Tag Archives: русская грамматика
April fun with paronyms Posted by bota on Apr 23, 2021
What better month than April to cover a few words that confuse even native Russian speakers? Ведь не даром говорят, «Непостоя́нен обма́нщик-апре́ль: на дню семь пого́д». (There is a good reason people say that “April-liar is fickle because it changes the weather seven times per day”.) Here are a few trickster paronyms, one pair for…
Are conjunctions necessary? Part II Posted by bota on Apr 5, 2021
We’ve talked about Russian sentences without conjunctions before, but we’ve yet to discuss my favorite Russian punctuation sign “тире́” (dash) and its role in these бессою́зных предложе́ниях (sentences without conjunctions). There are six instances where you can use “тире́” (dash; typed as an m-dash sign) in place of a conjunction. I’ll provide examples for each…
Russian Diminutives Part II Posted by bota on Jan 26, 2021
“Diminutives” is one of the coolest aspects of Russian, but you know what’s even cooler? Finding an old Part I blog on this channel about diminutives and realizing that there isn’t a Part II in the archives. Your insightful comments on that blog (and really all the blogs here) are so contagiously curious about the…
ЖЕ: particle or conjunction? Posted by bota on Dec 14, 2020
ЖЕ [pronounced “zhe”, see here for audio] can be either a particle or conjunction. Either way, it is written separately from the words it modifies and can add a lot of “flavor” to your Russian. ЖЕ as a particle The main function of this particle is to either intensify the word before, or show the…
Should I use один or раз? Posted by bota on Nov 13, 2020
Ever wondered why some Russians count “one, two, three” as “оди́н, два́, три́…” while others say “ра́з, два́, три́…”? Why would there be two Russian words to say “one”? Here’s how to differentiate between the two if you’re a beginner Russian learner. “Ра́з, два́, три́” is really only used when counting orally, like when a…
Ordinal Numbers in Russian Posted by bota on Nov 2, 2020
На пе́рвый-второ́й рассчита́йсь! This phrase has got to be the only thing I remember from НВП classes in high school (Нача́льная Вое́нная Подгото́вка = basic military training). It’s part of the drill to assign either “first” or “second” to people in a line so that they can easily be divided into two groups for other…
What is “pознь”? Posted by bota on Oct 23, 2020
What if I told you there was a single word in Russian to help one convey that just because something is labeled X doesn’t mean that all things X are like the first thing X? The word in question is рознь and here’s how it works. You take a Russian noun, put it in the…