Russian overview

Contents

Introduction
Russian facts
Russian alphabet
Russian grammar overview
Useful Russian phrases
Famous Russians

Introduction

Russian belongs to the East Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of Indo-European languages. Written Russian is in the Cyrillic alphabet which was introduced by the Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century A.D. The Cyrillic alphabet is based on the Greek alphabet, with the addition of about a dozen letters borrowed from Hebrew to represent Slavic sounds that are not found in Greek.

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Russian facts

Location: Northern Asia (the part west of the Urals is sometimes included with Europe), bordering the Arctic Ocean, between Europe and the North Pacific Ocean.

Natural resources: Wide natural resource base including major deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, and many strategic minerals, timber.

Industries: Complete range of mining and extractive industries producing coal, oil, gas, chemicals, and metals; all forms of machine building from rolling mills to high-performance aircraft and space vehicles; shipbuilding; road and rail transportation equipment; communications equipment; agricultural machinery, tractors, and construction equipment; electric power generating and transmitting equipment; medical and scientific instruments; consumer durables, textiles, foodstuffs, handicrafts

Russian alphabet

Basic alphabet and pronunciation

Russian letter	Pronounced	Transliteration
А а	a as in car	a
Б б	b as in bet	b
В в	v as in vine	v
Г г	g as in good	g
Д д	d as in do	d
Е е	ye as in yet	ye or e
Ё ё	yo as in yolk	yo
Ж ж	s as in pleasure	zh
З з	z as in zoo	z
И и	ee as in see	i
Й й	y as in toy	i or y or j
К к	k as in kitten	k
Л л	l as in lamp	l
М м	m as in map	m
Н н	n as in not	n
O o	o as in pot	o
П п	p as in pot	p
Р р	r rolled	r
С с	s as in see	s
Т т	t as in tea	t
У у	oo as in boot	u
Ф ф	f as in feel	f
Х х	ch as in loch	kh
Ц ц	ts as in cats	ts
Ч ч	ch as in chip	ch
Ш ш	sh as in shell	sh
Щ щ		shch
Ъ ъ	hard sign
Ы ы	i in sit	y
Ь ь	soft sign
Э э	e met	e
Ю ю	u as in use	yu
Я я	ya in yard	ya

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Russian grammar overview

Nouns

Russian nouns have different endings to reflect three different attributes - gender, number and case;

Gender

Masculine – Animate and inanimate. Masculine nouns end in a consonant (j is a consonant) or the soft sign
Feminine - Feminine nouns end in the vowels, -a or -q, or in the soft sign.
Neuter - Neuter nouns end in the vowels -o, -e

Number – Singular and plural

Cases

1. Nominative – Кто? Что?
2. Genitive – Кого? Чего?
3. Dative –Кому? Чему?
4. Accusative – Кого? Что?
5. Instrumental – с Кем? с Чем?
6. Prepositional – о Ком? о Чём?

Adjectives

Adjectives modify a noun or a pronoun and, as with nouns, have gender, number and case. Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify, if the noun is singular – the adjective will agree with the noun in gender, number (singular) and case. If the noun is plural, the adjective will agree only in number and case.

Pronouns

Pronouns are also flexible and have gender, number and case.

Different types of pronouns:

Personal – I, you, he/she/it…
Reflexive – refers back to the nearest subject – myself, yourself, himself/herself..
Possessive - shows to whom something belongs – my, your,his/her/…
Interrogative – asks a question or acts as the subject of a clause in a sentence – who, what , which…
Demonstrative – modifies a noun or stands alone – this, that, such
Negative – negative pronouns with the prefix ni require the use of the negative particle ne (no) or net (not) in the sentence.
Indefinite – some , any

Numerals

Numerals are flexible and agree with the noun they modify in a gender, a case and a number.

Different types of numerals:

Cardinal - one (один ),two (два) ,three (три,), four (четыре) Ordinal – first (первый), second (второй), third (третий), fourth (четвертый)..

Collective – both (оба/обе)
Fractions – expressed by combination of ordinal and cardinal numbers- one tenth (одна десятая)
Indefinite – few (мало), many (много)

Verbs

Verbs express action, existence or occurrence. When we talk about verbs we indicate their;

Person

1st   I ( я )	1st  we ( мы )
2nd   you  (ты )	2nd  you ( вы )
3rd    he/she/it (он/она/оно)	3rd  they (они)

Gender

Masculine
Feminine
Neuter

Number

Singular

Plural

Voice

Passive
Active

Mood

Indicative
Imperative
Conditional

Tense

Past

Non-past

Present
Future

Aspect

Perfective
Imperfective
Biaspectual

Adverbs

 Adverbs modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Adverbs do not decline in Russian; usually have an ending –o.

прекрасный (beautiful) – прекраснo (beautifully)

Many adverbs resemble the short form, neuter form of the adjective.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions join words, phrases, clauses and sentences.

Co-ordinating conjunctions а, и, но, или…
Subordinating conjunctions  - что (that),  (для того ) чтобы (in order) to,  потому что (because)

Prepositions

Prepositions are used with nouns in every case except the nominative. Many prepositions can be followed by different cases to give different meanings. Used with verbs of motion, identified by location or direction, very often the same preposition used with different cases will indicate either the location of an activity or the direction in which a verb of motion is occurring.

Interjections

Interjections add emotional emphasis in speech, most likely to be followed by an exclamation mark, expresses awe, pain, joy, disgust.

Particles

Add a different meaning to the word or the whole sentence

Negative – не, ни (not)

Interrogative - ли

Particles

Particles express wishes, interjection, wonder and injunction and indicate the type of sentence. Again they are not flexible words.

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Some useful Russian phrases

Famous Russians

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) - Playwright and author, Heart of a Dog,  The Master and Margarita

Anton PavlovichChekhov (1860-1904) -  Doctor and author,Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) - Author, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) - Author, Dead Souls

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841) - Poet, author and painter

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) - Author, refused Nobel Prize, Doctor Zhivago

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) - Poet, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) - Author, War and Peace, Anna Karenina

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) - Author, We

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