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| Russian alphabet in
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Russian
Russian (Russian: русский язык, transliteration: russkiy
yaz'ik) is the main language of Russia. It is also
spoken in by many people in other parts of the former
Soviet Union, such as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Latvia,
Lithuania, Turkmenistan and Estonia.
Russian, like other Slavic languages, are Indo-European
languages. Russian is one of the three main East Slavic
languages; the others are Ukrainian and Belarusian. More
people speak Russian than any other Slavic language.
Written Russian does not use the Latin alphabet that
English and the West Slavic languages do. It uses the
Cyrillic alphabet, whose letters, like those of Latin,
came from Greek, but are different from them. The other
East Slavic languages and some of the South Slavic
languages use the Cyrillic alphabet as well.
Russian is an official language of Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It is one of the
six official languages of the United Nations, along with
English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese. |
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Standard Russian
Standard Russian is also called modern literary Russian
(Современный русский литературный язык). It first
appeared at the beginning of the 18th century. Peter the
Great was then working to make the state more modern.
Standard Russian grew out of the dialect of Russian
spoken by people in and around Moscow. In some ways,
Standard Russian was also like the Russian used in
government offices in earlier centuries.
Mikhail Lomonosov wrote the first book on Russian
grammar in 1755. The Russian Academy of Sciences
published the first full dictionary of Russian in 1783.
The grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of Russian
became stable and were standardized at the end of the
18th and during the 19th century. This was the "Golden
Age" of Russian literature, which became famous
throughout the world.
All of Russia began to use Russian as the language of
literature, education, and official communication. Until
the 20th century, only the upper classes and people in
cities spoke the literary language. Russians from the
countryside continued to speak their local dialects. In
the 20th century, all children were then required to go
to school. Many people had radios and televisions, which
helped spread Standard Russian. In the 20th century,
Russian dialects mostly disappeared by the middle of the
century. Standard Russian replaced them almost
completely. |
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Names
In Russian, a person's name has three parts: the first
name, the second name and the family name.
Parents choose the first name for their child. Some
common Russian names for boys are Ivan, Vladimir,
Mikhail and Nikolai. Some common Russian names for girls
are Anna, Anastasia, Svetlana and Yekaterina.
The second name is the patronymic (Russian: otchestvo)
and comes from one's father's first name. For example, a
boy whose father is Ivan would havae as patronymic is
Ivanovich. If a boy's father is Nikolai, his patronymic
is Nikolaevich. If a girl's father is Ivan, her
patronymic is Ivanovna. If her father is Nikolai, her
patronymic is Nikolaevna. The patronymic of a boy ends
with -ovich or -evich. The patronymic of a girl ends
with -ovna or -evna.
Boys have the same family name as their fathers. Girls
use their father's family name but an -a is added to the
end of the name. A man whose family name is Romanov
would have a son with the family name Romanov and a
daughter with the family name Romanova.
If a man's name is Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov and has
a son, Aleksei, and a daughter, Anastasia, the son's
full name is Aleksei Nikolaevich Romanov, and the
daughter's full name is Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.
There are also many people in Russia whose family names
are not Russian. Some of the family names have only one
forma and so is the same for both sons and daughters.
Some examples are Glushko (a Ukrainian name), Rubinstein
(a German/Jewish name) or Shevardnadze (a Georgian
name). |
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Grammar
Case
Like Latin, Greek, and German, Russian has a case
system. In Russian, it applies to nouns, pronouns,
adjectives, numerals and participles with a set of word
endings (sounds/letters attached to the ends of words)
that show the grammatical roles of words in a sentence.
Because the grammatical roles are shown by the endings,
word order is freer in than in English. There are six
cases in Russian.
The nominative case, the form listed in the dictionary,
is used for the subject of the sentence. The genitive
case often shows ownership. The accusative case is used
for a direct object, the dative case for an indirect
object. The instrumental case is used for the tool or
instrument with which something is done. The
prepositional case is used after certain prepositions,
such as "in" and "on", but other prepositions may
require the use of other cases. Each case has other uses
than those listed.
Gender and number
In Russian, nouns have one of three genders: masculine,
feminine, or neuter. Masculine nouns usually end in
consonants, neuter nouns usually end in -o or -e, and
feminine nouns usually end in -a or -я. The plural acts
much like a fourth gender. since gender does not alter
plural words.
Adjectives
In Russian, an adjective must agree with the word that
it describes in gender and number. In the nominative
case, adjectives that describe feminine words usually
end in -ая or -яя. Those that describe masculine words
usually end in -ый, -ий or -ой. Those that describe
neuter words usually end in -ое or -ее. Those that
describe plural words usually end in -ые or -ие. The
endings change depending on case. |
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 Kiddle: Russian
Wikipedia: Russian |
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