08/04/2014
Hi! My name's Olya, and this is our first lesson of Russian language. No matter what you need it for – it has to become your Russian. It's not simple, as any other language. My method is to teach you speak simply.
Complicated things we will split into easy ones, and will not make simple things complicated. In some situations we will act rough, but we will achieve the result.
In this lesson I will tell you some facts to show what the Russian language looks like.
English alphabeth has 26 letters, in Russian there are 33. At least half of them will sound familiar to you. But you won’t meet there sounds [w], [ð] or [ɵ], and some others.
Every written letter is to be read. For example, if the word “make” were russian, it would be read [make]. But there are two letters in Russian alphabet that are not read. These are a soft sign ь and a hard sign ъ. They are sort of auxiliary letters and serve to soften or to harden the consonant preceeding them. For example, a word steel - сталь. Without the soft sign it would sound [stal] instead of [stal’].
The main characteristic feature of Russian language is the system of endings. They indicate tense (present, past or future), number, gender etc.
All nouns have gender. It can be feminine (female), masculine (male), neuter or general.
For example
a car машина is she – feminine
a train поезд is he – masculine
the sky небо is it – neuter
So even a book книга is she.
And looking at the ending you can know what gender it is.
If the word “car” were russian, it would be of a masculine gender, for it ends with a consonant.
In English adjectives don’t have gender. When you speak about a blue car, blue train or blue sky, the word “blue” doesn’t change. In Russian the adjective characterising the noun takes its gender and the ending changes each time you change the gender.
Blue car – синяя машина (feminine)
Blue train - Синий поезд (masculine)
Blue sky - Синее небо (neuter)
If blue were a Russian word, then the car would be some kind of blueяя, and the train – blueий. Don’t be scared, but the sky would be blueee.
If English is based upon 12 tenses, in Russian there are only 5 of them. All the needed information is shown with the help of endings and prefixes.
Besides, you will meet no articles before nouns and almost no auxiliary verbs.
We can hardly master Russian language in one lesson, to finish I will show you one more interesting detail.
Russian language has two words for english “you”. They are ты and вы. Ты is used when speaking to somebody you know well. It can be your friend, a family member, a child, an animal. But if a person is older than you, you’d better call him вы. Вы is used also when talking to strangers, people in position of authority, in-laws, and to show special respect. Young people tell each other ты, whether they know each other or not.
Вы is a plural form for both ты and вы.
