Basic Russian

A Grammar and Workbook

John Murray, Sarah Smyth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136764790
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Designed for students with a basic knowledge of Russian, this book provides an accessible reference grammar and related exercises in a single volume.
Across more than forty grammar topics it introduces the student to Russian people and culture through the medium of the language used today, covering the core material which the student would expect to encounter in their first year of learning Russian.
Complete with a full key to exercises and glossary, Basic Russian is a user-friendly reference grammar suitable for both independent study and class use.

PART 1

Identifying and describing people, places and objects

UNIT 1

Identifying people

Gender

(i) Nouns are classified in Russian according to three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The grammatical gender of a noun, which is constant, can usually be identified by its ending in the nominative case, that is, the dictionary form of the noun. In this unit we concentrate on nouns that refer to people. These are usually masculine or feminine nouns. Masculine nouns refer to men, feminine nouns to women. (See Unit 3 for nouns referencing objects and places and for the introduction of neuter nouns.)

Masculine nouns end in a consonant, a consonant followed by a soft sign (-ь) or a vowel followed by the semi-consonant (-й).

hard	consonant	музыкант	Иван
soft	consonant + -ь	писатель	Игорь
soft	vowel + -й	герой	Николай

Feminine nouns end in -a, -я, -ия or -ь. Note that the ending -ь may indicate either a masculine or feminine noun.

hard	consonant + -a	балерина	Анна
soft	consonant + -я		Катя
soft	consonant + -ь		Любовь
soft	consonant + -ия		Анастасия

(ii) Generally speaking males are designated by masculine nouns and females by feminine nouns.

Note: There are, however, some nouns ending in -a or -я which designate males. These nouns, though they look like feminine nouns, are grammatically speaking masculine, e.g., мужчина ‘man’, дядя ‘uncle’, дедушка ‘grandfather’; a number of first names, such as Илья, Никита, Фома; and many affectionate forms of names, such as Kоля(short for Николай), Ваня (short for Иван) and Петя(short for Пётр). These nouns are qualified by masculine adjectives, e.g. хороший мужчина ‘a good man’ (see Unit 4).

‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ endings

As can be seen from the tables above some nouns have what are called ‘hard’ endings and others ‘soft’ endings. The categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ refer to the quality of the final consonant as realised in the vowel that follows it.

‘Hard’ endings are represented in the written language by a consonant followed by:

• a zero ending (no ending) which in some grammar books is represented as Ø

• or one of the following vowels: -а, -у, -ы or -o

‘Soft’ endings are represented in the written language by a consonant followed by:

• a soft sign: -ь

• or one of the following vowels: -я, -ю, -и, -ё or -е

This distinction is easy to remember once you realise that Russian has two renditions of every...