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The Focus of This Lesson is Tips to Help Russian Students Overcome Common Errors

Tip 1: Learn Your Cases

• There are no cases in English. That means that nouns and adjectives always stay the same no matter what their function and position in the sentence is. It’s different in Russian. The endings of nouns and adjectives change depending on their function.

• Of course, it’s possible for a native speaker to understand someone who speaks like this but…
  • It can be irritating because you are slaughtering their language
  • It can be totally confusing!

Tip 2: Watch Your Word Stress!

• Like in English, word stress is extremely important. In Russian, you don’t say all the syllables of the word with the same strength, but accentuate one syllable.
• If you don’t stress the right syllable, it can lead to confusion, and native speakers will have difficulty understanding you.
• Unfortunately, unlike in Italian or French, there are no rules to help you stress a word correctly. It’s just something you have to learn for each word.

Tip 3: Don’t Repeat the Verb in the Question

• In Russian, you use a different verb ending for “I” and “you” in the present. It is very common for English speakers to forget about it, as in English the verb doesn’t change. Also, they hear the ending -ешь in the question and tend to reply using ешь.

Tip 4: Watch Your Gender

• In Russian, the ending of the verb in the past tense changes depending on the gender and the plurality.

• If the subject is я or ты, use the ending -л if the pronoun refers to a man, and -ла if it refers to a woman.

Tip 5: Don’t Try to Translate “It”

• In Russian, the pronoun “it” doesn’t exist. We replace “it” with “he” or “she,” depending on their gender. That means, for example, that when you speak, you have to remember that книга (”a book̶ is feminine, and that you should refer to it as она (”she”).

This blogpost is a brief overview of different tenses and articles found in Russian language.

Tenses

• The Present
  • In English, you use a different tense in the present depending on whether it’s an action that happens regularly or it’s happening now. In Russian, you use just one tense in the present, no matter whether the action happens regularly or is happening now.

• The Past
  • The past form of regular verbs in English end in -ed. You have to learn irregular verbs individually. In English, there are many irregular verbs. Guess what? In Russian, there are hardly any irregular verbs in the past tense!

• • • If the subject is masculine, the ending is -л:
      Он видел фильм.
      “He saw the film.”
    • If the subject is feminine, the ending is -лa:
      Она видела фильм.
      “She saw the film.”
    • If the subject is neuter, the ending is -ло:
      Письмо было на столе.
      “The letter was on the table.”
    • If the subject is plural, the ending is -ли:
      Они видели фильм.
      “They saw the film.”

Articles

• An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun.
• The articles in the English language are “the,” “a,” and “an.” In short, it is what you’re referring to (e.g., “the cat”). In Russian, there are no articles!

The Verb “To Be”

• In English, you have three forms of this verb,”am,” “is,” and “are.” In Russian, you should not use the verb “to be” in the present tense, so you don’t have to worry about it at all.

Making Questions

• In English, you need a different auxiliary depending on the tense, and you change the word order. In Russian, you just change your intonation. Nothing else changes.

Gender

• You can tell the gender just by looking at the ending of the word. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant. Feminine nouns usually end in -а or -я. Neuter nouns usually end in -о or -е.

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Have a healthy and happy holiday season.

From the RussianPod101.com Team!