Russian For Dummies

Talkin’ the Talk

Viktor and Marina are former co-workers. They meet after a long absence.

Words to Know

Planning for the future tense

To describe an action that will take place in the future, Russian uses the future tense. While English has many different ways to talk about the future, Russian has only two: the future imperfective and the future perfective.

You use the future imperfective when you want to emphasize the fact that something will happen or be happening in the future, but you don’t necessarily want to emphasize the result or completion of an action. You use the future perfective to emphasize result or completion of an action.

To form the future imperfective, you use the future tense form of the verb byt’ (biht’; to be) plus the imperfective infinitive. This combination translates into “will/will be.” Table 2-13 shows the conjugation of the verb byt’ in the future tense. (Find out more about this interesting verb in the next section.)

If you want to say “I will read (but not necessarily finish reading) the article,” you use the ya (I) form of the verb byt’ plus the imperfective infinitive chitat’ (chee-taht’; to read): Ya budu chitat’ stat’yu (ya boo-doo chee-taht’ staht’-yu).

To form the future perfective, you simply conjugate the perfective form of the verb, as in Ya prochitayu stat’yu syegodnya (ya pruh-chee-tah-yu staht’-yu see-vohd-nye; I’ll read/finish reading the article today). In other words, you use the ending -yu for ya (I) as you do in the present tense. See the previous section for more about perfective verbs.

Using the unusual verb byt’ (to be)

Russian has no present tense of the verb to be. To say “I’m happy,” you just say Ya schastliv (ya sh’as-leef; Literally: I happy). To say “That’s John,” you just say Eto Dzhon (eh-tuh dzhohn; Literally: That John). The being verbs am, are, and is are implicitly understood in the present tense.

To express the verb to be in the past tense, you need to use the proper past tense form of the verb byt’:

byl (bihl; was) if the subject is a masculine singular noun

byla (bih-lah; was) if the subject is a feminine singular noun

bylo (bih-luh; was) if the subject is a neuter singular noun

byli (bih-lee; was) if the subject is a plural noun or if the subject is vy (vih; you; formal singular)

To express the verb to be in the future tense, you have to use the correct form of the verb byt’ in the future tense. (For conjugation, refer to Table 2-13.) To say “I will be happy,” you say Ya budu schastliv (ya boo-doo sh’as-leef), and for “I will be there,” you say Ya budu tam (ya boo-doo tahm).

Providing Extra Details with Adverbs

Adverbs are words like very, quickly, and beautifully. They add information to a verb, an adjective, or even another adverb. Russian adverbs are one of the most uncomplicated parts of speech. Unlike nouns, verbs, and adjectives, adverbs never change their form. In the following sections, you discover the main categories of Russian adverbs: adverbs of manner and adverbs of time.

Describing how

You use some adverbs to describe how an action is performed. These adverbs are called adverbs of manner, and they’re easy to spot because they usually end in -o. In fact, you can consider the ending -o as a kind of equivalent of the ending -ly in English adverbs.

Some adverbs of manner you probably hear and use a lot are khorosho (khuh-rah-shoh; well), plokho (ploh-khuh; poorly), pravil’no (prah-veel’-nuh; correctly), nyepravil’no (nee- prah-veel’-nuh; incorrectly), bystro (bihs-truh; quickly), myedlyenno (myed-lee-nuh; slowly), lyegko (leekh-koh; easily), and prosto (proh-stuh; simply).

Describing when and how often

To describe when and how often the action took place, Russian uses time adverbs. Like adverbs of manner, time adverbs are recognizable because they usually end in -o (and sometimes in -a).

Some of the most common time adverbs are chasto (chahs-tuh; often), ryedko (ryed-kuh; rarely), inogda (ee-nahg-dah; sometimes), nikogda (nee- kahg-dah; never), vsyegda (fseeg-dah; always), skoro (skoh-ruh; soon), obychno (ah-bihch-nuh; usually), rano (rah-nuh; early), pozdno (pohz-nuh; late), and dolgo (dohl-guh; for a long time).

The subject of a sentence is always in the nominative case, and the direct object is always in the accusative case. The nominative case for the pronoun “I” is ya, and now we have to put intyeryesnaya stat’ya (een-tee-ryes-nuh-ye staht’-ya; interesting article) into the accusative case. (For details on cases, see “Making the Russian Cases” earlier in this chapter.)

Start with the feminine noun, stat’ya. Table 2-2 says that if a noun ends in -ya, then you form the accusative case by replacing -ya with -yu, so now you have stat’yu. And as for the adjective intyeryesnaya, it must agree in gender, case, and number with the noun it modifies. The dictionary form of “interesting” in Russian is intyeryesnyj. From Table 2-10 you know that this adjective takes the ending -uyu when it modifies a feminine noun in the accusative case. Presto! You now have intyeryesnuyu. (See “Decorating Your Speech with Adjectives” earlier in this chapter for more information.)

Choosing the verb

After you decide on the verb and tense you want to use in your sentence, you just need to make sure it agrees in number (and in gender if it’s in the past tense) with the subject of the sentence. (For more, see “Adding Action with Verbs” earlier in this chapter.)

In the sentence “I’m reading an interesting article,” the verb is obviously in the present tense and agrees with the singular pronoun “I.” Table 2-11 in the section “Living in the present tense” earlier in this chapter says that you form the first person singular present tense verb by replacing the infinitive ending -t’ with -yu. So the verb form you want is chitayu from the infinitive chitat’. The whole sentence is Ya chitayu intyeryesnuyu stat’yu (ya chee-tah-yu een- tee-ryes-noo-yu staht’-yu; I’m reading an interesting article). Congratulations! You’ve just created a complete Russian sentence!

Connecting with conjunctions

Sometimes you may want to connect words or phrases in a sentence with conjunctions, which are words like and, but, and however. “And” in Russian is i (ee), “but” is a (ah), and “however” is no (noh).

Forming questions

Forming questions in Russian is easy. You simply begin your sentence with a question word like kto (ktoh; who), chto (shtoh; what), gdye (gdye; where), kogda (kahg-dah; when), pochyemu (puh-chee-moo; why), or kak (kahk; how). And then you form your sentence as if you were making a statement.

4 chyetyrye (chee-tih-ree)

5 pyat’ (pyat’)

6 shyest’ (shehst’)

7 syem’ (syem’)

8 vosyem’ (voh-seem’)

9 dyevyat’ (dye-veet’)

But wait! You have to use a few rules when you use these numbers. The following sections give you the scoop.

The number 1 followed by a noun

If the noun you’re referring to is masculine, you say odin followed by the noun as in odin chyelovyek (ah-deen chee-lah-vyek; one man). If the noun is feminine you say odna as in odna dyevushka (ahd-nah dye-voosh-kuh; one girl). And if the noun is neuter you say odno as in odno okno (ahd-noh ahk- noh; one window).

The number 2 followed by a noun

If you’re talking about nouns that are masculine or neuter, you say dva, and if the noun is feminine, dva becomes dvye. After the numeral 2, you have to put the noun into the genitive case singular as in dva chyelovyeka (dvah chee- lah-vye-kuh; two men), dva okna (dvah ahk-nah; two windows), and dvye dyevushki (dvye dye-voosh-kee; two girls). For rules on forming genitive case for singular nouns, see Table 2-2 earlier in the chapter.

The numbers 3 and 4 followed by a noun

Like the numeral dva (dvah; two), tri (tree; three) and chyetyrye (chee-tih- ree; four) also require the noun used after them to be put into the genitive singular. (For rules on forming genitive case, see Table 2-2 earlier in the chapter.) Unlike odin and dva, these numbers don’t change their form depending on the gender of the noun they refer to.

The numbers 5 through 9 followed by a noun

Any noun you use after the numerals 5–9 must be put into the genitive plural case, as in the phrase pyat’ dyevushyek (pyat’ dye-voo-shuhk; five girls) and syem’ mal’chikov (syem’ mahl-chee-kuhf; seven boys). (See “Changing plurals into the genitive case” earlier in this chapter.) Unlike odin and dva, these numbers don’t change their form depending on the gender of the noun they are used with.

60 shyestdyesyat’ (shees-dee-syat’)

70 syem’dyesyat’ (syem’-dee-seet’)

80 vosyemdyesyat’ (voh-seem-dee-seet’)

90 dyevyanosto (dee-yee-nohs-tuh)

Therefore, you make the numbers 21–23 like this:

21 dvadtsat’ odin (dvaht-tsuht’ ah-deen)

22 dvadtsat’ dva (dvaht-tsuht’ dva)

23 dvadtsat’ tri (dvaht-tusht’ tree)

When using nouns after these numerals, be sure to put the noun in the nominative after each number ending in 1 (as in 21 and 31); in the genitive singular case after each number ending in 2, 3, or 4 (as in 42, 53, and 64); and in the genitive plural case after all the others.

Numbers 100–999

You form each of the following numerals (except 200) by adding either a sta or a sot to the numerals 1–10:

100 sto (stoh)

200 dvyesti (dvye-stee)

300 trista (tree-stuh)

400 chyetyryesta (chee-tih-rees-tuh)

500 pyat’sot (peet’-soht)

600 shyest’sot (shees’-soht)

700 syem’sot (seem’-soht)

800 vosyem’sot (vuh-seem’-soht)

900 dyevyat’sot (dee-veet’-soht)

Sta (stah; 100) is actually the genitive singular form of sto (stoh; 100), and it makes sense that this is the form used with the “100” part of the numerals 200, 300, and 400, because 2, 3, and 4 force the noun after them into the genitive singular. It’s as if the numeral 100 (sto) is treated like a noun when it comes after the numerals 2, 3, and 4, in 200, 300, and 400. The exception to this rule is dvyesti (200), in which sto becomes sti rather than sta. And sot (soht; 100) is the genitive plural form of sto. This fact also makes sense because the numerals 5–9 all take the genitive plural after them.