Russian Grammar: Alphabet and Nouns

• Russian grammar includes its own rules and exceptions, making it a complex system.
• Russian is a highly inflected language, where words change form to indicate grammatical function, such as case, gender, number, and tense.
• Morphology, or word formation, and syntax, or sentence structure, must be understood to achieve mastery.

The Russian Alphabet

• The Cyrillic script serves as the foundation for the Russian alphabet.
• The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, including:
  • 11 vowels
  • 20 consonants
  • 2 "sign" letters (ь, ъ) that modify pronunciation

Nouns

• Russian nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
• Gender is mainly grammatical, but it can reflect the natural gender of animate objects.
• Russian nouns decline in six cases:
  • Nominative
  • Genitive
  • Dative
  • Accusative
  • Instrumental
  • Prepositional
• Each case signals a different grammatical function:
  • Subject
  • Object
  • Possessor
• Noun case endings depend on gender and declension.
• Nouns have two numbers: singular and plural.
• Plural forms are often irregular in the Russian language.
• Animacy affects the accusative case of masculine nouns:
  • Animate masculine nouns take the genitive case ending in the accusative.
  • Inanimate masculine nouns take the nominative case ending in the accusative.

Pronouns

• Russian pronouns also decline by case.
• Personal pronouns (я, ты, он, она, оно, мы, вы, они) change significantly depending on the case.
• Possessive pronouns (мой, твой, его, её, наш, ваш, их) agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they modify.
• Demonstrative pronouns (этот, тот) also decline.
• Relative and interrogative pronouns (кто, что, какой, чей, который) also decline.

Adjectives

• Russian adjectives agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they modify.
• Adjective endings change to match the noun.
• Most adjectives have two forms: a long form and a short form.
• The long form declines like a pronoun, and is commonly used to define a characteristic of a noun.
• The short form does not decline and is typically used as a predicate.
• Adjectives can be expressed in the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees.
• The comparative can be formed synthetically (with suffixes -ее, -ей, -ше) or analytically (adding более or менее).
• The superlative can be formed synthetically (with suffixes -ейш, -айш) or analytically (adding самый, наиболее, наименее).

Verbs

• Russian verbs are conjugated, meaning they change form to indicate tense, aspect, mood, person, and number.
• Verbs have two aspects: imperfective and perfective.
• The imperfective aspect describes ongoing or repeated actions.
• The perfective aspect describes completed actions.
• Aspect is crucial for determining verb usage and meaning.
• Verbs are conjugated into three tenses: past, present, and future.
• The past tense is formed using the past tense suffix (-л) and agrees in gender and number with the subject.
• The present tense only exists for imperfective verbs.
• The future tense has two forms:
  • A compound future (буду + infinitive) for imperfective verbs
  • A simple future (conjugated perfective verb) for perfective verbs
• Verbs have three moods: indicative, imperative, and subjunctive/conditional.
• Verbs are divided into two conjugation classes, determined by their infinitive endings.
• Reflexive verbs are marked by the suffix -ся or -сь.
• Motion verbs are a special category describing movement with specific prefixes and distinctions for directionality (unidirectional vs. multidirectional).

Adverbs

• Russian adverbs often derive from adjectives and typically modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
• Many adverbs end in -о or -е.
• Adverbs can also have comparative and superlative forms.

Prepositions

• Russian prepositions govern the case of the nouns or pronouns that follow them.
• Different prepositions require different cases; for example, в (in) can take the accusative (direction) or prepositional (location) case.
• Prepositions are essential for indicating relationships between words in a sentence.

Word Order

• Word order in Russian is relatively flexible compared to English.
• Word order is not entirely free and can affect emphasis and meaning.
• The typical word order is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), but variations are common.
• Topic-comment structure often influences word order.

Agreement

• Agreement is a fundamental principle of Russian grammar.
• Gender, number, and case agreement is required between nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs.
• Subject and verb must agree in number and gender in the past tense.

Syntax

• Russian syntax involves the rules for combining words into phrases and sentences.
• Syntax must be understood to construct grammatically correct and meaningful sentences.
• Complex sentences are formed using conjunctions and relative pronouns.
• Impersonal sentences (sentences without a subject) are common.

Peculiarities

• The "soft sign" (ь) and "hard sign" (ъ) have no sound value but affect the pronunciation of adjacent letters.
• Stress in Russian is unpredictable and can change the meaning of a word (дви́гать vs. двига́ть).
• Foreign words are often adapted to Russian grammar rules.
• Many grammatical phenomena are influenced by regional dialects.

Explore the basics of Russian grammar, including the Cyrillic alphabet and noun declensions. Understand the three genders of nouns and the six cases that determine their grammatical function. Learn how nouns change form to indicate case, gender, and number.