Russian

Pronunciation and alphabet

Russian is a nontonal language; the accent of the words is variable (it can move from one form to another). The not accentuated vowels are short and reduced (the not accentuated syllable preceding the accent being less reduced than the others).

Russian is written with a version of the Cyrillic alphabet comprising 33 letters.

The following table presents the capital letters and their equivalent spelled according to the French uses:

Orthography

Russian is practically written as he decides, although certain letters escape this rule, the such vowels not accentuated or certain consonants. For example, in " говорить "to pronounce " gavarit" (to speak), “O” decide between “O” and “has it”. Similar in " хорошо " (well) with the first both “O” (the third on the other hand really decides “O”). The “E” has also variable pronunciations according to whether it is accentuated or not. For example, in " нет " (not), he decides “IE”. In " семья " (family), he decides almost like a “I” short. In verbs like " чувствовать " (to feel, feel), the first “в” does not decide. In addition, the final consonants or antéfinales sound undergo a deafening, known in the majority of the Slavic languages. For example, in " лoшадь " (the horse), the final “д” decides almost like “wet you. In the words finished by " его " or " ого " (case of the possessive adjectives to the singular genitive), the “г” decides like a “в”. In the reflexive verbs, the final particle " ся " characterizing generally decides “sié”.

Despite everything, the writing rules are clear.

The current orthography is the fruit of the great reform of 1918 (which had been proposed before the Révolution) and of the coding of 1956. The punctuation, coming initially from the Byzantine Greek, was modified with the S by analogy with the German and French system.

Vocabulary

Grammar of Russian

Russian is an inflected language. The Russian variation has six cases:

Personal
Accusative
Genitive
Instrumental Dative
Rental (or Prepositional)

(A Vocatif remains in the religious invocation.)

Variations

First variation - male substantives

Accusative: for animated the accusative is identical to the genitive. For the inanimate ones it is identical to the personal one.
1. One writes и after hushing, г , к or х .
2. One writes ей after hushing.
3. After a soft consonant one writes ё under the accent, if not E .

First variation - neutral substantives

1: After hushing one writes о under the accent, if not E.
2: After a soft consonant one writes ё under the accent, if not E.
3: For the substantives finishing in ие with the personal singular one writes ии.
4: For the substantives finishing in ие with the personal singular one writes ий.

Second variation - female substantives

1: One writes и after hushing, г , к or х .
2: After hushing one writes о under the accent, if not E .
3: After a soft consonant one writes ё under the accent, if not E .
With the plural accusative one distinguishes animated (= genitive) from inanimate (= personal).

Third variation

One notes that the substantives in soft sign (- ь) in this group are all female, except путь (way) which is male.

Neutrals in - я

Article

Like the majority of the Slavic languages, Russian does not have any article. The definite or indefinite character of a substantive is indicated by its position compared to the verb.

Example:

"Девушкапришла" (literally: " Young girl is arrivée") will result in: " the young girl is arrivée".

"Пришладевушка" (literally: " Young person fille" arrived;) will result in: " a young girl is arrivée".

Name

There are three kinds (masculine, female, neutral) and two numbers (singular, plural). The duel remains in rare cases.

Generally, the termination of the personal singular indicates the kind.

Adjective

The Russian adjectival system, just like the verbal system with the past, knows only four “kinds”. It distinguishes masculine, female and neutral in the singular (still that the masculine and the neutral merge starting from the genitive), but applies same plural to all the kinds. A specificity of Russian, compared to the other Slavic languages, is the existence of a long form (described below) and of a short form (not déclinable) of the adjectives. The short form is used only when the adjective is epithet.

With the accusative (except the female singular) one distinguishes animated (termination as with the genitive) from inanimate (termination as to personal). It is noted that all the neutrals are inanimate (thus accusative like personal).
the masculine adjectives finish in ой under the accent (e.g.: большой - large).
For the adjectives in chuintate and ж which does not have the accent finally (i.e. all except большой and чужой) the O according to the hushing one is replaced by E . (For example: хорошый gives хорошего, хорошему etc)
After the hushing ones or the letters г , к and х one writes и in the place of ы . In the same cases, one never writes я but has , like never ю but у .

One distinguishes moreover between the adjectives with hard root (cf above) and those with soft root. For the latter one will note that:

For the masculine adjectives ending with personal in ий and the neutral adjectives in ее one declines as follows его , ему , им and eм .
the feminine adjectives in яя are declined юю and ей .
the plural adjectives in ие are declined их , им , ими et' их .

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

When a preposition is used directly in front of a pronoun of the third nobody, one prefixes it with н- : унего , снеё , etc
the pronouns do not know the difference enters animated and inanimate. The accusative is always equal to the genitive.

Conclusive pronouns

этот and тот

Possessive pronouns

мой and твой

наш and ваш

его , её and их is not déclinables.

Interrogative pronouns

кто and что

чей

Verb

the Russian conjugation knows only two forms - present and past - and four modes - code, requirement, gerund and takes part. There are with the present six people (three in the singular and three in the plural), and the verbal forms are sufficiently different from/to each other so that the Russians employ the personal pronouns rather little ( я, ты, ононо, мы, вы, они ). The verbs with last have only four forms: masculine, female, neutral and plural: what means that the verbs do not agree with the personal pronouns but with the people. As for other times, they are built with acronyms (the imperfectif future is built with the verb being with the future + infinitive; the conditional one is built with the past + the particle бы ).
the Russian verb, as in the other Slavic languages, presents two “aspects”: perfective and imperfectif which results sometimes in a complete change of the radical (examples: говоpить and сказать , to speak ; класть and положить , to pose ). It is this characteristic which is one of the difficulties of Russian for the student of the countries of Western Europe. The imperfectif aspect is used to indicate an action present, a not finished action passed or an action which are repeated in time. The perfective one, it, is used to describe a last action which are completely finished, a future action which do not exist yet or a single action.
Particular case of the verb to be ( быть ). If the forms of passed and the future remained, the present, him, disappeared. To express this verb, the Russians use with the writing an indent (-).
As for the verb to have ( иметь ), it is rather rare. To translate the membership, the Russians use a particular form: уменяесть … (to say: I have …), literally at home is…

Dialects

One distinguishes three groups from dialects in Russia d' Europe: septentrional, central and southernmost Russian. Each one of these groups breaks up itself into several dialects. To also consider, although not raising of the dialectal aspects: the Russian language in its slang form. The " language verte" , the " mat" come from the prisoners and " zek" is used with the daily newspaper. Its lexicon is rich, except the aphereses, apocopes and other derivations, and polysemias wide.

Septentrional Russian

Located at the North-East of a line connecting the Lake Ladoga to Yoshkar-Ola while passing by Novgorod and Yaroslavl. This group is characterized by a pronunciation from the " o" not accentuated like a /o/, the " g" is guttural and the " t" decides hard.

Dialect of Ladoga and Tikhvine
Dialect of Kostroma
Dialect of Vologda
Dialect of Onega
Dialect of Beloozersk

Central Russian

The septentrional limit passes by Saint-Pétersbourg, Novgorod, Ivanovo and Nijni-Novgorod until Tcheboksary. In the south, this area includes/understands Vélikié Louki, Moscow and Penza. The local accent comprises features borrowed as well from septentrional Russian as with southernmost Russian. One distinguishes the Western part (pronouncing /o/ even except accent) and the oriental party (pronouncing O not accentuated /a/).

Western Dialect of Pskov
Western Dialect of Novgorod
Eastern Dialect of Moscow and surroundings
Eastern Dialect of Yegorevsk and surroundings
Eastern Dialect of Temnikov and surroundings
Eastern Dialect of the area the Volga - Vladimir
Eastern Dialect of the the Ural

Southernmost Russian

The area extends to the south from Vélikié Louki and passes by Ryazan and Tambov. One pronounces there “O” not accentuated /a/, “G” fricative and “you is wet.

Dialect of Riazan
Dialects of the Dnepr
Dialect of Oskol

The Russian language today

Russian is spoken today by more than 300 million people, of which 150 million speaks it like native tongue. In addition to the fact of being spoken by the large majority about the Russians about Russia, its prestige is always important in Ukraine, Bielorussia and with the Kazakhstan where still an important Russian minority remains. In the republics of the the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russian is always used as common language between the various ethnos groups. Because of immigration, Israel, the Germany, the Canada, the the United States and some other countries count also important communities of Russian language.

It should be noted that the people nonRussian of old the the USSR often have a better written control of the Russian language than of their own language, which makes it possible the press Russophone to remain. In the Baltic States, the nationalism of after-independence made lose with Russian his official role, and the Russian minority is seen today obliged to fight to maintain the role of their language in these countries.

Out of the ex-USSR, the prestige of Russian regressed because of loss of influence of Russia in the world. The countries of Central Europe, where the training of Russian was formerly important, turn today to the English and the German , even towards the French. In spite of that, the opening of Russia towards the western world lets hope for a revival of the Russian language from here a few decades if Russia concerns itself its current crisis. Russian remains finally an important language of communication in the space.

Internal bonds

Transcription of Russian in French
accented Apophony in Russian
Name of anybody in Russian
Negation in Linguistic Russian
linguistic Impérialisme
Dictionary of the languages
Languages by family
Indo-European Languages
Slavic Languages
Swadesh List of Russian
Russian speaker
Russenorsk
ISO 9

External bonds

List of Russian proverbs
the forum of the Russophiles
free audio Base of Russian words
To learn Russian
Dictionary Russian-French
Glossary Russian-French from slang
4 Russian words the every day
Dictionary Russian Freelang Dictionary romanisé-French/French-Russian romanized
Russian Keyboard in line
On the decline of the Russian language in the world (in Russian)
Transliteration of the Russian language
Virtual Russian Keyboard a Russian virtual keyboard freeware.

Beats-smg: Rosu kalba Be-X-old: Расейскаямова Nds-nl: Russisch Simple: Russian language Zh-classical: 俄語

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