Russian cheat sheet

Cyrillic script

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Letters that resemble Latin letters do not always represent the same sounds.

Р is an r sound; С is an s sound.

Cases

Six main cases mark roles such as subject, object and relationships expressed with prepositions. Endings vary by noun pattern.

Learn the case required by a preposition as part of the phrase.

Verb aspect

Imperfective and perfective forms present an action differently, for example as ongoing/repeated or as a bounded whole.

читать / прочитать — read

Agreement

Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number and case. A dictionary form does not supply every sentence form.

новый дом — a new house

Past-tense agreement

In singular past-tense forms, verbs commonly distinguish masculine, feminine and neuter gender; plural forms use a common plural ending. The subject’s grammatical features guide agreement.

Он читал. — He was reading/read. Она читала. — She was reading/read.

Negation and absence

Не commonly negates a predicate. Нет expresses absence and commonly combines with the genitive of the absent thing.

Я не знаю. — I do not know. Нет книги. — There is no book.

Numbers and noun forms

Numerals affect the form of following nouns, with patterns depending on the number and syntactic case. Learn full number–noun phrases, not only the dictionary singular.

одна книга; две книги; пять книг — one book; two books; five books, in a basic counting context.

Questions without do

A yes–no question can use statement-like word order with question intonation. English-style auxiliary “do” is not required.

Вы говорите по-русски? — Do you speak Russian?

Worked example: object case

Я читаю книгу uses the accusative книгу for the direct object of читаю. The dictionary form книга changes its ending in this clause.

Я = I; читаю = am reading/read; книгу = a book.

Common mistake: aspect is just tense

Perfective and imperfective express different views of an event, not simply past versus present. Their tense possibilities and meanings need to be learned with the verb pair.

Both aspects can describe past events, with different viewpoints and contexts.

Check your understanding

Which form agrees with она in the past: читал or читала?

Читала: the feminine singular past form.

Curriculum connections

Sources