't yet started learning them, you probably will - pretty soon. For a beginner, whose native language is English, studying Russian system of declension can be pure horror. But don't give up and you'll make it:)

Russian Ordinal Numbers

Ordinal numbers decline just like adjectives, and therefore must agree in gender and number, as well as case with the noun they describe. Russian ordinal numbers are formed from cardinal numbers, and they have some additional endings like (-, -, -, -, -), see the table below:

Russian Ordinal Numbers 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th - 5th - 6th - 7th - 8th - 9th - 10th- 11th - 12th - 13th - 14th - 15th 16th - 17th - 18th - 19th - 20th - 21th - (20+ 1st) 30th - 40th - 50th - 60th - 70th - 80th - 90th - 100th - 1000th -

12 Participles
Participles are the form verbs assume when they are used in complex tenseaspect combinations such as John has worked or as adjectives modifying a noun, e. g. a working woman, the bent stick. Adverbial participles have the strictly adverbial function of modifying verbs: Walking home, I fell and sprained my ankle. As in this example, the adverbial participial usually tells 'when' the action of the main verb takes place, while the adjectival participle helps us identify the noun that it modifies. While English possesses only two participles, the present ( I am working) and the past (I have worked), the Russian language possesses four adjectival participles and two adverbial ones. The English adverbial and adjectival participles are formally the same; the Russian correlates are not. The Russian adjectival and adverbial participles are as follows: 1. The Present Active Participle 2. The Present Passive Participle 3. The Past Active Participle 4. The Past Passive Participle 5. The Present Adverbial Participle 6. The Past Adverbial Participle Following a full example with six participles of verb love : (verb, imperfective aspect, transitive) infinitive infinitive, reflexive past, masculine, singular past, masculine, singular, reflexive past, feminine, singular past, feminine, singular, reflexive past, neuter, singular past, neuter, singular, reflexive past, plural past, plural, reflexive

past, verbal adverb, short form past, verbal adverb past, active participle, nominative, masculine, singular past, active participle, nominative, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, masculine, singular past, active participle, genitive, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, masculine, singular past, active participle, dative, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular past, active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, nominative, feminine, singular past, active participle, nominative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, feminine, singular past, active participle, dative, feminine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular past, active participle, genitive, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, feminine, singular past, active participle, accusative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, nominative, neuter, singular past, active participle, accusative, neuter, singular past, active participle, nominative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, neuter, singular past, active participle, genitive, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, neuter, singular past, active participle, dative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular past, active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular past, active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, nominative, plural past, active participle, nominative, plural, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, plural

past, active participle, prepositional, plural past, active participle, genitive, plural, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, plural, reflexive past, active participle, dative, plural past, active participle, dative, plural, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate past, active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, plural, animate past, active participle, accusative, plural, animate, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, plural past, active participle, instrumental, plural, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive past, passive participle, nominative, masculine, singular past, passive participle, genitive, masculine, singular past, passive participle, dative, masculine, singular past, passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate past, passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate past, passive participle, instrumental, masculine, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, masculine, singular past, passive participle, nominative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, genitive, feminine, singular past, passive participle, dative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, feminine, singular past, passive participle, accusative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, nominative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, accusative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, genitive, neuter, singular past, passive participle, dative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, instrumental, neuter, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, neuter, singular past, passive participle, nominative, plural past, passive participle, genitive, plural past, passive participle, prepositional, plural past, passive participle, dative, plural past, passive participle, accusative, plural, inanimate past, passive participle, accusative, plural, animate past, passive participle, instrumental, plural past, passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, passive participle, masculine, singular past, passive participle, feminine, singular past, passive participle, neuter, singular

past, passive participle, plural 1st person, singular 3rd person, plural 3rd person, plural, reflexive active participle, nominative, masculine, singular active participle, nominative, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, masculine, singular active participle, genitive, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, masculine, singular active participle, dative, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate, reflexive active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate, reflexive active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, feminine, singular active participle, nominative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, feminine, singular active participle, dative, feminine, singular active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular active participle, genitive, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, feminine, singular active participle, accusative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, neuter, singular active participle, accusative, neuter, singular active participle, nominative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, neuter, singular active participle, genitive, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, neuter, singular active participle, dative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, plural

active participle, nominative, plural, reflexive active participle, genitive, plural active participle, prepositional, plural active participle, genitive, plural, reflexive active participle, prepositional, plural, reflexive active participle, dative, plural active participle, dative, plural, reflexive active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate, reflexive active participle, accusative, plural, animate active participle, accusative, plural, animate, reflexive active participle, instrumental, plural active participle, instrumental, plural, reflexive active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive verbal adverb imperative, singular imperative, plural 2nd person, singular 3rd person, singular 3rd person, singular, reflexive 1st person, plural 2nd person, plural passive participle, nominative, masculine, singular passive participle, genitive, masculine, singular passive participle, dative, masculine, singular passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate passive participle, instrumental, masculine, singular passive participle, prepositional, masculine, singular passive participle, nominative, feminine, singular passive participle, genitive, feminine, singular passive participle, dative, feminine, singular passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular passive participle, prepositional, feminine, singular passive participle, accusative, feminine, singular passive participle, nominative, neuter, singular passive participle, accusative, neuter, singular passive participle, genitive, neuter, singular passive participle, dative, neuter, singular passive participle, instrumental, neuter, singular passive participle, prepositional, neuter, singular passive participle, nominative, plural

passive participle, genitive, plural passive participle, prepositional, plural passive participle, dative, plural passive participle, accusative, plural, inanimate passive participle, accusative, plural, animate passive participle, instrumental, plural passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular passive participle, masculine, singular passive participle, feminine, singular passive participle, neuter, singular passive participle, plural

The Present Active Participle

The present active participle, like all present participles, is derived only from imperfective verbs, since it refers to an action that is currently taking place or which takes place repeatedly. The simplest way of deriving the Present Active Participle is to remove the final from the 3rd Person Plural form of the verb, add - plus the appropriate adjective agreement endings, i. e. -, -, -, -. For example, the second conjugation stem for "divide" is --, so the present active participle is formed like this: The verb - "do, make" ends on a consonant and so is a first conjugation verb. It forms its present active participle like this: . Other consonants stems, like - () follow the same rule: .

The Present Passive Participle

Present passive participles, too, are formed only from imperfective verbs, since they refer to an activity which is currently taking place or which repeatedly takes place. The simplest way to form the present passive participle is to begin with the 1st person plural form of the verb and simply add the adjective endings to itno suffix is necessary. Thus, if "we read" is () the present passive participle of - then is "being read". The present passive participles of - is derived from () in the same way: , , , "beloved, favorite". The accent falls on the same syllable of first conjugation verbs as it does in the first person plural. However, for second conjugation verbs, it falls on the same syllable as it does in the 1st person singular: , : "being produced". The present passive participle has two major functions.

First, it expresses action not carried out by the noun it modifies, but which is carried out on the noun it modifies. Thus , means "a person reading the paper" but , is "a paper being read by a person". This form also has the meaning of adjectives on -able in English and is

used most widely with the negative prefix - to express the quality of resistance to certain processes. In this function it is derived from perfective and imperfective stems. Notice in the following examples that, unlike English which allows participial phrases only after the noun they modify, participial phrases in Russian may be placed before or after the noun. , , the car that is produced in Russia the car (being) produced in Russia , the scene, which is described in the book the scene described in the book , conditions that everyone demands , the paper that young people read conditions demanded by everyone the paper read by young people

The Past Active Participle

The past active participle is formed by adding -() to a perfective or imperfective verbal stem. Since this is a past tense participle, it is more often derived from a perfective verb than an imperfective one but either is possible. All you have to remember is to apply the basic spelling rules and concomitant verb stem changes. No changes are necessary for stems ending on vowels, e.g. - : - > 'who had asked'. If the stem ends on a removable consonant ( or ), the removable consonant is, well, removed: 'being done'. If the stem ends on a fixed consonant, the of the suffix is dropped: 'that had taken (something) away'. If the verb has two different stems for the present-future and past tenses, the stem of the past tense is used-- : > '(the one) who had arrived'. The function of the past active participles is to express the same relationship as the present active participles except in the past tense (and usually the perfective aspect). Another words, it expresses the sense of a clause (in the past tense) in which is the subject of the clause. If the verb is in the imperfective aspect, it will express an acton which occurred simultaneous to that of the past tense main verb, e.g. , , 'the woman reading the newspaper, was thinking of home'. If the verb is in the perfective aspect, however, this participle will refer to an action which occurred before the action of the main verb, e. g. , , 'the woman, who had read the paper, went home'.

Notice again that the entire participial phrase may be placed before or after the noun, although the
position before the noun is used more in written style and the position after the noun is more common in spoken Russian. , , . , , . My friend who had just finished work left for home. , , . , , . The student who had looked through the whole exhibit yawned and left.

, , . . The man who had packed the suitcase turned to me. , , . . The dog that had run up to us suddenly started to bark.

13 Adjectives 1
Russian Adjectives are used just like in English to describe qualities to nouns, but they differ than English when it comes to their agreement with nouns. Russian adjectives must agree with the noun they modify in gender and number, also adjectives must agree in the case as well, adjectives may change their endings in each case of the six cases depending on which case the noun is using. So to have the proper form of an adjective, you should know what case/ gender/ number is used by the noun, then form the adjective accordingly, which means that if the noun is in the accusative feminine singular, you will have to do the same with adjective. For example, if you have a book () and want to say that it is interesting (), you must know that the noun is in the nominative-feminine-singular form. Then you should give the correct form to the adjective you are using. You will be on the right track if you say (interesting book). Note that in dictionaries all adjectives are given in the nominative masculine singular, like , , . To form the proper form of an adjective, you should know how their endings change depending on number, gender and case. We listed the most common endings for adjectives in the nominative singular and plural forms, so that you be able to compose simple phrases. The majority of Russian adjectives have a stem ending in a hard consonant. In other words, their last letter before the ending is a hard consonant (, ). In the nominative case, such adjectives have the ending - if they are masculine singular, the ending - if they are neuter singular, and the ending - if they are feminine singular. The plural form of such adjectives is the same for all genders and always ends in -.

Common Adjective's Endings

Below is a table of a very common ending which many adjectives take:

Common Adjective's Endings

Case Masculine FeminineNeuter Plural Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Nom or Gen

Nom or GenNom or Gen

Prepositional Instrumental

Endings for adjectives in the nominative singular and plural (stressed vowels are underlined) Singular masculine (-, -) neuter (-oe) feminine (-) Plural (any gender) (-) , , , ,

The adjectives with a stem ending in the soft sound acquire the endings -, -, -, - in the nominative feminine singular, neuter singular, masculine singular, and plural respectively. These adjectives are called soft adjectives and always have a stress on the stem, as in . The adjectives with a stem ending in letters , , , , , , have the muscular singular ending - ( - small), the feminine singular ending in - (), and the plural ending - (). In the neuter singular such adjectives end in -oe after , , (), and end in -ee after , , , if stress is on the stem ( fresh milk) otherwise is has the ending -oe ( - big window). There is a small group of adjectives called stressed adjectives. They have the ending - instead of - or - in the nominative masculine singular. This ending is always stressed on

the letter o as in (young), (big), (another).

Endings for adjectives with a stem in , , and , , , (stressed vowels are underlined) Singular Stem ends in masculine (-, -) , Plural (any gender) (-)

neuter (-, -) ,

feminine (-)

, , , , ,

This is a list of adjectives: bad cheap clean deep difficult dirty early far fat good hard high, tall late small strong thin weak wide young heavy short simple soft long, tall loud narrow near old poor quiet rich shallow low, short

big, large

light, easy

expensive

Long and Short Forms of Adjectives

So far we learned how to form long adjectives ( - beautiful, - easy). In addition, Russian adjectives have a short form. To be more precise, only qualitative adjectives may have both long and short forms ( - , - ). In today's conversational Russian the usage of long adjectives if preferred. However, you will most likely have to use the short form of an adjective in the end of a sentence. For example:

Long adjective (occupied) (agree)

Correct usage (short form) . (This room is occupied.) . (I agree with you.)

Wrong usage (long form) . .

Short adjectives change only by gender and number; they do not change by case as long adjectives do. Singular masculine short adjectives do not have an ending, singular feminine adjectives end in -a, and singular neuter adjectives end in -o. All plural short adjectives end in -.
Endings for short adjectives (stressed vowels are underlined) Singular masculine (no ending) neuter (-o) feminine (-) Plural (any gender) (-)

Short adjectives usually describe temporary qualities, as opposed to long adjectives that refer to constant and general qualities. For example, we say: -- . (Olga is a happy girl.) -- constantly . (She was very happy last night.) -- temporarily
Remember ! There are no short forms for the adjectives and . Use short forms for the adjectives and instead, i.e. the words and respectively.

Short adjectives can also refer to qualities with respect to a particular person, thing or

circumstances. For example: . (The father's suit is big for the son.) You already know that masculine short adjectives have no endings. But there is a special rule to form a short form of those masculine adjectives that become too hard to pronounce. In this case you should add a letter O before the last K, and letter E before the last H. Consider the following examples:
- O before K: ("" is hard to pronounce because it has two consecutive consonants in the end) E before H: ("" is also hard to pronounce)

There are no short forms for the adjectives (big) and (small). Use short forms for the adjectives (great) and (small) instead. These forms change by gender and number as follows (stressed vowels underlined):

for ():
masculine singular: feminine singular: neuter singular: plural:

for ():
masculine singular: feminine singular: neuter singular: plural:

Some Russian adjectives do not have a short form. In general, those are adjectives formed from nouns and ending in:

- (, ) -, - (, ) -, -, - (, , )

There is also the short adjective (glad) that does not have a long form.

14 Adjectives 2
Adjectives are used to describe people and objects. Words like fast, new and beautiful are all adjectives. Adjectives always describe nouns. (Whereas adverbs describe verbs or actions). In the Russian language there are many different forms of each adjective. (Relating to the 6 cases, 3 genders, plural, short and the comparative). This may sound daunting at first, but in reality, it is fairly simple once you learn the system. The key is to just to learn the stem, or dictionary form of each adjective and then you can quickly form the rest. The dictionary form of a Russian adjective is normally the normal, nominative, masculine form. These will almost always end in the letters - or - There are 3 main types of Russian adjectives. Normal, Short and Comparative.

Normal Adjectives
Normal adjectives are those that come before a noun. For example in a phrase like beautiful girl, or new car. Normal adjectives always agree in gender, and case with the noun that they are describing. This means that there are several ending for each adjective. There are two systems to make the adjectives. Use the Soft Adjectives table for those adjectives ending in -, otherwise use the Hard Adjectives

Normal Adjectives - Hard (-, -, - (but not -))

Hard Adjectives are by far the most common. Just substitute - for -, or - where needed. (other table entries remain the same). Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural Nominative Case - - - - - - Accusative Case - - - (anim.) - (anim.) Genitive Case - - - - Dative Case - - - - Instrumental Case - - - - Prepositional Case - - - -

For example, the word "" (new) ends in the letters - so we use the forular above. Masculine Nominative Case Accusative Case (anim.) Genitive Case Dative Case Instrumental Case Prepositional Case Feminine Neuter Plural (anim.)

Normal Adjectives - Soft (-)

The soft form or normal adjectives is less common. It's for adjectives ending in -. Masculine Nominative Case - - Accusative Case - (anim.) Genitive Case - Dative Case - Instrumental Case - Prepositional Case - Feminine Neuter Plural - - - - - - - (anim.) - - - - - - - (or -) - - - - -

You will notice that the soft adjectives simply use the soft form of the first added vowel. ("" becomes "", "" becomes "", "" becomes "","" becomes ""). Otherwise the hard and soft forms are basically the same. Remember that "", and "", the "" is pronounced like the English letter "v" For example, the word "" (dark blue) ends in the letters - so we use the forular above. Nominative Case Accusative Case Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural (anim.) (anim.)

Genitive Case Dative Case Instrumental Case Prepositional Case

Short Adjectives
The second main type of Russian adjectives are the short form. We dont really have this form in English, but we do use adjectives the same way. The short form is generally used to make a statement about something. In English it normally follows the word is or are. For example, You are beautiful, He is busy. Notice that the adjective is not followed by a noun. The use of the short form is generally limited to such simple sentences. It is important to note that not all adjectives can have a short form, (but most do). One notable example is (Russian). Cases are not relevant when using short adjectives, as you only need the nominative case when making such statements. The adjective should still agree in gender with the noun. Masculine nouns just use the stem of the adjective in the short form. Feminine adds . Neuter adds . Plural adds or . If the adjective is masculine and the stem ends in two consonants, then add a vowel (, or ) so that the word is easier to read. Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural Short Adjectives - - - or - For Example. Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural Short Adjectives

Comparative Adjectives
Often you may wish to use adjectives to compare one thing to another. To do this we normally use the comparative adjectives. These adjectives are just adapted from normal adjectives. However the are a couple of methods that you can use. All of these methods are relatively easy.

Method 1 : More / Less

The lazy way to compare two things is to use the Russian words for more and less. Here are the Russian words that you need to use. - more - less - than When comparing adjectives using this method, use the normal adjectives. Here

are some examples. - A more beautiful house. - A less beautiful house. , . - Anna is a more beautiful woman than Elena. , . - Anna is a less beautiful woman than Elena.

Method 2 : Comparative Adjectives

Although the above examples are acceptable, Russians will prefer to use the comparative adjectives most of the time. These are formed by adding either or to the stem of the adjective. It is worth noting that these forms can also be used as comparative adverbs. 1. If the last consonant of the adjective is , , , , , , : Add (fast) - (faster) (beautiful) - (more beautiful, also: more beautifully) (difficult) - (more difficult , also: more difficultly) 2. Otherwise add (but the stem will display typical consonant mutation). (big) - (bigger) (easy) - (easier) (cheap) - (cheaper) (expensive) - (more expensive) 3. As with English the words "good" and "bad" have irregular comparative forms. (good) - (better) (bad) - (worse) Here are some examples. , . - Moscow is more beautiful than London. , . - Anna is more beautiful than Elena.

3. Without
The third way to make comparisons is almost the same as method 2, except the we omit the word (than). This method is popular in spoken Russian. In order to omit we must use the second noun in the genitive case. When using this method the order of words in the sentence is important. . - Moscow is more beautiful than London. . - Anna is more beautiful than Elena.

Superlative Adjectives - Most

The superlative is how we indicate something is the best, or the most. (Eg, the most beautiful, smallest, oldest). To do this we simply use the adjective (most) which declines like a normal adjective. - The most beautiful house. - The cheapest wine. - The most beautiful woman

15 Appendix
Vocabulary
In this lesson you will learn Russian Vocabulary such as: Food, Clothes in Russian, Family, Questions in Russian, List of Adjectives, List of Adverbs in Russian, Time, Countries, Nationalities in Russian. Since the page has many words it may take sometime to display, please be patient, and try to memorize them all if you can, I listed here only the most important stuff that you need to know. So it will not be a waste of time if you memorize them because you will certainly need them in the future. Adjectives In Russian bad big, large cheap clean deep difficult dirty early long, tall

loud

low, short narrow

near old poor quiet

expensiv rich e far fat good shallow short simple

hard heavy late light, easy small

soft strong weak wide

high, tall thin

young

Food In Russian apple apple juice bananas beans beef beer boiled eggs borsh (beetroot soup) bread broth butter cabbage cake carrots caviar cheese chicken chocolate coffee coffee with milk (russian soup) liver mashed potatoes meat milk mushrooms omelet onion orange orange juice pasta peas pepper pineapple pizza pork potato red wine rice a

mineral water

roast beef

cream cucumbers cutlets dessert duck fish fried eggs fried potatoes fruit garlic grape juice grapefruit grapes ground meat ham ice cream jam juice kasha kidneys lemon

salad salmon salt sandwich sausage shashlik snacks soda soft drinks soup spinach steak sugar sweets tea tomatoes ukha (fish soup) veal vegetables water wine

Clothes And Family In Russian belt blouse clothes coat dress gloves handbag hat jacket jacket (top of a suit) laces large leather medium necktie pants aunt brother children dad daughter family father

granddaugh ter grandfather grandmoth er grandson husband mother mum parents sister

raincoat scarf shirt shoes silk skirt slippers small socks suit sweater sweatshirt

son uncle wife umbrella wool

Other House Stuff In Russian cup fork glass kettle knife napkin plate spoon supper antibiotic aspirin bandage eye drops book magazin e newspap er poetry soap

breakfas t lunch dinner watch

cream

deodora nt hair spray jewelry

 plaster lipstick nail polish pearl thermome ter toothbrush toothpaste vitamin pills

perfume shampoo

Questions In Russian How much money? ? How much/many? How? ? ? Who? What's the matter? What do you need? When? Which? What do you want? What are you ? ? ? ? ?/ ? ?

What did you say? ? What is this? What time is it? What's the date ? ?

today? Where from? Where? Who is this? Why?

? ? ? ? ?

doing? What's happened? What? O.K.?

? ? ? ?

List Of Russian Adverbs afterwards almost already also, too always , some some kind of someone something sometimes - - -

any kind of anyone anything anywhere as

somewhere still such suddenly then

- () - -

as far/much then as because entirely there

therefore this much/many together usually very which/who/wh om yet (from) anywhere (from) somewhere

everywhere here ,

immediatel y never nobody nothing nowhere quite several so

(to) anywhere , (to) somewhere

Time Vocabulary In Russian early later on soon in time I'll be back in a moment. second minute hour day morning noon evening night tonight today yesterday the day before yesterday tomorrow the day after tomorrow Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday . Sunday week month this month next month January March April May June July August a

February

Septemb er October Novembe r Decembe r winter spring

summer autumn year

this year last year next year

Countries & Nationalities In Russian Afghani Algeria Algerian American Argentina / / / Indian Indonesia Indonesian Ireland Irish Israel Israeli Italian Italy Japan / / / / / / / / / M M / Afghanistan

Argentinean / Australia Australian Austria Austrian Belgium Belgium Brazil Brazilian British Canada Canadian China Chinese Czech Czech Republic /

/ Japanese / Korea / / / / / Korean Mexican Mexico Mongolia Mongolian Morocco Moroccan Norway Norwegian Pakistan

Danish Denmark Dutch Egypt Egyptian Finland Finnish France French German Germany Greece Greek Holland Hungarian Hungary India

/ Pakistani / / / / / / / Poland Polish Romania Romanian Scotland Scottish Spain Spanish Sweden Swedish Swiss Switzerland Turkey Turkish United Kingdom USA

/ / / / / / / -

Colors In Russian color black blue brow n

gray gree n pink red whit e

yello w

Index of Conjugated Russian Verbs

Russian Imperfective Russian Perfective run stroll be (is, are, will, was) see lead, drive carry (by vehicle) speak, talk, say drive give do, make think go (by vehicle) eat live know study English

(View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations)

 () () ()

() () ()

have climb fly love can, able (to be able) carry, wear swim crawl understand work sit listen watch, look at ask become, begin stand pull, drag go (on foot) want, feel like read

(View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations) (View Conjugations)

/ (to See) Imperfective Aspect Perfective Aspect

English Infinitive Present Tense

1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

see

Past Tense
Masculine Feminine

Neuter Plural

Future Tense
1st Person Singular 2nd Person Singular 3rd Person Singular 1st Person Plural 2nd Person Plural 3rd Person Plural

Language Review
The aim of our review Russian lesson is just to let you practice the language concepts that you already know. It is really a review lesson, although we may introduce some vocabulary, and show you some different ways of using it. We will avoid introducing new grammar in this lesson. This Russian language lesson will be based on examples. We will try to use some Russian phrases and sentences that you might see in real situations. Review each Russian phrase or sentence to make sure that you understand both the vocabulary and the structure of the sentence used. Take particular notice of the use of the four cases that we have learnt so far.

Russian Names...
Note the use of the genitive case for pronouns in this construction. ? - What is your name? . - My name is Vera. ? - What is her name? - Her name is Alyona. ? - What is his name? - His name is Boris.

Here are some other common Russian names for men... - Nikolay () - Boris () - Vladimir (, ) - Pyotr, Peter. - Andrey - Alexander (, ) - Dimitry () - Sergey - Aleksey And here are some common Russian names for women. - Yelena () - Natalya () - Mariya () - Olga () - Alexandra () - Oxana - Yekaterina - Anastasiya () - Nadezhda () - Anna () Note: the form in brackets is the diminutive form of the name. This is like a pet name. (For example in English 'William' is also 'Will'). There are many diminuatives for each Russian name and they are commonly used. The diminuative is a more personal, or tender form, and should only be used when you are in close firendship. The exception is when a person intruduces themself using this form.

Russian Greetings...
Here are some Russian greetings that we learnt in earlier lessons. You should be able to remember all of these. - Hello - Hi (Informal) - good morning - good afternoon - good evening - goodnight (when going to bed)

Please and Thank-You

Never forget please and thank-you. - Thank-You - Please (and You're Welcome)

Really Small Russian Words

To help you remember, here is a summary of those really small Russian words that we have learnt. Some of these may be new, but try to learn them all. In fact all of these words are from the 100 most used words in the Russian language - and - and/but (contrasting) - but - or The word "" is generally used when you could use either the English words "and" or "but". For example, in the sentence "I am in Moscow and he is in Kiev.", the statements are related but contrast each other so you could also use the word "but". In Russian we would use the word "". These prepositions are commonly used in Russian - with - near, by (also used in the "to have" construction) , - in (+prepositional), to (+accusative) - on, at (+prepositional), onto, to (+accusative) , - about - towards, to - for (+accusative), behind (+instrumental) - out of, from - from - along, (also used with languages) You should already know these pronouns. Refer to lesson 5 if you have forgotten. -I - he, it - you (informal) - you (formal/plural) - him, it - her, it

 them

Using the Russian Language

Now we will give you some sample Russian sentences. You might also find some new words in these sentences. We will use only common words, so you should try to learn them all. Also pay attention to the different cases used for nouns and how verbs are formed. , , ? - Tell me please, where is the toilet? ? - Do you have coffee? . - There is no coffee. ? - Do you have tea? . - There is no tea. ? - What do you want? , . - I want tea please. , , . - Give me please, coffee with milk and with sugar. ? - Do you have vodka? ? - Does Anna have vodka? ? - Does Ivan have tea? , -. - I know that you speak Russian. -. - He loves to speak English . - My mum loves music. -? - Does your borther speak Russian? . -. - Yes. He speaks Russian well. -. - The dog doesn't speak English. -? - Why don't you speak Russian? . - I understand. . - I don't understand. ? - Do you understand? , . - I know that you understand. , . - I think that you understand. ? - Why don't you understand? - I live in London.

 - He is going home.

? - Where? ? - Who? ? - What? ? - How? ? - When? ? - Why? ? - What do you know? ? - What do you think? ? - Where is he? ? - Where is the cafe? ? - Who is he? - I am reading a magazine. - I am studying the Russian language. - I am listening to music. - I really love sport. - I really love Moscow. - Adam's brother loves Moscow. - My sister is reading a newspaper. - Anna's siser is reading a newspaper. - Ivan's grandfather is listenig to the radio. - My Mum loves music. - He is not home. ? - How much? - 100 roubles. ? - How much? - 4 dollars. ? - How much?

 - 21 roubles. ? - How much? - 4 roubles.

Conclusion
This is mainy a review lesson, so you should make sure that you understand most of the Russian language above. Try learning the above phrases by covering up the English then translating for yourself. You should also try to form some of your own Russian sentences and phrases.

A. Verbs
(verb, imperfective aspect, transitive)
infinitive infinitive, reflexive past, masculine, singular past, masculine, singular, reflexive past, feminine, singular past, feminine, singular, reflexive past, neuter, singular past, neuter, singular, reflexive past, plural past, plural, reflexive past, verbal adverb, short form past, verbal adverb past, active participle, nominative, masculine, singular past, active participle, nominative, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, masculine, singular past, active participle, genitive, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, masculine, singular past, active participle, dative, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate past, active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular past, active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular, reflexive

past, active participle, nominative, feminine, singular past, active participle, nominative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, feminine, singular past, active participle, dative, feminine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular past, active participle, genitive, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, feminine, singular past, active participle, accusative, feminine, singular, reflexive past, active participle, nominative, neuter, singular past, active participle, accusative, neuter, singular past, active participle, nominative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, neuter, singular past, active participle, genitive, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, dative, neuter, singular past, active participle, dative, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular past, active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular past, active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular, reflexive past, active participle, nominative, plural past, active participle, nominative, plural, reflexive past, active participle, genitive, plural past, active participle, prepositional, plural past, active participle, genitive, plural, reflexive past, active participle, prepositional, plural, reflexive past, active participle, dative, plural past, active participle, dative, plural, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate past, active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate, reflexive past, active participle, accusative, plural, animate past, active participle, accusative, plural, animate, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, plural past, active participle, instrumental, plural, reflexive past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive past, passive participle, nominative, masculine, singular past, passive participle, genitive, masculine, singular past, passive participle, dative, masculine, singular

past, passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate past, passive participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate past, passive participle, instrumental, masculine, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, masculine, singular past, passive participle, nominative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, genitive, feminine, singular past, passive participle, dative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, feminine, singular past, passive participle, accusative, feminine, singular past, passive participle, nominative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, accusative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, genitive, neuter, singular past, passive participle, dative, neuter, singular past, passive participle, instrumental, neuter, singular past, passive participle, prepositional, neuter, singular past, passive participle, nominative, plural past, passive participle, genitive, plural past, passive participle, prepositional, plural past, passive participle, dative, plural past, passive participle, accusative, plural, inanimate past, passive participle, accusative, plural, animate past, passive participle, instrumental, plural past, passive participle, instrumental, feminine, singular past, passive participle, masculine, singular past, passive participle, feminine, singular past, passive participle, neuter, singular past, passive participle, plural 1st person, singular 3rd person, plural 3rd person, plural, reflexive active participle, nominative, masculine, singular active participle, nominative, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, masculine, singular active participle, genitive, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, masculine, singular active participle, dative, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, inanimate, reflexive active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate active participle, accusative, masculine, singular, animate, reflexive active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular active participle, instrumental, masculine, singular, reflexive

active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular active participle, prepositional, masculine, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, feminine, singular active participle, nominative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, feminine, singular active participle, dative, feminine, singular active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular active participle, genitive, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, prepositional, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, feminine, singular active participle, accusative, feminine, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, neuter, singular active participle, accusative, neuter, singular active participle, nominative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, accusative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, genitive, neuter, singular active participle, genitive, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, dative, neuter, singular active participle, dative, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular active participle, instrumental, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular active participle, prepositional, neuter, singular, reflexive active participle, nominative, plural active participle, nominative, plural, reflexive active participle, genitive, plural active participle, prepositional, plural active participle, genitive, plural, reflexive active participle, prepositional, plural, reflexive active participle, dative, plural active participle, dative, plural, reflexive active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate active participle, accusative, plural, inanimate, reflexive active participle, accusative, plural, animate active participle, accusative, plural, animate, reflexive active participle, instrumental, plural active participle, instrumental, plural, reflexive active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular active participle, instrumental, feminine, singular, reflexive verbal adverb

imperative, singular imperative, plural 2nd person, singular 3rd person, singular 3rd person, singular, reflexive 1st person, plural 2nd person, plural