This blogpost is a brief overview of different tenses and articles found in Russian language.

Tenses

• The Present
  • In English, you use a different tense in the present depending on whether it’s an action that happens regularly or it’s happening now. In Russian, you use just one tense in the present, no matter whether the action happens regularly or is happening now.

• The Past
  • The past form of regular verbs in English end in -ed. You have to learn irregular verbs individually. In English, there are many irregular verbs. Guess what? In Russian, there are hardly any irregular verbs in the past tense!

• • • If the subject is masculine, the ending is -л:
      Он видел фильм.
      “He saw the film.”
    • If the subject is feminine, the ending is -лa:
      Она видела фильм.
      “She saw the film.”
    • If the subject is neuter, the ending is -ло:
      Письмо было на столе.
      “The letter was on the table.”
    • If the subject is plural, the ending is -ли:
      Они видели фильм.
      “They saw the film.”

Articles

• An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun.
• The articles in the English language are “the,” “a,” and “an.” In short, it is what you’re referring to (e.g., “the cat”). In Russian, there are no articles!

The Verb “To Be”

• In English, you have three forms of this verb,”am,” “is,” and “are.” In Russian, you should not use the verb “to be” in the present tense, so you don’t have to worry about it at all.

Making Questions

• In English, you need a different auxiliary depending on the tense, and you change the word order. In Russian, you just change your intonation. Nothing else changes.

Gender

• You can tell the gender just by looking at the ending of the word. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant. Feminine nouns usually end in -а or -я. Neuter nouns usually end in -о or -е.