There is a good Russian saying «чем дальше в лес, тем больше дров» [lit: the further one gets into the forest, the more firewood there is] that means the further in, the more complicated things get. Russians have lots of modern-day endings to this saying – funny, silly, and yes, some are rude. I’ll add my own one here, inspired by I.I. Shishkin’s famous painting – «чем дальше в лес, тем голодней медведи» [the further into the forest, the hungrier the bears].

My name is Yelena and I have a problem with the English language. Apart from my very embarrassing inability to correctly pronounce such words as “sheet”, “beach” and “ship” and occasional confusion of “jock” with “joke” in e-mails, the one grammar issue that gets me the most is articles. All those pesky “a” and “the” just «сводят меня с ума» [are drive me crazy]. Even after years of living in the US I get them only about half the time.

The way I see it, learners of Russian can legitimately complain about the overabundance of letters in the alphabet, confusing word stress or the problematic accusative case, but not about articles. For it is a huge advantage of Russian language over English is that there are no «артикли» [articles] in Russian.

But how do Russians manage without these «определители существительных» [nouns’ determiners]? Well, they don’t sweat about them and either omit determiners altogether or «заменить» [substitute] them.

The three words that can be used in place of the indeterminate article “a/an” are «некий» [some kind of], «какой-то» [some kind of], and «один» [one].

«Когда на работе было нечего делать, Джон читал какую-нибудь книгу» [When there was nothing to do at work, John would read a book].

«Один сотрудник поинтересовался, что же Джон читает» [A co-worker was curious what John was reading].

«Через несколько дней был выпущен некий меморандум, запретивший читать книги на работе» [A few days later, a memo came out forbidding reading at work]

«Джон перешёл на чтение какого-то блога» [John switched to reading a blog]

For determinate articles, substituting words include «тот» and «этот» [this]. To continue John’s story,

«Этот блог оказался таким интересным, что Джон проводил на нём всё больше и больше времени» [The blog was so interesting that John started spending more and more time on it]

«Тот же сотрудник снова поинтересовался, чем Джон теперь занят» [The co-worker once again got interested in John’s activities]

«Так как блог был более интересный, чем книга, сотрудник Джона тоже стал его втихаря почитывать» [Since the blog was more interesting than the book, John’s co-worker also got into reading it on the sly]

Note how in the last sentence the articles in front of “blog” and “book” were simply dropped. Back to John and his friend,

«У них не оставалось времени на работу» [They did not have any time left for work]

Here again “any” was dropped altogether.

So the rule is really simple:

If it’s “a noun”, use «какой-то», «некий», «один» for masculine nouns; «какая-то», «некая», «одна» – for feminine nouns; and «какое-то», «некое», «одно» – for neuter nouns. Or skip substitutions altogether.

If it’s “the noun”, use «тот», «этот» and any variations such as «этот самый» for masculine nouns; «та», «эта», «эта самая»- for feminine nouns; and «то», «это», «это самое» for neuter nouns. Or, once again, skip substitutions altogether.

But by now you know that in Russian language «нет правил без исключений» [there are no rules without exceptions]. Same is with this rule. And so the story continues:

Obviously, the blog that John read was a very interesting one. The more time he spent reading it, the less time he had left for work and the higher were his chances of getting fired.

When you see grammatical structures such as “the more the better”, “the sooner the better”, “the less, the higher”, etc, those articles actually get translated, but in a special way by using «чем… тем…» construct:

«чем больше денег, тем лучше живётся» [the more money one has, the better one lives]

«чем раньше придёте, тем раньше уйдёте» [the sooner you show up, the sooner you get to leave]

«чем выше залез, тем дольше падать» [the higher the climb the longer the fall]

«чем дальше в лес, тем больше дров» [the further in, the more complicated things get]

«чем ближе беда, тем больше ума» [the closer the misfortune, the smarter one gets]

Can you think of any sayings that use «чем… тем…»?