The Russian language is based on a Slavic language that dates back to the Middle Ages. Although there are only 20 consonants in the language, these consonants make 37 different sounds. There are also rules of grammar that you must master when you learn Russian, whether you take an actual class or take a free online course in the language.
Some of the rules you need to know about the Russian language are:
1. There are three genders masculine, feminine and neuter
2. There are no articles used with nouns. For example, you would not say the girl, but rather you would just say girl.
3. Nouns are singular and plural.
4. Adjectives must agree with the nouns in terms of the gender and whether the noun is singular or plural.
5. Verbs conjugate according to the person, the tense and the mood
6. There are three tenses of verbs past, present and future
When pronouncing the Russian words, you do so phonetically so that you say each letter of the word. You do not have to worry about the sound of vowels because there are no short or long vowels in this language. The stress can fall on any part of the word and there are no dipthongs in this language, such as /th/or/sh/ as there are in English.
There is an easy way of differentiating between the genders, since you do not have a definite article to help you in Russian. Any nouns that end in and are always masculine. Words that end in and are feminine and words ending in and are neutral. You also have to keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, especially in the case of feminine nouns. However, when you learn the nouns and their gender as part of your course, you will also learn the nouns endings that are exceptions to these patterns.
As part of your Russian grammar lessons, you will also learn which tense of verb to use in different situations. An example of a situation in which you would use this tense of the verb would be for speaking of a situation that started and ended at a specific time in the past, but the result is not important. If you are speaking about an event that occurred in the past and you are telling the result, you would use the perfective aspect of the past tense.
This type of grammatical lesson may take you more time than some of the others if you find it difficult to understand. You do have to give yourself lots of time when learning Russian. Even if you have a set time for your studies each day, do not become frustrated if you do not accomplish as much in one day as you do on others. You may have to review a lesson several times before you fully grasp the concept.
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