Overview
This lecture provides an all-in-one guide to Russian fundamentals, focusing on the language's essential grammar, cases, tenses, sentence structure, and core vocabulary. The material is structured for those with English as their native or primary language for language learning.
Key Features of Russian
- Russian distinguishes between literal (written) and spoken dialects, with significant pronunciation differences.
- Printed Russian uses block letters; cursive (handwritten) is different and rarely taught to beginners.
- Russian has no definite/indefinite articles; meaning is inferred from context.
- Progressive ("-ing") and perfect tenses do not exist; only past, present, and future are used, with two aspects for past/future.
- The verb "to be" is not used in the present tense, only in past/future.
Russian Grammar Essentials
- Russian tenses: Past, present, future; past/future have perfective (completed action) and imperfective (ongoing/habitual) aspects.
- Nouns have gender: masculine (ends with consonant), feminine (ends with -a, -я), neuter (ends with -e, -ё, -o, -мя).
- Plural endings vary by noun gender and ending (e.g., masculine: -ы/-и; feminine: -и/-ы; neuter -я/-а/-и).
The Six Russian Cases (Expressions)
- Nominative: Subject of the sentence (“who/what”).
- Genitive: Shows possession or absence (“of/from whom/what”).
- Dative: Direction/indirect object (“to whom/what”).
- Accusative: Direct object (“whom/what”); distinctions between animate/inanimate.
- Instrumental: Means/agent ("with whom/what").
- Prepositional: Used after prepositions, especially "about," "in," "on".
Sentence Structure & Flexibility
- Russian allows flexible word order due to its case system, but typical order is subject-verb-object (SVO).
- Word order is often used to emphasize different parts of a sentence.
Russian Alphabet & Pronunciation
- 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, 2 modifier signs (hard “ъ”, soft “ь”).
- Some sounds change (devocalization, vowel reduction, syllable stress changes meaning).
- Modifier signs indicate preceding consonant hardness/softness.
Verb Conjugation and Aspects
- Verbs have perfective (completed) and imperfective (ongoing/habitual) aspects.
- Present tense: Only imperfective; perfective used for completed actions in past/future.
- Past tense endings reflect subject gender/number; future has simple (perfective) and compound (imperfective with "быть").
Adjectives and Pronouns
- Adjectives agree with noun in gender, number, and case.
- Pronouns (personal, possessive, demonstrative, reflexive) are modified for case, gender, and number.
- Reflexive pronouns and possessive reflexives indicate “one’s own.”
Key Vocabulary & Practical Phrases
- Core question words: что (what), кто (who), где (where), когда (when), как (how), почему (why).
- Days, months, numbers, greetings, basic pronouns covered.
- Russian uses intonation to form questions; word order can be altered for emphasis.
Advanced Topics
- Object pronouns change form with case.
- Impersonal constructions show possession ("у меня есть..." = "I have...").
- Negation is formed with "не" (not), and double negatives are allowed.
- Imperative mood used for commands (different forms for “ты” and “вы”).
- Reflexive verbs indicate actions on oneself; participles create verbal adjectives.
- Subjunctive mood uses "бы" and is used for hypotheticals, wishes, and advice.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Aspect — A grammatical category indicating whether an action is completed (perfective) or ongoing (imperfective).
- Case — Modification of nouns/pronouns to indicate grammatical function (subject, possession, object, etc.).
- Declension — Pattern of changing word endings to show case, number, and gender.
- Perfective/Imperfective — Verb forms distinguishing completed vs. ongoing actions.
- Reflexive verb — Verb form indicating the subject acts on itself, ending in -ся/-сь.
- Instrumental case — Case used with the preposition “with” or to indicate the means by which an action is performed.
Action Items / Next Steps
- Review provided links for deeper exploration of each Russian case and concept.
- Practice creating Russian sentences with flexible word order.
- Memorize the Russian alphabet and practice pronunciation.
- Apply case endings to nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in simple sentences.
- Conjugate common verbs in present, past, and future tenses.
- Practice using aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) with different verbs.