Can I use this forum to begin practice on composing my own sentences in Russian? I have a comprehensive dictionary and a textbook that I refer to and would like to practice writing letters or email... - - Kevin
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Can I use this forum to begin practice on composing my own sentences in Russian? I have a comprehensive dictionary and a textbook that I refer to and would like to practice writing letters or email... - - Kevin
Конечно можете. Мы с удовольствием поможем вам с русским языком.Quote:
Can I use this forum to begin practice on composing my own sentences in Russian?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugene-p
Спасибо Eugene…много вещи учиться хотя этот прекрасный :)
kgcole, please, accompany your sentences with their equivalents in English, this will help us understand you better and if we see a mistake, we won't have to guess what it was supposed to mean, we can correct you right away in order to help you put your thoughts across in Russian.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugene-p
Sure thing Eugene. Here's what I was trying to say:
"Thanks Eugene...lots of things to learn, though that's excellent (fine)."
Один из вариантов.Quote:
Originally Posted by kgcole
"Спасибо, Евгений. Мне нужно многое выучить, но все равно это замечательно."
You're right, "выучить" is the right word. But what if I consider learning as an unfinished process? Wouldn't I need the imperfective "учить"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Doomer
мне нужно многому научиться.
многому=dative case (дательный падеж)?Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugene-p
yes, it is. научиться needs dative. or an infinitive. Научиться делать что-либо or научиться рисованию / чтению / пению....
That makes sense. I was wondering, Eugene, do you have any tips on how I can know the gendre of a noun that ends in "ь"? Do I just have to memorize which words are which?
feminine (ночь, моль, соль, качель, виолончель, грязь, боль, роль...)
masculine (карась, язь, рояль, король)
well, basically it's very random, I think you just have to memorize all this weird stuff.
You just have to memorize the gender. One exception is that nouns that end in -ность are feminine (I can't think of any exceptions to this rule, but I'm not a native).
Eugene- I was afraid you'd say that! LOL :)
ZXC - - that's an interesting tip about nouns ending in -ность... :)
выучить still works in the contextQuote:
Originally Posted by kgcole
Because you trying to выучить many(some) things not ALL things, so even if you learn those many things you still have a long way to go until you done learning
учить however implies to the process and does not guarantee results, so it would sound that your goal is to try to learn some things but you don't care if you learn them or not
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doomer
That sounds like one of those nuances that can only be picked up from a native speaker. My textbook has good information in it, but not all information...lol. Discussing these things in writing helps me to remember it.
Sure -- if the genitive singular ends in -и, then the noun is feminine, but if the genitive singular ends in -я, then the noun is masculine! ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by kgcole
Which is, of course, just another way of saying that when you learn a new Russian noun, it's a good practice to memorize the nominative singular AND the genitive singular at the same time. (For the majority of nouns, knowing these two forms will allow you to correctly determine the gender and to logically deduce all the other forms. Of course, there are exceptions -- some nouns have irregular patterns in the plural, so memorizing only the singular forms won't help you there.)
In the same way, when you learn a new Russian verb, memorizing the infinitive isn't enough. At minimum, you should learn the infinitive, the 1st-person sg., and the 2nd-person sg., -- most of the time, you'll be able to work out all the other forms given these three.
Back when I was a high-school Latin student, we had to memorize "the four principal parts" of every new verb. Just learning amare ("to love") wasn't enough information, but learning the four separate forms amo, amare, amavi, amatus allowed you (in theory) to deduce every single one of the verb's possible conjugational forms, in all tenses, active and passive, subjunctive and imperative, etc.
Russian is a bit simpler than Latin, but generally speaking, for most nouns and verbs there will be 2 to 4 "essential forms" that you need to memorize, not just one form.
That's a good way of looking at it, Throbert. Of course, that's if the sentence is already written. I'm thinking more along the lines of how to know just by the nominative case itself with words ending in -ь. Somebody wrote once that words ending in -ность tend to be feminine, so that's a big help and narrows the field somewhat. But then there are words like жизнь...you basically just have to know it's feminine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Throbert McGee
Some Russian consonants (ш, ж, ч, щ, ц) do not form hard/soft pairs.Quote:
Originally Posted by kgcole
If a noun has one of such consonants before the final ‘ь’ (i. e. it ends in -шь, -жь, -чь, or -щь), then it definitely is feminine.
That's because of a (strange) spelling rule. According to it the letter ‘ь’ must be placed after these consonants (except ц) only if the noun is feminine (this ‘ь’ doesn't affect the pronunciation).
For example:
мышь — feminine (pronounced [mɨʂ])
шиш — masculine (pronounced [ʂɨʂ])
ложь — feminine (pronounced [ɫoʂ])
нож — masculine (pronounced [noʂ])
печь — feminine (pronounced [pʲeʨ])
меч — masculine (pronounced [mʲeʨ])
вещь — feminine (pronounced [vʲeɕː])
клещ — masculine (pronounced [klʲeɕː])
Soft sign
Just a piece of advice, they basically know how to pronounce Russian sounds so you can confine yourself to giving Russian variants of sounding, like [шыш], [лож], etc.
That's good information to know, and helps a lot. Thanks :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Soft sign
The most important thing is that I've managed to understand you. Grats on that :)Quote:
Originally Posted by kgcole
Hopefully I'm making progress in becoming more understandable. Thanks for the encouragement.Quote:
Originally Posted by egalor