Introduction to Russian: Lesson 2
You had country names like Россия or Англия. Here is the word for Russian:
Russian for Russian is русский.
So you had ия replaced with ский. You also have o change to у but that’s somewhat of an irregularity which doesn’t really happen elsewhere. The words for nationalities are pretty irregular in Russian (probably less than in English where France changes to French, Germany changes to German while Russia changes to Russian).
Russian for English is английский.
There is another й added in the middle but that doesn’t change the pronunciation much. The golden rule for nationalities is to change ия to ский.
Russian for tongue is язык.
Why are we learning the word for tongue, you might ask? That’s because like in English you have the mother tongue to mean mother language, in Russian the word tongue also is the word for language.
Having in mind that there is no word for the, how would you say:
Guess how to say:
You could also say this phrase as in in Russian:
Russian for in- is по-.
If you use по- you drop that last й because й is a masculine ending and you don’t need it for по-.
How would you say:
Russian for to speak is говоритъ.
The government sure does speak a lot, don’t they...
To make to speak into I speak you replace the ending тъ with ю.
Having that in mind, you already know all that you need to say I speak Russian which literally is I speak in Russian:
You also have all that you need to say:
Let’s learn another word now:
Russian for to understand is пониматъ.
Think I still don’t understand why you bought me a pony for my birthday.
Remember that тъ to ю thingie and try making some sentences. For example, you can now generate phrases such as:
Literally the next one would be I do not understand in English:
Let’s learn one word you already know and another one you don’t but it is still very easy:
Russian word for yes is да.
Yes, dad.
Russian for and is и.
You can say and understand the last phrase which could be the answer to a question:
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