Tag Archives: Russian grammar
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…
Не За Что Or Ни За Что Posted by Nadya on Jan 22, 2021
In today’s topic, we will talk about the difference between “нЕ за что” and “нИ за что“. Even some Russian speakers sometimes make mistakes in the spelling of these two phrases. However, it is important to realize that their meanings are different. Both sound like just one word. Let’s look at some examples of using “не…
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…
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…
Particles. Sentence Structure Part II Posted by bota on Oct 15, 2020
We continue our quest of making sense of sentence structure in Russian. While Part I covered the basics of the subject and verb placement, this blog focuses on the smaller but equally important parts of the sentence. It may seem a bit more obvious where to place a word if it’s a verb or a…
Was Yoda Russian? (Sentence Structure in Russian. Part I) Posted by bota on Oct 5, 2020
“Do or do not. There is no try.” While Yoda’s OSV (object-subject-verb) word order may seem a bit unusual, the Russian translation of the quote doesn’t sound all that strange or other-worldly, all because the Russian sentence structure is flexible. So, please do try, because learning about the nuances of word order variations in Russian…
Let’s dig deeper into the Russian verbs for gardening Posted by bota on Sep 17, 2020
September is a busy month if you are a gardener in Russia. Many are spending their weekends busy на да́че, reaping the fruits (and vegetables) of their spring sowing and getting their gardens ready for the winter. We’re going to get our hands dirty by digging into verbs related to gardening (садово́дство и огоро́дничество) and…