Serafima Gettys - Russian For Dummies

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From famous Russian writers to a polite way to decline an invitation, this icon marks a wide variety of curious and useful facts about Russian culture.

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In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Russian For Dummies Cheat Sheetin the Search box.

Now that you’re familiar with the anatomy of Russian For Dummies, 3rd Edition, you can embark on your journey. You can start anywhere, and you don’t have to go in a specific order. Just choose a topic that seems appealing, find the corresponding chapter in the table of contents, and start speaking Russian!

If you’re at a loss about where to start, please take our advice and begin with Chapter 2: It provides you with a very powerful tool — the ability to read Russian. Chapter 3is a good place to get a grasp on the essentials of Russian grammar. After that, you can go straight to the sections that deal with information you need urgently. Wherever you decide to start, you can find plenty of useful phrases to get you speaking Russian and exploring the benefits that your language skill brings. And now we wish you Cчacтливoгoпути!(sh’ees- lee -vah-vah pooh- tee !) ( Bon voyage! ) .

Part 1

IN THIS PART …

Learn the basics of Russian.

Explore the Russian alphabet.

Understand basic Russian grammar.

Say some simple Russian expressions.

Get your numbers, times, and measurements straight.

Identify items at home using Russian.

Chapter 1

IN THIS CHAPTER

Approaching the Russian alphabet

Looking at grammar in a new light

Getting started with some useful words and expressions

Putting Russian to use in common social situations

Taking Russian on the road

Russian has a reputation for being a difficult language. Is it? We would say that different is a better word to describe the experience of studying Russian. Russian actually is a distant cousin of English. Both languages belong to a huge Indo-European family of languages — unlike, say, Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese, which belong to completely different language-family clans.

This chapter provides you a taste of Russian. Get ready to study this fascinating language!

If you were to ask people on the street what they think the most difficult thing about learning Russian is, most of them (slightly taken aback by your question) would likely say, “The alphabet!”

But we’re here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth: The Russian alphabet is perhaps the easiest part of learning Russian. In fact, you may be surprised to hear that most people are able to start reading Russian in several hours. That’s how easy the Russian alphabet is!

Don’t believe us? Consider this: The Russian alphabet, often called the Cyrillic alphabet, was named after a ninth-century Byzantine monk named Cyril, who developed it with the help of his brother, Methodius. (Please don’t ask us why Methodius’s name wasn’t added to the name of the alphabet. Life isn’t fair.) Cyril and Methodius wanted to translate the Bible into one of the Slavic languages spoken by the Eastern European pagan tribes, because the brothers were planning to convert those tribes to Christianity. These languages had never been written down before. When the brothers were creating their alphabet, they borrowed quite a few letters from the Latin alphabet to indicate the sounds produced by the tribes. Luckily for those tribes (and for anyone studying Russian), a lot of the borrowed letters sound the same in Russian as they do in any Latin-based alphabet (like English).

Are you ready to jump in and start reading Russian? Chapter 2shows you how to sound out the letters of the Russian alphabet.

In addition to the alphabet, grammar is responsible for earning Russian its reputation for being a difficult language. Don’t worry, though! Chapter 3makes your transition from English grammar to Russian grammar as smooth as possible. We give you the scoop on Russian nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and sentence construction.

One benefit of Russian: Compared with English, which enforces the strictest order of words on its speakers, Russian allows a completely free, almost anarchic order of words. In the sentence “The dog chased the boy,” for example, the Russian words for boy and dog can switch places, but the sentence will still mean “The dog chased the boy.”

But to fully enjoy this freedom of word order, Russians had to pay a dear price in the form of six grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental, and prepositional), which anybody who speaks Russian has to juggle constantly to create sentences that make sense. Don’t let this fact intimidate you, however. With the guidelines we provide in Chapter 3, you’ll have a handle on cases in no time.