The Russian Languagefor English Learner

May 2009 (Incomplete Work) by pfournar@gmail.comIf you want to collaborate send me an email!

Table of Contents1 Basic facts about Russian Language ................................................................................................ 5

Basic grammatical features ............................................................................................................. 5 Basic phonetic features ................................................................................................................... 6

2 Russian alphabet ............................................................................................................................... 7 The Handwriting Russian Alphabet ............................................................................................... 10 BGN/PCGN Romanization of Russian .......................................................................................... 11

3 Stress ............................................................................................................................................... 14 Word stress on the whole and applied to Russian language ......................................................... 14

Russian stress has the following features ................................................................................. 14 4 Pronunciation .................................................................................................................................. 16

Russian Pronunciation Guide ......................................................................................................... 16 Palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard) ............................................................................. 16 How to mark the softness of consonants .................................................................................. 17

"", "", "", "", "" ........................................................................................................... 17 The letter "" ........................................................................................................................ 17

Consonant ...................................................................................................................................... 17 Paired Consonants (Plain, Palatalised) ...................................................................................... 17 Unpaired consonants ................................................................................................................. 18 Palatalised Consonants - Palatal Indicators .............................................................................. 18 Noisy consonant ( ) .................................................................................................. 18 Velar consonant ( ) .............................................................................................................. 18

Vowels ............................................................................................................................................ 18 Hard-Indicating Vowels (A, O, , , ) ................................................................................... 19 Soft-Indicating Vowels (, , , , ) .................................................................................... 21

Ikanie .................................................................................................................................... 21 Quick reference on "soft-indicating" vowels ....................................................................... 22

Alphabet ......................................................................................................................................... 23 Additional features of Russian pronunciation .............................................................................. 25

5 The Russian Spelling System ......................................................................................................... 27 Hard and Soft Vowels. .................................................................................................................. 27 Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants ..................................................................................... 28 The Combination of +V (y+vowel) ............................................................................................. 28 The soft sign () ............................................................................................................................. 29 The 7 Consonant Rule (not but ). ............................................................................................ 29 The 5 Consonant Rule ( or ). ...................................................................................................... 29 The Hush Rule (not or but and ). ................................................................................. 29 Upper or Lower Case? ................................................................................................................... 29 Suffixes () .................................................................................................................... 30

6 Useful Russian Words ..................................................................................................................... 32 7 Pronouns ......................................................................................................................................... 35

Classes of Russian pronouns .......................................................................................................... 35 Personal Pronouns .......................................................................................................................... 36 Possessive Pronouns ...................................................................................................................... 38 Demonstrative Pronouns ................................................................................................................ 39 The Interrogative Pronouns ........................................................................................................... 42 Reflexive Pronouns ........................................................................................................................ 46

8 Verbs ............................................................................................................................................... 48 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 48 Aspect ............................................................................................................................................ 49 Usage of Russian Verbs ................................................................................................................. 50 The General Nature of the Russian Verb ...................................................................................... 52

Stem .......................................................................................................................................... 53 What Are Conjugations? ........................................................................................................... 54 Present- Future and The Conjugations ...................................................................................... 56 The Past Tense Endings ............................................................................................................ 58 The Rules of Stem-Ending Combination .................................................................................. 58

Infinitive ........................................................................................................................................ 61 Forming the infinitive ............................................................................................................... 61 Uses of Infinitive ....................................................................................................................... 62

Indicative Mood ............................................................................................................................ 63 Conjugations of Verbs* (..Maybe I have to merge some headings) .............................................. 65 Present Tense ................................................................................................................................ 68 Ending of Present Tense ................................................................................................................ 69 Examples ........................................................................................................................................ 70

A Full Example ......................................................................................................................... 71 Palatalization .................................................................................................................................. 71

Where Does Palatalization Occur? ............................................................................................ 73 Past Tense ...................................................................................................................................... 74 Future Tense .................................................................................................................................. 75 Some Conjugated Russian Verbs ................................................................................................... 76 Verbal Accent in Russian ............................................................................................................... 78 Verbs of Motion ............................................................................................................................. 80

Part 1 - Motion verbs without prefixes. - To Go ....................................................................... 80 Part 2 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion ................................................................................ 82 Part 3 - Other unprefixed verbs of motion -To Carry ................................................................ 82 Part 4 - Prefixed verbs of motion .............................................................................................. 83

The Imperative Mood .................................................................................................................... 85 1st Way To Form Imperative ..................................................................................................... 85 2nd Way To Form The Imperative ........................................................................................... 86

Subjunctive Mood .......................................................................................................................... 88 Reflexive Verbs .............................................................................................................................. 89

Genuine Reflexives ................................................................................................................... 90 Optative Reflexive Verbs .......................................................................................................... 90

9 Nouns .............................................................................................................................................. 91 Cases .............................................................................................................................................. 91 Russian Nouns Genders ................................................................................................................. 92

Exercise ..................................................................................................................................... 93 Russian Genders' Table ............................................................................................................. 94

Plural Nouns .................................................................................................................................. 96 The Nominative Case ..................................................................................................................... 97 The Accusative Case ...................................................................................................................... 97

Accusative Case Form ............................................................................................................. 97 Instrumental Case (With, By) ........................................................................................................ 98 Declension ..................................................................................................................................... 99

Noun Declension Table ............................................................................................................. 99 Mnemonic Rules of Cases ....................................................................................................... 100 I Declension - Masculine Paired Consonants ......................................................................... 101 I Declension - Masculine Unpaired Consonants ..................................................................... 101 I Declension Neuter ............................................................................................................. 102 II Declension - Feminine (and some masculine and epicene) ................................................. 103 III Declension Feminine only .............................................................................................. 104

Russian Names - ................................................................................................ 105 Examples: .......................................................................................................................... 107

10 Prepositions ................................................................................................................................ 109 Prepositions Governing the Nominative Case ............................................................................ 110 Prepositions Governing the Genitive Case .................................................................................. 111

Genitive Prepositions Indicating Non-Existence .................................................................... 112 Genitive Prepositions Indicating Closeness ............................................................................ 112 Genitive Prepositions Indicating Origin .................................................................................. 114 Miscellaneous Genitive Prepositions ...................................................................................... 116

Prepositions Governing the Accusative Case .............................................................................. 117 The Accusative with Verbs of Motion ..................................................................................... 117 Other Prepositions Governing the Accusative ........................................................................ 118

Prepositions Governing the Prepositional Case .......................................................................... 119 Prepositions Governing the Instrumental Case .......................................................................... 121

11 Numerals ..................................................................................................................................... 123 Russian Cardinal Numbers .......................................................................................................... 125 Rules of Numerals ....................................................................................................................... 125 Russian Ordinal Numbers ............................................................................................................ 127

12 Participles .................................................................................................................................. 128 The Present Active Participle ....................................................................................................... 133 The Present Passive Participle ..................................................................................................... 133 The Past Active Participle ........................................................................................................... 134

13 Adjectives 1 ................................................................................................................................ 135 Common Adjective's Endings ...................................................................................................... 136 Long and Short Forms of Adjectives ........................................................................................... 138

14 Adjectives 2 ................................................................................................................................ 140 Normal Adjectives ....................................................................................................................... 140

Normal Adjectives - Hard (-, -, - (but not -)) ........................................ 140 Normal Adjectives - Soft (-) .......................................................................................... 141 Short Adjectives ...................................................................................................................... 142

Comparative Adjectives ............................................................................................................... 142 Method 1 : More / Less ........................................................................................................... 142 Method 2 : Comparative Adjectives ........................................................................................ 143 3. Without ........................................................................................................................ 143

Superlative Adjectives - Most ...................................................................................................... 144 15 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 144

Vocabulary ................................................................................................................................... 144 Index of Conjugated Russian Verbs ............................................................................................. 155 Language Review ........................................................................................................................ 157

Russian Names... ..................................................................................................................... 157 Russian Greetings... ................................................................................................................ 158 Please and Thank-You ............................................................................................................. 159 Really Small Russian Words ................................................................................................... 159 Using the Russian Language ................................................................................................... 160 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 162

A. Verbs ....................................................................................................................................... 162 (verb, imperfective aspect, transitive) ........................................................................ 162

1 Basic facts about Russian LanguageRussian language belongs to Indoeuropean family, Slavic group, East Slavic branch. It derived from Old Russian language in 14th-15th centuries from which also Ukrainian and Byelorussian derived. About 250 million people around the world speak Russian, including 180 million people on the territory of the former USSR. Its closest relatives are the remaining two East Slavic languages: Ukrainian and Byelorussian, Byelorussian being the closest (I must admit, that in Belarus beyond the countryside people speak only Russian, not Byelorussian, so Byelorussian is possibly endangered language). Other relatives include Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene from South Slavic branch and Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Polabian (extinct) from West Slavic branch. On the vast territory of Russia you will see almost no dialectal divisions, almost all people speak common literary language, only old people might still use local dialects which vary little from place to place. Russian is rather synthetic than analytic language and being a synthetic language it is flective, not agglutinative, that is it uses a lot of prefixes, suffixes and flections and it can express in one word what analytic language like English has to use three words for; but unlike agglutinative languages, like Finno-Ugrian and Turkish ones, the same flection might express a lot of different grammatical categories and different flections might express the same grammatical category.

Basic grammatical features there are three persons, two numbers (singular and plural), though there was

dual number in Old Russian there are three genders: masculine, feminine and neutral there is no article nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, participles do decline there are 6 cases: Nominative, Genitive (the so-called Genitive-II is used with

some nouns), Dative, Accusative, Instrumental and Prepositional (Prepositional-II is used with some nouns, though not with the same ones as Genitive-II) (Russian lacks Vocative case which is present in Ukrainian and in many other Slavic languages).

there are 3 classes of noun declension adjectives decline according to case, gender and number and agree with nouns

in case, gender and number there are short adjectives that do not decline verbs conjugate according to person, number, tense, voice and mood there are two classes of conjugation, 3 tenses (Past, Present and Future) and 3

moods (Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative) verbs have two aspects: Imperfective and Perfective, similar to English Present

and Perfect infinitives, e.g. to do - to have done, to go - to have gone, but these two forms in Russian both consist of one word

participles exist in 4 forms: Present Active, Past Active, Present Passive and Past Passive

there are short participles corresponding to two Passive forms of regular participles that like short adjectives do not decline

there are adverbial participles that do not decline and exist in Present and Past forms

word order is free, moreover, by changing the word order any word in a sentence can be emphasized

Basic phonetic features pronunciation is almost phonetic, that is there is one-to-one correspondence

between letters and sounds, but not at all since there is a lot of specific moments which have to be studied

there is no division of vowels into long and short ones but consonants are divided into palatalized (soft) and non-palatalized (hard)

ones unlike English there are no diphthongs stress is free and moving, that is it can fall on any syllable of the word and on

different syllables within the paradigm (the set of the word forms) of the same word

2 Russian alphabetHere you will get familiar with all those strange unreadable symbols you may have seen on the TV screen or elsewhere. You will understand that they are quite readable as well as Latin symbols.Primarily Russian letters will be introduced as small pics in a table since you still might not have the Cyrillic support on your computer, but after the table and in all following lessons only Cyrillic font will be used in writing Russian words.

In the following table all of the 33 letters (both in upper and lower case) which Russian alphabet comprises are presented, along with their rough English equivalents. More detailed consideration of pronunciation rules is still to follow.

a i s -

b j t i, y

v k u -

g l f e

d m h u, ju

e, je n ts a, ja

o, jo o ch

zh p sh

z r shch

Note that these are only transliteration, not pronunciation rules. All present-day Russian letters are derived from ancient Cyrillic alphabet by means of excluding some out-of-date letters and simplifying their writing form. The first reform of Russian alphabet was undertaken in 1708-1710 by Peter the Great and then in years 1735, 1738 and 1758 by the Russian Academy of Sciences. But 3 remaining unnecessary letters remained until 1917 when they were finally abolished.Special care should be taken of the letter "", introduced in 1797 by Russian author N.Karamzin, since it is used nowhere except for the teaching aids, you won't see it anywhere in Russian papers, it is even not present on the Russian keyboard, it is always replaced with the letter "", and as these letters are pronounced differently it will be difficult for a learner to know which sound to pronounce when seeing the letter "" in a word. In fact, all the words with the letter "" should be learned by heart, and there many of them. So to help learners I will use the letter "" in writing words. By the way, there is no "" letter in Ukrainian, combination "" is used instead, so there is no such problem as described above in Ukrainian. You probably noticed that letters "" (hard sign) and "" (soft sign) have no Latin equivalents. That is because these letters are never pronounced in Russian, the former one is used only as a partitive letter between the prefix and the root of the word, e.g. (to have eaten), the latter is used as a softening sign telling that the consonant after which it is written must be palatalized (softened), compare (particle used in retelling the other person's words) - (moth). Soft sign is also used as a partitive sign but mainly in the root of the word, e.g. ((he) drinks), it is used to underline some grammatical features (feminine gender, imperative mood) as well. The letter "" can never start a word except for the very rare words borrowed from Korean, Kazakh and Siberian languages. The letter "" also very rarely starts a word. There a lot of peoples that use cyrillic alphabet, mainly those inhabiting the territory of the former USSR. Among the Slavic languages 4 languages use cyrillic alphabet: Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. However their alphabets are slightly different from the Russian one. In the next table the names of all Russian letters are presented

Letter Name Letter Name Letter Name Letter Name

(hard sign)

(short )

(soft sign)

You can get an mp3 with all these names in a row here.

The Handwriting Russian Alphabet

BGN/PCGN Romanization of RussianFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaBGN/PCGN romanization system for Russian is a method for romanization of Cyrillic Russian texts, that is, their transliteration into the Latin alphabet as used in the English language.There are a number of systems for romanization of Russianthe BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for anglophones to pronounce. It is part of the larger set of BGN/PCGN romanizations, which includes methods for twenty-nine different languages. It was developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use. The portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944, and by PCGN in 1947.This romanization of Russian can be rendered using only the basic letters and punctuation found on English-language keyboards: no diacritics or unusual letters are required, although the interpunct character () can optionally be used to avoid some ambiguity.In many publications a simplified form of the system is used to render English versions of Russian names, typically converting to yo, simplifying -iy and -yy endings to -y, and omitting apostrophes for and . Edward Allworth, for instance, uses a romanization system based upon BGN/PCGN in his 1971 book Nationalities of the Soviet EastPublications and Writing Systems; he transliterates and always to e and respectively and substitutes an i for the y of , and , which makes the system also close to a version of the ALA-LC system without diacritic marks.The following table describes the system and provides examples.

Russianletter Romanization Special provision Examples

() A (a) None = Azov = Tambov

() B (b) None = Barnaul = Kuban

() V (v) None = Vladimir = Ulyanovsk

() G (g) None = Groznyy = Volgodonsk

() D (d) None = Dzerzhinskiy = Nelidovo

()Ye (ye)

1. Word-initially; 2. after vowels; 3. after ; 4. after ; 5. after .

1. = Yelizovo 2. =

Chapayevsk; 3. = Mayyer; 4. = Yuryev; 5. = Syezd.

E (e) All other cases = Belkin

()Y (y)

1. Word-initially; 2. after vowels; 3. after ; 4. after ; 5. after .

1. = Ylkin; 2. = Yey; 3. ; 4. =

Gromady; 5. =

Podymnyy.

() All other cases = Ozrnyy

() Zh (zh) None = Zhukov = Luzhniki

() Z (z) None = Zvenigorod = Vyazma

() I (i) None = Irkutsk = Apatity

()

Y (y)Before , , , or . Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

= Kayafa

Y (y) All other cases- = Yoshkar-Ola = Biysk

() K (k) None = Kirov = Yeniseysk

() L (l) None = Lomonosov = Nelidovo

() M (m) None = Mendeleyev = Kamenka

() N (n) None = Novosibirsk = Kandalaksha

() O (o) None = Omsk = Krasnoyarsk

() P (p) None = Petrozavodsk = Serpukhov

() R (r) None = Rostov = Severobaykalsk

() S (s) None = Skovorodino = Chaykovskiy

() T (t) None = Tambov = Mytishchi

() U (u) None = Uglich = Dudinka

() F (f) None = Furmanov = Ufa

() Kh (kh) None = Khabarovsk = Prokhladnyy

() Ts (ts) None = Tsimlyansk = Yeltsin

() Ch (ch) None = Cheboksary = Pechora

() Sh (sh) None = Shakhtrsk = Myshkin () Shch (shch) None = Shchlkovo

= Rtishchevo () This letter does not occur in the beginning of a word. = Podyezdnoy

()

Y (y)Before , , , or . Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

= Vyudit

yAfter any vowel. Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

- = Suyk-Su

Y (y) All other cases. This letter does not occur in the beginning of words of Russian origin.- = Yttyk-Kl = Tynda

() This letter does not occur in the beginning of a word. = Tyumen

()

eAfter any consonant except . Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

= Dvukhelementnyy

E (e) All other cases

= Elektrogorsk = Radioelektronika

() Yu (yu) None = Yubileynyy = Klyuchevskaya

() Ya (ya) None = Yakutsk = Bryansk

() Ts (ts)Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

= Sootvetstviye

() Shch (shch)Used primarily for romanization of non-Russian-language names from Russian spelling. The use of this digraph is optional.

3 Stress

Word stress on the whole and applied to Russian language Here we will be speaking only about the word stress since there is also the logical stress which accentuates certain word in a sentence. The word stress is a way of differentiating the certain syllable of the word from the others by any means. These means can be different. Generally there are 4 types of stress:

quantitative - the length of the vowel of the stressed syllable is longer than the lengths of unstressed vowels

dynamic - the stressed syllable is more powerful, intensive and loud in pronunciation, sometimes this type is falsely called expiratory since the strength of the syllable is thought to depend on the amount of exhaled air, but these are different phenomena not determining each other

quality of the vowel - the stressed vowel gets clear and distinct and therefore acquires special quality

tonic - pitch of the stressed syllable is higher

There are languages which don't have word stress. Syllables do not differ at all. These are Even, Evenk, Kalmyk and others. But the most languages do have it. Each language usually has not only one type of stress, but different types play a certain role in a language. For example, in Japanese and Swedish the tonic stress plays the main role. It did in Ancient Greek as well but it is displaced by dynamic stress in contemporary Greek.

Russian stress has the following features the main type of stress is the quality of the stressed vowel: even if all the

words in a sentence consist of one syllable and therefore each syllable is stressed one can feel that they are stressed not comparing the stressed syllables with unstressed ones (because there are no unstressed ones) but because of special quality of the stressed vowels, for example (It was raining all the day). Another example: (pencil). Here the last syllable is stressed, the last vowel is the most clear, the last but one is weaker and the first one is very unclear which even can be omitted in hurried speech, the first vowel as well as the second one can be compared to the always unstressed schwa in English

Russian stress is quantitative: the length of the stressed vowel is known to be 1.5 times longer than that of the vowel preceding the stressed one. This type of stress is possible in Russian because there is no opposition between long and short vowels unlike f.ex. Finnish and German where short and long vowels are different phonemes (for example, in Finnish, word "tuli" (fire) cannot be stressed by lengthening the first vowel because we will get another word with another meaning - "tuuli" (wind); by the way it may be interesting that there is word "tulli" (customs) in Finnish as well)

Russian stress is also dynamic, because the strength of the vowel depends on its quality

there is no tonic stress in Russian (there must be no confusing it with

rising and lowering tone in a phrase which does exist in Russian in certain types of sentences)

Now as we have considered the phonetic nature of stress let's consider its placement in a word. There are two types of stress regarding the association of it with a certain syllable of the word:

fixed stress - the stress is always associated with a certain syllable of the word, for example in Finnish, Hungarian, Czech, Latvian stress always falls on the first syllable, in Polish it falls on the last but one syllable, in French it falls on the last syllable

free stress - the stress can fall on any syllable of the word, but each word, of course, has its definite stressed syllable. This type of stress is in Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Lithuanian.

Languages either with fixed or free stress can have one of two following types of stress:

stable stress - the stress does not change its place within the paradigm (the set of word worms) of the word while being declined or conjugated and in all derived words as well, i.e. if a noun has its ending stressed it will have its ending stressed in all possible cases, the same is true for root or prefix

moving stress - the stress does change its place within the paradigm of the same word, for example, if a noun in singular form has its root stressed then it can have its ending stressed in plural form. Note, that languages with fixed stress can have moving stress, for example in Polish word "polski" (Polish) the first (last but one) syllable is stressed which belongs to the root, but in Genitive case "polskiego" the second syllable (also last but one) is stressed which belongs to the ending, not to the root

Russian language has free and moving stress which is the most difficult to study. You must learn the stress of each word otherwise you might be not understood or misunderstood. So in this course I will mark the stress of each word by making the stressed vowel bold, for example (town), (cow), (milk), (pipeline), (palaeontology). You see that in these words stress falls on different syllables, from 1st to 5th. But please don't fall into despair, Russian stress is very simple compared to Lithuanian where the stress is free and moving and in addition there are 3 different types of stress marked with acute, grave or circumflex each of which changes the intonation of the word. Even Russian people can hardly deal with the stress, there are a lot of common errors, for example a lot of people say instead of ((he) phones), instead of (agreement, contract), instead of (cakes) etc. And for this reason there are pronunciation dictionaries in Russia usually intended not for transcribing the words but mainly for marking their stress; all the forms of each word that can make people doubt are included in such dictionaries and there are very many of them, for example in the entry "" (to give) there are 34 forms of this verb. There are words which have two accepted in the literary language ways of stressing, for example and (curds) are both right. You should note that changing the stress in some words leads to totally different meaning, e.g. (castle) and (lock), (Instrumental case of - road) and (expensive, dear), (narrower) and

(already), (Instrumental case of - sweat) and (then, afterwards). As already mentioned above, Russian has moving stress, but however some words have stable and some words have moving stress, for example words (dog), (lemon), (fire) have stable stress since all their forms and words derived from them have their stress on the second vowel of the root (, , respectively) and words (hand, arm), (mountain) have moving stress, since their plural forms (hands, arms) and (mountains) have their stress on the root and not on the ending. The place of stress in a word can change during historical evolution of the language, for example word (music) was in 19th century pronounced as .

4 Pronunciation

Russian Pronunciation GuideHere all aspects of Russian pronunciation will be considered. Right on this chapter you will find only basic pronunciation rules which might be enough for you to pronounce Russian words more or less correct. Now let's discuss each letter of the Russian alphabet in their alphabetic order and see in what ways it can be pronounced. As already mentioned in Basic facts about Russian language Russian language is almost phonetic that is there is one-to-one correspondence between the letters of the alphabet and the sounds. But this almost means that there are some exceptions. The most important of them are discussed here. Well, first to be mentioned, there is no division into long and short vowels in Russian, that means that it is no matter how you pronounce a vowel: long or short, it won't change the word's meaning.

Palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard)Almost all consonants in Russian appear in two forms: palatalised (soft) and non-palatalised (hard) ones. The term palatalised means that while pronouncing the sound the middle part of your tongue is lifted toward the hard palate and makes what is being uttered sound in a higher pitch what is perceived by us as softness. You can determine where your hard palate is by pronouncing the sound [j] like in "yes": it is where your tongue touches the upper jaw. Try to compare sounds [n] and [n'] ( ' denotes palatalisation) in words "not" and "new": in the first one you pronounce [n] because the next [o] vowel is on open vowel and does not require your tongue to lift while pronouncing [n]; on the contrary, in the second word you pronounce [n'] because your tongue automatically adjusts to the pronunciation of the next [j] consonant and lifts toward the hard palate. You see that soft and hard consonants appear in both Russian and English but the difference is the following: in English for example you can't pronounce [n'] before [o] like in "not", you can pronounce it only in certain positions before the

sounds with the similar articulation (e.g. [j] or [i:]), but in Russian the sound [n'] can appear before every sound no matter how it is articulated. For example, there are two absolutely different in meaning words in Russian differing only in palatalisation or non-palatalisation of [n] consonant: "" [nos] (nose) and "" [n'os] (past masculine form of "" (to carry), carried). Another example is "" [mat] (mate) and "" [mat'] (mother).

How to mark the softness of consonants Now you see that palatalisation bears word differentiating function in Russian so you must manage to pronounce every Russian consonant in both hard (which is easy) and soft (more difficult) forms to be understood properly. As mentioned above you should always pronounce soft consonants by lifting the middle part of your tongue toward the hard palate. The problem is how to mark the softness of consonants in writing. This problem is solved differently in different languages: in Polish letter "i" is placed right after the consonant letter to denote its palatalisation, Serbo-Croatian has special letters for each palatalized consonant since there are only four of them in it; if it were the same way in Russian we would have to use 15 additional letters in the alphabet which would be an unbearable burden on the language, so Russian uses two variants of vowel letters instead:

"", "", "", "", ""

Russian uses "" after a consonant letter to mark both its softness and vowel [a] after it (compare (mother) and (to crumple)), "" - to mark the softness of preceding consonant and vowel [o] after it (compare (bullock, ox) and ((he) was leading)), "" - softness of the consonant + vowel [u] after it, "" - softness of the consonant + vowel denoted by letter "" after it. Besides, letter "" always denotes the softness of preceding consonant plus vowel [i] after it as well (e.g. (one)) but the same vowel [i] can also be expressed by the letter "" apart from the consonant (e.g. (to look for)), so "" has no counterpart while "", "", "", "" do have it.

The letter ""

If there is no vowel following the soft consonant softness is marked by the letter "" (soft sign), e.g. (mother), (ring).

Consonant

Paired Consonants (Plain, Palatalised)All but six of the consonants of Russian occur in two varieties: a plain variety and a palatalised variety (pronounced PALatalized). For example, the plain variety of is pronounced somewhat like the p in English poor, and the palatalised variety of is pronounced somewhat like the p in English pure. Similarly, the plain consonant is pronounced somewhat like the n in the middle of English cannon, while the palatalised is pronounced somewhat like the n in the middle of English canyon.The consonants that occur in two varieties are called paired consonants.

Unpaired consonantsThere are also six unpaired consonants, i.e. consonant sounds that do not come in both a plain and a palatalised variety. These are the sounds (noisy consonant) and the sound /y/ (as in 'boy' and ). The difference between Russian palatalised consonants and English consonants followed by y (as in canyon) is that palatalisation (pronounced PALataliZAtion) is produced simultaneously with the consonant, whereas in English the y-sound is a separate consonant. In other words, a palatalized in Russian is a single sound and takes no longer to say than a plain , while in English the combination ny is two sounds and takes longer to say than n alone.

Palatalised Consonants - Palatal IndicatorsThe Russian alphabet does not represent palatalised consonants with separate consonant letters. Instead, palatalisation is indicated by the letter that follows the consonant. Thus, the consonant letter followed by the letter indicates that is palatalised (), while followed by the letter indicates that is plain (). (English uses a similar device: the difference between 'soft g' and 'hard g' is indicated by the letter that follows, not by two separate consonant letters, e.g. the first g of George and gorge.) Notice in the above example ( vs. ) that the vowel sound is considered to be the same, though the vowel letters differ. There are five basic vowel sounds in Russian, but ten vowel letters; five of these letters (called plain indicators) are employed to indicate that the preceding consonant is pronounced in the plain fashion, and the other five (called palatal indicators) are employed to indicate that the preceding consonant is pronounced in the palatalised fashion. The whole system looks like this (In Accented Cyrillic Font, may not appear better):

Vowel Plain Palatal Examples sounds Indicators Indicators/i/ , /e/ , /a/ , /o/ , /u/ ,

Noisy consonant ( )

Velar consonant ( )

Vowels(See also Hard and Soft Vowels)Russian pronunciation rules are rather simple as compared to English. For example, there are no words in Russian that sound the same but have different

spelling like English might and mite. By and large, Russian words will sound correctly if you simply read them letter-by-letter.In this lesson you will learn ten Russian vowels and several basic pronunciation rules. You will find that almost all Russian vowels have pretty close English sounds. In general, Russian vowels are divided into two basic types: "soft-indicating" and "hard-indicating" vowels. The "hard-indicating" vowels are , , , , . Russian "soft-indicating" vowels are formed from their "hard-indicating" counterparts by adding an English sound of "y" at the beginning. Thus you will get such "soft-indicating" vowels as , , , , .Notice, that vowel groups are marked as "soft-indicating" and "hard-indicating" because they indicate whether the following consonant is "hard" or "soft". In this sense, the Russian pronunciation system should be looked at as a unity of vowels and consonants. For now, do not worry if you do not understand what "hard" and "soft" mean. Just try to learn the pronunciation of vowels and memorize what group ("soft-indicating" or "hard-indicating" ) each of them belongs.If you really want to learn Russian vowels, you should practice. Here we give guidelines on pronunciation of five "hard-indicating" Russian vowels. They are accompanied with exercises so that you could practice them with real Russian words.

Hard-Indicating Vowels (A, O, , , )

A as in Ah

This vowel is pronounced in two different ways depending on stress. When stressed, it is close to the sound of the English word Ah, but shorter. When unstressed, it is pronounced like u in the word nut. Practice these words:

mah-ma pah-pa vah-ta va-dah mahs-la

mother father cotton water butter

You've probably noticed that the letter o is pronounced like unstressed a in the words and . This is an important rule of the Russian pronunciation.

Rule #1

In unstressed positions, Russian letter O is

pronounced like unstressed Russian A. In other words, it souns like English u in nut.

O as in law

You already know that unstressed letter o is pronounced like unstressed a. But when it is stressed, is sounds like English aw in law. Practice these words:

kot toch-ka ma-la-ko ston ok-na

cat dot milk groan windows

This vowel does not have an equivalent in English. Try to invest some time in learning it and differentiating from other sounds. To get Russian sound , you should place your tongue in the position right between the positions of English sounds i in kit and u in sugar. Then make a new sound of . Note that this sound is different form the English i in bit. Now practice these words:

dim bit bil mi-lo mi

fog everyday life was soap we

as in wood

The letter sounds like oo in wood. In unstressed positions, it is pronounced a little bit quicker than in stressed positions. Practice these exercises:

stool goo-bah moo-zi-ka zvook

chair lip music sound

as in net

This sound is close to e in pet. Practice these words:

e-tat een-ter-net temp shest

this Internet tempo pole

Quick Reference On "hard-indicating" Vowels

Russian letter Symbol Pronunciation

A (stressed) ah as Ah, but shorter

A (unstressed) a as u in but

O (stressed) o as aw in law

O (unstressed) a as u in but

i no English equivalent

oo as oo in wood

(stressed) e as e in pet

(unstressed) Ee as ee in meet

Soft-Indicating Vowels (, , , , )The basic rule to make a "soft-indicating" Russian vowel is to combine a sound of English y with corresponding "hard-indicating" vowel. For example, to get Russian you should say y + a as if they are one whole (ya). Here I will introduce you into five "soft" vowels of the Russian language , , , , . You will also learn a rule of the Russian pronunciation called ikanie.

as in yahoo

This vowel is pronounced like English ya in yahoo. Practice these words:

ya-ma ryat yakh-ta mya-sa

hole row yacht meat

E as in yes

The Russian sound of e is easy, because it is close to ye in English yes. Do not confuse it with English letter e , which sounds like Russian . Practice these words:

myes-ta lye-ta pyes-nya vye-see-la

place summer song marrily

Ikanie

In the word , an unstressed e sounds like an abbreviated Russian . This rules is called ikanie and it also applies to unstressed and .

Rule #2

In unstressed positions, Russian letters , , are

pronounced like an abbreviated Russian .

as in yonder

This letter is pronounced like yo in yonder. As you can see, is formed from y sound and vowel o: y + o = . Now practice these words:

yozh yol-ka plyon-ka

hedgehog fir-tree film, tape

Rule #3

The letter is always stressed in Russian words.

as in meet

This letter is pronounced like ee in meet. Practice these exercises:

eeg-lah een-dee-ya peek-neek leest

needle India picnic leaf

as in you

The letter denotes the same sound as the English word you. Practice these words:

yook yoo-pee-tyer plyoos

south Jupiter plus sign

Quick reference on "soft-indicating" vowels

Russian letter Symbol Pronunciation

(stressed) ya as ya in yahoo

(unstressed) eeas ee in meet, but very short

(stressed) ye as ye in yes

(unstressed) ee as ee in meet, but very short

(always stressed) yo as yo in yonder

yoo as the word you

(stressed) ee as ee in meet

Alphabet Now let's go to the alphabet. In the following list Russian letters are on the left, their rough pronunciation on the right.

1. - like "a" in "part" but shorter, e.g. (winter), (to give), (yes).

2. - like "b" in "bone", e.g. (banana) (hard), (birch) (soft)3. - like "v" in "vast", e.g. (gate) (hard), (carpet) (soft)4. - like "g" in "get", e.g. (town), (cucumber) (both hard),

(genius) (soft)5. - like "d" in "day", e.g. (water) (hard), (to do) (soft)6. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and ""

like [je] in "yes", e.g. (fir), (diet), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant (except "","" and "", e.g. (woman), (six), (prices), and other consonants in some foreign words, e.g. (phonetics)) and is pronounced almost like Russian "", i.e. like "e" in "let", e.g. (to sing), (newspaper)

7. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [jo] in "yawn" but shorter, e.g. (hedgehog), ((he) gives), ((he) beats), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant (except "" and "", e.g. (silk), (yellow)) and is pronounced like stressed Russian "", i.e. like English "o" in "corn" but shorter, e.g. (honey), (carpet). Note that "" is always stressed in Russian.

8. - like "g" in "rouge", e.g. (yellow), (to live) (both hard); "" is very seldom pronounced in soft form so in the previous examples letters "" and "" did not soften it.

9. - like "z" in "zest", e.g. (to call) (hard), (green) (soft)10. - like "ee" in "teen" but shorter, e.g. (winter), (to drink).

Note that the consonant preceding "" is always soft except for letters "", "" and "" which are always hard in Russian (in these cases letter "" is pronounced identical to ""), e.g. (life), (wide,

masculine), (circus).11. - when beginning a syllable (very seldom) like "y" in "yes" or like "j"

in German "ja", e.g. (iodine), (coyote), when terminating a syllable - like "y" in "may" ("" is pronounced like a semivowel in this case so it is called " " ( short)), e.g. (my), (T-shirt). Note that "" can have only soft form since it is a palatal sound, i.e. it is pronounced with the tongue touching the hard palate, so it is already palatalized and can't be pronounced without palatalization.

12. - like "k" in "kick" but not aspirated, e.g. (cow), (juice) (both hard), (paintbrush) (soft)

13. - like "l" in "look", e.g. (pigeon) (hard), (forest) (soft)14. - like "m" in "moon", e.g. (to wash) (hard), (place) (soft)15. - like "n" in "not", e.g. (she) (hard), (they) (soft)16. - like "o" in "port" but shorter, e.g. (milk), (house)17. - like "p" in "pay" but not aspirated, e.g. (dad) (hard),

(beer) (soft)18. - no exact counterpart in English but it is like rolled "r" in "rock" in

Scottish pronunciation, e.g. (to work) (hard), (river) (soft)19. - like "s" in "say", e.g. (advice) (hard), (family) (soft)20. - like "t" in "time", e.g. (that, masculine) (hard), (shadow)

(soft)21. - like "oo" in "moon" but shorter, e.g. (chair), (moon)22. - like "f" in "fast", e.g. (torch) (hard), (coffee) (soft)23. - no exact counterpart in English since English "h" is pronounced as a

pharyngeal sound and Russian "" is articulated by the back part of the tongue touching the soft palate, it is rather like German "ch" in "Buch", e.g. (bad) (hard), (cunning, crafty) (soft)

24. - like "ts" in "cats" (but pronounced as one sound) or like "Z" in German "Zeit", e.g. (father), (Gipsy) (both hard). Note that this consonant never appears in soft form in Russian unlike Ukrainian and Belorussian.

25. - like "ch" in "check", e.g. (tea), (black) (both soft). Note that this consonant never appears in hard form unlike Belorussian

26. - like "sh" in "shock" but not so soft, e.g. (soul), (noise) (both hard). Note letter "" never denotes soft consonant since there is another letter "" for this purpose

27. - this letter denotes long and soft "" like "sh" in "she" but a bit softer and longer, e.g. (pike), (raincoat). Of course this letter can't appear in hard form like "" can't appear in soft form

28. - this letter is not pronounced in Russian, it is usually a partitive sign between the prefix and the root, it can only appear between a consonant and letters "", "", "", "" which are then pronounced as at the beginning of the word or after a vowel, i.e. with consonant [j] preceding a vowel: [je], [jo], [ju], [ja] (in stressed position). Example: (to

drive up), (advertisement)29. - no exact and even similar counterpart in English, this sound is very

hard to describe, you should pronounce [i:] as in "mean" then lower the middle part of your tongue a bit and bring your lips to neutral position, then you will hear somewhat similar to Russian sound. But better listen to the examples: (soap), (to breathe), (forget), (rat)

30. - this letter like is not pronounced in Russian, like "" it is a partitive sign between the parts of the word, also like "" it can appear between a consonant and letters "", "", "", "" which are then pronounced with a consonant [j] preceding them, e.g. (drunken), ((he) beats). But "" can also appear at the end of the word, e.g. (moth), (horse). In both cases the consonant preceding "" is pronounced soft (except for "", "" which never appear soft)

31. - like "e" in "set", e.g. (this, masculine), (mayor) (quite rare in Russian)

32. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [ju] in "mute" but shorter, e.g. (south), ((they) sing), ((they) sew), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant and is pronounced like Russian "", e.g. (beak), (to smell).

33. - at the beginning of the word, after all vowels and letters "" and "" like [ja] in "yard" but shorter, e.g. (box), (beacon), (drunken), in other positions it marks the softness of the preceding consonant and is pronounced like Russian "", e.g. (to understand), (five).

Additional features of Russian pronunciation

There are two additional features of Russian pronunciation which even a beginner should know of:

vowels in non-stressed positions are reduced more or less depending on a particlular vowel: vowels [u], [] and [i] are not reduced very much (compare (hand,arm) - (hands, arms), (to breathe) - ((he) breathes), (winter) - (wintry)); vowel [a] is reduced pretty much: in the syllable right before the stressed one it is pronounced like "u" in "cut" (1st level reduction), e.g. (lock), in all other syllables except the stressed one and the one right before stressed it is pronounced yet weaker (2nd level reduction), e.g. (caravan) (here we have two unstressed syllables); vowel [o] which is denoted by letter "" is reduced very much in non-stressed syllables: in the syllable right before stressed it gets identical with the vowel [a] in its 1st level reduction, elsewhere with the vowel [a] in its 2nd level reduction, e.g. (milk), (expensive, dear).

(akanie), (okanie), (ikanie)

So you see: whenever you meet letter "" in non-stressed position you should pronounce it as if letter "" were in its place (this process is called (akanie) and is dated back to the 13th century, it influenced mostly territories to the west and south of Moscow, on the contrary to the north-east of Moscow we can still hear a lot of people pronouncing [o] non-reduced in non-stressed syllables, it is called (okanie) ); vowel [e] (denoted by "") and vowel [a] before soft consonants (denoted by "") are in non-stressed syllables reduced to a vowel very similar to [i], e.g. (tree), (wooden), (nine), (ninety) (this process is called (ikanie) )

noise consonants (in Russian they are denoted by the following letters: "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "") are assimilated in the presence of voice when coming in clusters, i.e. if there is a cluster of these consonants, consisting of at least two consonants, then all of them are pronounced voiced or unvoiced solely depending on the last consonant of the cluster being voiced or unvoiced respectively. This process is called regressive assimilation since the last consonant of the cluster influences all the previous ones; in English we can meet progressive assimilation, for example when forming the plural of a noun you choose endings [s], [z] or [iz] depending on the quality of the preceding consonant (compare "books", "tables", "matches"), or in forming the Past Simple form of regular verbs you choose [t] or [d] ending for the same reason (compare "looked" and "saved") so that the first consonant of the cluster influences the following one.

Examples of regressive assimilation: [fkomnati] (in the room) ("" is pronounced as unvoiced [f] in this consonant cluster since the last consonant of the cluster is unvoiced [k]), [addat'] (to give back, perfective aspect) ("" is pronounced as voiced [d] since the last consonant of the cluster is voiced [d]), [lotka] (boat), [zgar] (from the mountain). Exception: voiced consonant [v] (denoted by "") does not influence the previous consonants of the cluster though it gets influenced by the following noise consonants, compare [svojstva] (feature, property) ([v] does not influence the previous consonants neither in the first ("") nor in the second ("") cluster) and [f/sh/] (lice) ("" does get influenced by the following ""). Another feature is that all noise consonants are devoiced at the end of the word (of course if there is no word immediately following it and beginning with the voiced noise consonant, you could see it in one of the previous examples: ), e.g. [got] (year) ("" gets devoiced), [vrak] (enemy) ("" gets devoiced), [maros] (frost) ("" gets devoiced)

5 The Russian Spelling SystemThe Russian spelling system is far simpler than that of English. The system is basically this: one sound, one letter; one letter, one sound. There are a few disparities, but only a few. To give you an idea of just how few: they are all just below on this one page. Russian kids learn them by the end of first grade; if you are past this stage, you should pick them up with no difficulty. Right?

Hard and Soft Vowels. Russian has a system of 'soft' or 'palatalized' consonants which parallels that of the regular consonants. (Soft consonants are pronounced as though you were pronouncing that consonant and a 'y' simultaneously.) Fourteen Russian consonants come in soft-hard pairs and, if the Russian alphabet assigned a distinct consonant for each, we would have to memorize fourteen additional consonant letters. However, because they want their language to remain the simplest language in the world, the Russians decided to use the following vowel to indicate whether the preceding consonant is hard or soft. Since the Russian language has only 5 distinct vowel sounds, this system requires only 5 additional letters. This saves the Russian-language learner 9 letters to memorize! Here are the 10 vowel letters which indicate whether the preceding consonant is 'hard' or 'soft'. Remember, each vowel of the pair is pronounced identically, except for the and the . The approximate pronunciation is given to the right.

Russian Vowels

Hard SoftSound(roughly)

'Ah!'

'Eh?'

'Eee!'

'Oh!'

'Ooo!'

The vowel letters in the left column occur only after 'hard' consonants; those in the right column appear only after 'soft' consonants. You must remember that, after applying all the other rules of Russian, especially when adding noun, verb, and adjectives endings, you must be sure to convert any 'hard consonant' vowel to its 'soft' alternate, if the suffix begins with a vowel and is added to a stem ending on a consonant. Also, if any word ends on a vowel from the right-hand column, then its stem ends on a soft consonant, so when changing the endings on such words, you must consistently use the vowels from the 'soft' column. The following table shows what I mean. [For best results in studying this table, focus on one word at a time and follow the change in each word. Begin with the forms in the left columns; they provide you with the basic vowel used after hard consonants. The right-hand column shows you the rule for converting the basic vowel to the vowel used after a soft consonant.]

Vowel Alternations after Soft Consonants

after hardconsonants

Examples

after soft

consonants Examples

C + - C + >

C + e - C + >

C + - C + >

C + - C + >

C + - C + >

"C" = any soft consonant in the table above. To compare the use of the 'soft' vowels after soft consonants (C) and the 'hard' vowels after hard consonants (C), examine the table below. is the nickname for "Eugene" or "Eugenia" and means "wife". Table shows some of them in their various case forms.

Hard & Soft Consonants

Nominative

Genitive

Accusative

Instrumental

The Combination of +V (y+vowel) Russian orthography does not allow spellings with (jod) plus a v owel, that is, +, +, +, +, +. Instead, the "soft" vowels are also used to indicate these combinations, as the following table illustrates.

Jod + Vowel Combinations

- 'of a table' 'of a genius'

- 'tables' (Pl) 'geniuses' (Pl)

- 'with a table' 'by the genius'

- 'to a table' 'to the genius'

The soft sign () In their attempt to simplify their alphabet for us, the Russians developed a spelling system that leaves us another problem: how to indicate the softness of consonants at the end of words or before other consonants, i. e. when no vowel follows. If the consonant is hard--no problem: "table". However, if the consonant is soft, a soft sign () must be added to distinguish the soft consonant from its corresponding hard variant, e.g. "mother", "door", "day"; "only", "fate", "request".

The 7 Consonant Rule (not but ). Also remember that after (velars) and (hushes) never write but always , e.g. "students" but "coeds", "elevator operators" but "women elevator operators".

The 5 Consonant Rule ( or ).After (noisy consonants, don't confuse it with hushes that have not ) write o if that syllable is accented and e if it is not, e.g. "in a big nice house". (The light letters indicate accent placement.)

The Hush Rule (not or but and ).Finally, after (hashes) never write or but always and .

Upper or Lower Case?The use of capitalization in Russian is different from English. All proper names (including names of towns, rivers, seas, oceans, and continents) are capitalized in Russian the way they are in English, but if a common noun is part of the name, it is not capitalized. Examples: , , , , -.

Names of nations and languages are not capitalized, e. g. , , .

Names of months and days of the week are not capitalized, e. g. ,

, .

In titles, only the first word is capitalized (but names are still capitalized, of course), e. g. , , .

The first word in a sentence is always capitalized. The pronoun is not capitalized unless it is the first word in the sentence. The pronoun is capitalized only in personal correspondence.

Suffixes ()The root defines the basic meaning of the word, e.g. the words , , , , , , and all have to do with learning. The prefix may add a nuance to the basic meaning, e.g. and signify that the process was completed. The ending shows how the word functions in the sentence, e. g. to answer the question ? you'll say , but to answer the question ? you'll say . The word remains the same, but the grammatical construction, and the endings are different, because the word now serves a different function. A suffix is the part of the word that is between the root and the ending. Like prefixes, they create words with the same basic idea, but somewhat different specific meanings.

The Suffix -For example, the suffix - creates a word that means "the person or thing that carries out the action indicated by the root," like , , , , , etc. Like some of the prefixes, many suffixes present a spelling problem because they're rarely stressed, and so you cannot trust the vowel sound that you hear. For example, you may hear the sound -- in the suffix of the word , but the word is spelled with -e-. You can remember this suffix as one that creates adjectives with affectionate, diminutive overtones. The suffix -- does the same, and may sound as if it has an -a- in it. These two suffixes are never spelled with -- or --.

Here are a few common suffixes whose spelling you should remember:--: , --: , (there're no - words in Russian, and only three - words, e.g. )--: --: , (always -- after - -, i.e. noisy/sibilant/hissing consonant)

--: , (-- after a non-noisy/sibilant/hissing consonant)---: , ---: , --: , , --: ---: --: , --: , --: , --: , ---: --: , , , ---: --: (words in - do exist, but they never mean "someone who does what the root signifies")--: , (there's no -- suffix in Russian)---: , ---: , ----: , ----: , -/-: , , , , ,

The adjectival suffixes --, --, --, --, --, are always spelled with two 's. Two verb suffixes deserve special attention. The suffixes in and may sound similar but these verbs behave very differently when conjugated: compare and . If you are not sure about the spelling of a -- verb, you can tell the two types apart by conjugating them:

-- and --: / , / (the suffix changes form -- to -- when conjugated)-- and --: / , / (the suffix stays the same).

And It is very useful to remember that there are many verbs with the suffixes -- and -- and none at all with the suffix -o-. This will help you to spell, e.g. (-a- verb) and (-- verb, e. g. , , ).

6 Useful Russian Words

Personal pronouns I we

you you

, , he, she, it they

Possessive pronouns my our

your your

, ,

his, her, its their

Numbers zero

one eleven

twenty one hundred

two twelve

twenty two

two hundred

three

thirteen

twenty three

three hundred

four

fourteen thirty

four hundred

five fifteen forty five hundred

six

sixteen fifty

six hundred

seven

seventeen

sixty

seven hundred

eight

eighteen seventy

eight hundred

nine

nineteen

eighty

nine hundred

ten twenty ninety Thousand

Days of the weekRussian week begins on Monday and ends on Sunday . Note that all the days are written with the small first letter in Russian..

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

MonthsNote that all the months are written with the first small letter in Russian.

January February March

April May

June July August September October November December

Colours white black red green, blue

yellow orange brown violet gray

7 PronounsPronouns are words that are used as substitutes for nouns. They do not name objects, their characteristics or quantity but only refer to them. There are nine types of pronouns in Russian.

Classes of Russian pronouns

Personal1st person , I, we2nd person , you (sing), you (plural)3rd person , , , he, she, it, they

Reflexive myself, oneself

Possessive , , , , my, your (familiar), our, your (polite/plural), (reflexive) my etc.

Demonstrative, , , ; , , ; ; , , , ;

that; this; these; such; so much/many

Interrogat