RUSLAN RUSSIAN GRAMMAR An interactive Russian grammar course John Langran General Editor Ashot Vardanyan, University of Iowa
Ruslan Limited www.ruslan.co.uk
Ruslan Russian Grammar
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Introduction It is essential to study the grammar of any language that you want to learn seriously, and the Russian language has a denser grammatical structure than most. This “Ruslan Russian Grammar” gives the main grammatical points that serious learners will meet in their study of the language, with straightforward explanations, lots of examples from contemporary usage, relevant extracts from poems and songs as illustrations, pictures to liven things up, and structured exercises for the main points. New items are introduced in a sequence as close as possible to the sequence of the main grammatical items in my Ruslan Russian course, especially in the first few sections, but it was not possible to maintain this throughout. You will need to use the contents and index pages to find particular items as you need them. This is not a full reference of the grammar of the Russian language. For more detail I recommend “A Comprehensive Russian Grammar” by the late Terry Wade, on which I have relied heavily for the compilation of this book. I have also used “A Living Russian Grammar” by Natalia Bitekhtina, Larissa Grutchevskaya and Juila Sheina and the excellent website www.gramota.ru. Every attempt has been made to give simple, up to date examples. Exercises for practice and consolidation have been placed immediately after explanations, and there are also exercises for conversation practice in the classroom. The audio CD that accompanies the book contains recordings of the answers to those exercises marked 6 and of all the songs and poems used. The number is the number of the CD track. Many of these recordings may be used as language drills. Recordings of the answers to most of the other exercises will be posted on the Ruslan website at www.ruslan.co.uk/grammar.htm. A key to all the exercises in the book will be available on the Ruslan teacher pages. For those exercises that ask learners to find more examples of a particular usage it is recommended to use Internet searches in cyrillic, for example at www.google.com Stress is marked with an acute accent (but is not marked on words like, for example, the name Àííà in which a stressed vowel is printed in upper case). The two dots on the Russian letter ¸ are marked on lower case letters. These conventions will help you as a learner, but remember that you will not normally have them to help you in authentic Russian texts. Where verbs are given in their aspect pairs, the imperfective is given first, for example: äˆëàòü / ñäˆëàòü (or äˆëàòü / ñ-). Learners will need a dictionary when using this book. John Langran September 2010
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Ruslan Russian Grammar
CONTENTS
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.
ÑÎÄÅÐÆÀÍÈÅ
The gender of nouns The plural of nouns Personal, possessive and demonstrative pronouns in the nominative Adjectives in the nominative case. êàê‹é - “what, what kind of” Adjectival nouns Cases in Russian The nominative case The accusative case The animate accusative The genitive case The dative case The instrumental case The prepositional (locative) case Prepositions with different cases ãäå - “where”, êóä‚ - “where to”, îòê˜äà - “where from” â, íà, èç and ñ with places -“to”, “at”, “in”, “on” and “from” Expressions of time Pronouns. ñâîé, ñåáµ and ñàì - “one’s own” and “oneself” Pronouns. ñ‚ìûé - “the very”, äðóã äð˜ãà - “each other”, ‹áà - “both” Pronouns. âåñü - “all”, öˆëûé - “a whole”, ê‚æäûé - “every”, âñµêèé - “any” and ëþá‹é - “any” Pronouns. ÷ò‹-òî - “something”, ÷òî-íèá˜äü - “anything”, êò‹-òî - “someone” and êòî-íèá˜äü - “anyone”, etc. Relative pronouns êîò‹ðûé - “which”, ÷òî - “that”, êòî - “who” Negative pronouns - íèêò‹ - “no one”, íè÷ò‹ - “nothing” etc. Short adjectives Comparative adjectives. Short form Comparative adjectives. Long form Superlative adjectives Adverbs derived from adjectives Adverbs of quantity or degree Adverbs of time Adverbs with the prefix ïîAdverbs of position and direction Adverbs: âäâî¸ì - “two together” etc., ðàç - “a time”, ñí‹âà, îïµòü, åù¸ and óæˆ Adverbs: êàê - “how”, òàê - “so”, ò‹æå and ò‚êæå - “also” Adverbs: ïî÷åì˜, çà÷ˆì, -òî, -íèáóäü, ð‚çâå Negative adverbs: íèãäˆ, íèêóä‚, íèêîãä‚, íˆãäå, íˆêóäà, íˆêîãäà, etc. Comparative and superlative adverbs Verbs. The Infinitive. Introduction to aspects and tenses Verbs. Aspect pairs Verbs. The use of the infinitive Verbs. The present tense. Imperfective verb stems Verbs. The present tense Verbs. First conjugation Verbs. Second conjugation and irregular Verbs. The past tense Verbs. The past tense. Aspects Verbs. Future tenses
Ruslan Russian Grammar
Page 8 12 16 20 21 24 26 30 32 36 44 50 58 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 90 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120 121 124 126 126 128 134 136 140
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48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.
Verbs. Future tenses. Perfective verb stems The verb “to be” The verb “to be” in the negative The verb “to have” Verbs for getting married, divorced, being born Verbs for dying, being ill, hurting, loving, liking Reflexive verbs Verbs. Imperatives Verbs of motion Verbs. The conditional. The use of áû Verbs. Passive voice Verbs. Reported speech and sequence of tenses. Participles. Introduction Active participles Passive participles Participles as nouns or adjectives Gerunds Conjunctions è, à, íî and ‰ëè Conjunctions ÷òî and òî, ÷òî, êàê, ãäå, êîãä‚ and ÷ò‹áû Ñonjunctions ïîòîì˜ ÷òî, òàê êàê and ÷ò‹áû More conjunctions Particles Word order in Russian Russian names Diminutives Names for town dwellers The vocative case in colloquial Russian Numbers Collective numbers Indefinite numerals. Numbers with verbs Telling the time Dates and years
145 146 148 150 152 154 156 160 164 170 172 174 176 178 182 184 188 194 196 198 198 200 204 205 206 206 207 208 210 212 214 216
TABLES. DECLENSIONS AND CONJUGATIONS 80. Nouns 81. Pronouns ñåáµ, êòî, ÷òî, ¬òîò, òîò, ìîé, âàø, ÷åé 82. Adjectives and ordinal numbers 83. Possessive adjectives. Names 84. Numbers 85. Collective numbers, ‹áà 86. Prefixes 87. Verb conjugations
218 220 221 222 223 224 225 226
SPELLING RULES AND ORTHOGRAPHY 88. Spelling rules 89. Punctuation 90. Abbreviations
238 239 240
THE ALPHABET AND PRONUNCIATION 91. The Russian alphabet. Letters and their sounds 92. Pronunciation notes 93. Pronunciation practice
241 242 246
INDICES 94. Alphabetical index of Russian words 95. Alphabetical index of grammatical points
248 254
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Ruslan Russian Grammar
