«O великий, могучий, правдивый и свободный русский язык!»

—Тургенев

Русский язык (Russian)

Russian is what they speak in Russia.

It is a sophisticated and complex language, which carried the universal works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but also of Gogol and many other Russian writers. It is very poetic, due to its peculiar declinations and conjugation that allow for many beautiful rhymes ending in a, in e or ef, in i or iye, in o or of or even more exotic things like ik or ak (and still others, ending in m, s, etc.) It has a nice musical ring but is also difficult to listen to, for instance I can not differentiate читать (read, /tʃɪˈtatʲ/) from считать (count, /ʂtʃɪˈtatʲ/), tchi-tat from schee-tat. It is a very humane language, it refers to one another, or each other, as друг друга. The friend of a friend.u

The most immediate feel one can have of Russian is its alphabet—the Cyrillic alphabet—which almost look like a joke at the interface between Latin and Greek glyphs. This allows for the horrendous practice known as Faux Russian, which is the most insulting lack of interest an occidental can manifest at others' culture. Everybody should be able to transliterate words which are recognizable even if you only know the alphabet, such as the famous ресторан (restaurant). There's fun for everybody to feel conversant in the language, e.g., for French: шанс, юрист, ..., or English лимон, волейбол, бизнес партнёр, ..., or Spanish лунаItalian, помидор, etc.

Russian grammar is notoriously difficult, so we discuss details of it on its own page, as well as Russian words and concepts or idioms, but cannot escape here general statements.

One source of difficulty is the many exceptions of conjugation and accords, see for instance the case and number rules according to which 2, 3 and 4 demand a different conjugation than 1, which is fair enough (that is the singular/plural notion of most languages), but then numbers from 5 to 20 require still another conjugation, and then higher numbers ending in 1, 2, 3 or 4 like 21 or 72 go back to conjugate like 1 to 4 again, and then 25 and 107 and everything else carries on as if higher than 20. What a strange rule. Another curiosity is that the past tense conjugates in gender, but not the other tenses, so your sex does not matter for your actions in the present or future, but it does for what you did yesterday. It would have had some intuitive justifications for things like imperative, where it does not, however, depend on gender.

Another difficulty is that, like most slavic languages, is the built-in grammatical aspect of perfective (completed) and imperfective (ongoing) verbs. Most actions can be understood as punctual and achieved or, on the other hand, repetitive, usual and still continued. Most languages have such notions in the past, where this manifests, however, by the conjugation of the same verb. In Russian, although often connected in their constructs, different verbs convey this meaning. This makes it even more peculiar in the present tense. For instance while everybody knows я люблю тебя, only Russian speakers appreciate the subtler я полюблю тебя, which turns love into a perfective concept of a completed action. This, in other languages, translates as a future: I will come to love you, or I will have loved you (with future and past cancelling each others). This, indeed, differs from the canonical future Я буду любить тебя, I will love you, which has the same understanding as in other languages.

Another difficulty is the shuffling of letters of lookalike words to form different meanings, sometimes directly opposite (e.g., выключить and включить), or deviations from one letter, such as здание (building), задание (task). Dislexic Russians must have a hell of a time! This, on the other hand, also power up the language for poetic constructs.

Russian has the interesting characteristic of being able to convey very complex meanings in short sentences, but to make natural, cheerful or positive statements quite intractable, such as «с удовольствием» to mean "gladly", "with pleasure", or «самый лучший» for "best", as well as important ones requiring concision, such as «Будьте внимательны» for "be careful".

Links

• Learn Russian from the streets.
• all words, nouns, verbs & adjectives.
• russianlessons.nett Vocabulary, verbs, grammar, etc.