Learn about two types of Russian pronouns: possessive and reflexive
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Oxana: [Привет всем, с вами Оксана!] |
| Eddie: Eddy here! Gangue Russian Season 1, Lesson 24 - “A brush with destiny. Two strangers reunited.” So, in the last lesson, John attempted to get some directions. |
| Oxana: Yes, we’re not sure whether for how that John starts out last week. |
| Eddie: But, all is well that ends well, as we will see. |
| Oxana: Let’s go over those directions again, because we don’t want anyone else to get lost, too. |
| Eddie: How about I ask you a direction in English and you tell me the Russian? |
| Oxana: Ok! |
| Eddie: “Turn left” |
| Oxana: [Поверните налево.] |
| Eddie: “Turn right” |
| Oxana: [Поверните направо.] |
| Eddie: How about “on the left side”? |
| Oxana: [По левой стороне.] |
| Eddie: And how about “walk straight”? |
| Oxana: [Идите прямо.] |
| Eddie: Ok! I think I could handle that without getting lost. |
| Oxana: Well, getting lost can always can lead to other adventures. Let’s see what adventure John finds today. |
| Eddie: Let’s listen to the conversation! |
| DIALOGUE |
| Лена: [Джон, я не могу поверить. Что вы здесь делаете?] |
| Lena: John, ya ne magu paverit’. Chto vy sdes’ delaete? |
| Джон: [Простите?] |
| John: Prastite? |
| Лена: [Это я, Лена.] |
| Lena: Eto ya, Lena. |
| Джон: [Лена, вот это да! Я немного заблудился, ищу свой отель. А вы что здесь делаете?] |
| John: Lena, vot eto da! Ya nemnogo zabludilsya, ishchyu atel’. A vy shto zdes’ delaete? |
| Лена: [Я работаю недалеко отсюда. Ну, как вам Москва?] |
| Lena: Ya rabotayu nedaleko otsyuda. Nu, kak vam Maskva? |
| Джон: [Очень нравится, мне будет жаль улетать.] |
| John: Ochen’ nravitsa, mne budet zhal’ uletat’. |
| Лена: [Давайте как-нибидь встретимся, пообщаемся.] |
| Lena: Davaite kak-nibud’ vstretimsya, paabshchaemsya. |
| Джон: [С удовольствием. Как насчёт завтра?] |
| John: S udavol’stviem. Kak naschyot zavtra? |
| Лена: [Отлично.] |
| Lena: Atlichno |
| Джон: [Хорошо, я вам позвоню.] |
| John: Harasho, ya vam pazvanyu. |
| Eddie: Once again, more slowly. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз, медленнее. |
| Лена: [Джон, я не могу поверить. Что вы здесь делаете?] |
| Lena: John, ya ne magu paverit’. Chto vy sdes’ delaete? |
| Джон: [Простите?] |
| John: Prastite? |
| Лена: [Это я, Лена.] |
| Lena: Eto ya, Lena. |
| Джон: [Лена, вот это да! Я немного заблудился, ищу свой отель. А вы что здесь делаете?] |
| John: Lena, vot eto da! Ya nemnogo zabludilsya, ishchyu atel’. A vy shto zdes’ delaete? |
| Лена: [Я работаю недалеко отсюда. Ну, как вам Москва?] |
| Lena: Ya rabotayu nedaleko otsyuda. Nu, kak vam Maskva? |
| Джон: [Очень нравится, мне будет жаль улетать.] |
| John: Ochen’ nravitsa, mne budet zhal’ uletat’. |
| Лена: [Давайте как-нибидь встретимся, пообщаемся.] |
| Lena: Davaite kak-nibud’ vstretimsya, paabshchaemsya. |
| Джон: [С удовольствием. Как насчёт завтра?] |
| John: S udavol’stviem. Kak naschyot zavtra? |
| Лена: [Отлично.] |
| Lena: Atlichno |
| Джон: [Хорошо, я вам позвоню.] |
| John: Harasho, ya vam pazvanyu. |
| Eddie: Once again, with the translation. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз, с переводом. |
| Oxana: [Джон, я не могу поверить. Что вы здесь делаете?] |
| Eddie: John, I can’t believe it. What are you doing here? |
| Oxana: [Простите?] |
| Eddie: Pardon me? |
| Oxana: [Это я, Лена.] |
| Eddie: It’s me, Lena. |
| Oxana: [Лена, вот это да! Я немного заблудился, ищу свой отель. А вы что здесь делаете?] |
| Eddie: Lena, holy cow. I'm a bit lost here, looking for my hotel. And what are you doing here? |
| Oxana: [Я работаю недалеко отсюда. Ну, как вам Москва?] |
| Eddie: I work not far from here. So what do you think of Moscow? |
| Oxana: [Очень нравится, мне будет жаль улетать.] |
| Eddie: I like it a lot. It’ll be a pity to meet. |
| Oxana: [Давайте как-нибидь встретимся, пообщаемся.] |
| Eddie: Let’s meet and have a chat sometime. |
| Oxana: [С удовольствием. Как насчёт завтра?] |
| Eddie: With pleasure. How about tomorrow? |
| Oxana: [Отлично.] |
| Eddie: Sounds great. |
| Oxana: [Хорошо, я вам позвоню.] |
| Eddie: Ok, I’ll call you. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Eddie: Let’s look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Oxana: [Верить] |
| Eddie: To believe. |
| Oxana: [Верить] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Прастить] |
| Eddie: To forgive, to pardon. |
| Oxana: [Прастить] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Вот это да!] |
| Eddie: An exclamation of great surprise. |
| Oxana: [Вот это да!] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Заблудиться] |
| Eddie: To get lost. |
| Oxana: [Заблудится] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Искать] |
| Eddie: To look for, to search. |
| Oxana: [Искать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Свой] |
| Eddie: In this case, “my”. |
| Oxana: [Свой] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Отсюда] |
| Eddie: From here. |
| Oxana: [Отсюда] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Как вам…?] |
| Eddie: What do you think of…? How do you like…? |
| Oxana: [Как вам…?] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Жаль] |
| Eddie: Pity, sorry, unfortunately. |
| Oxana: [Жаль] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Улетать] |
| Eddie: To fly away. |
| Oxana: [Улетать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Как-нибудь] |
| Eddie: Sometime, somehow. |
| Oxana: [Как-нибудь] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Встретиться] |
| Eddie: To meet (with each other). |
| Oxana: [Встретиться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Общаться] |
| Eddie: To communicate, talk, intermingle. |
| Oxana: [Общаться] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [С удовольствием] |
| Eddie: With pleasure. |
| Oxana: [С удовольствием] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Как насчёт] |
| Eddie: How about. |
| Oxana: [Как насчёт] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Отлично] |
| Eddie: Great. |
| Oxana: [Отлично] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [Звонить] |
| Eddie: To call. |
| Oxana: [Звонить] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Eddie: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Oxana: The first word we’ll look at is [верить] meaning “to believe”. There are a lot of phrases to express surprise that have this word in Russian. |
| Eddie: Well, English has them, too, like “unbelievable” or “I can’t believe it!”. |
| Oxana: Yes, so today we have one of them. [Я не могу поверить.] |
| Eddie: Literally, “I can’t believe it!” |
| Oxana: Then, there is a word that we’ll translate it as “Pardon me!” - [Простите]. The primary meaning of this is “to forgive”. |
| Eddie: It’s a bit stronger than the English “pardon”. You can also use this word instead of “Excuse me!” in a question. |
| Oxana:Yes! They’re interchangeable in this case. So, John didn’t recognize Elena at once. That’s why he said [простите] with an interrogative intonation. |
| Eddie: He was hoping to get a little more help from Elena. And, after finally remembering her, he exclaims: |
| Oxana: [Вот это да.] |
| Eddie: Personally, to me it’s sounds just like a number of words “Here, this, yes!”, but apparently it’s a phrase that expresses great surprise in Russian. |
| Oxana: Well, if I translated something like “Holy cow!” or “I’ll be monkey’s uncle” into Russian. I don’t think it would make much sense, either. |
| Eddie: I guess! Ok, the next word we need to talk about is? |
| Oxana: [Заблудиться] |
| Eddie: Which means “to get lost”. |
| Oxana: Yes, even having received the directions, John [заблудился]. |
| Eddie: Well, the words point a few directions. By the way, this verb has [ся] at the end. Is this a reflexive verb? |
| Oxana: This verb is called intransitive which is the kind of verb that can only be used in a reflexive form. Just like the verb [улыбаться], meaning “smile”, for example. You can’t “smile someone”, right? |
| Eddie: I can make someone smile, but it’s a totally different story about verbs, I guess. |
| Oxana: You guessed right! The next word we had is [искать]. |
| Eddie: It means “to look for”, “to seek”, “to search” and all of the synonyms you can come up with. And Russian is just [искать]. |
| Oxana: And “I’m looking” would sound like [Я ищу]. |
| Eddie: Next we have an interesting pronoun: [свой], which means “one zone” and it’s used instead of “my, his, her” and so on, sometimes. |
| Oxana: But, we’ll talk about it in the grammar part of the lesson. The word that might seem interesting to you is [отсюда]. |
| Eddie: It is interesting, because in English we have two words for it: “from here”. |
| Oxana: Well, [от] actually means “from”. It’s just together with [сюда] that it forms one word. Just know that [сюда] alone means “here”, but only in the context of direction, like “to here”. When we’re talking about the location, we use [здесь]. Here are two simple examples to remember: [иди сюда] and [иди отсюда]. |
| Eddie: “Come here!” and “Go away!” or “Get out of here!”. Oh, I think we’ve come across our next phrase already. |
| Oxana: [Как вам] means “How do you like”. |
| Eddie: Right! It was in Victor’s question about Russian food. |
| Oxana: [Как вам русская кухня?] |
| Eddie: Yes, that one, meaning “How do you like Russian food?”. So, the meaning of [как вам] is “What do you think of” or “How do you find”, “How do you like”. In our dialogue it was “How would you like Moscow?”. |
| Oxana: [Как вам Москва] |
| Eddie: Apparently, despite everything he’d heard about it before, he liked it all right. He even says “It will be a pity to leave!”. |
| Oxana: [Жаль улетать]. So, [жаль] means “pity”. We can use it in the beginning of the sentence. For example, [жаль что ты улетаешь.] meaning “It’s a pity that you are leaving.” It can also be used in the meaning of “to be sorry for” as in [мне его жаль] meaning “I feel sorry for him.” or “I pity him.”, in a good sense. |
| Eddie: So, John just means it will be a pity for him to leave. [мне будет жаль уезжать]. Not that he feels sorry for himself! |
| Oxana: Yes, maybe a little bit of that, too. Oh, there is another familiar word coming up. [как-нибудь] |
| Eddie: Right! “Somehow” or “sometime”, the word John used to say he wanted to visit Kiev, meaning not any time in particular, but when an occasion occurs. |
| Oxana: And Elena uses this word so that her invitation to meet wouldn’t sound too persistent. She wants to meet, but she leaves the opportunity to set a date to John. |
| Eddie: By the way, next we have the words for “meet” and “chat”. |
| Oxana:[Встретиться] and [общаться]. |
| Eddie: As you might have guessed from that structure, both words are reflexive. |
| Oxana: The word [встретиться] is used in a context of “to meet with each other”, but not “to meet somebody”. For example, [Давай встретимся]. You can translate it as “Let’s meet!” in English, but actually it means “Let’s meet with each other!” due to its [ся] ending. |
| Eddie:But if you drop [ся], you’ll get a simple verb “to meet”, that you can use in a phrase like “to meet a friend”, for example. |
| Oxana: Right! [Встретить друга]. The word [общаться] is also reflexive, just like [заблудиться], it means “to get lost”. You can’t drop [ся] in it, because it’s intransitive. So, you can say [общаться с другом] meaning “to communicate with a friend”, but you can’t [общать] a friend, meaning “you can’t communicate a friend”. |
| Eddie: This is a very interesting word in itself. It doesn’t mean “to talk directly”, instead it’s more like “to meet and interact with a person”. You can use it in the meaning of seeing a person regularly. |
| Oxana: [Му часто общаемся] - “We see each other often.” or [Мы не общаемся] - “We neither meet, nor talk.” |
| Eddie: Or, in the broad meaning of “talk”: |
| Oxana: [Мне интересно с ним общаться] |
| Eddie: “I find him interesting to talk with.” The next phrase is the third familiar one in this lesson. |
| Oxana: [С удовольствием] |
| Eddie: “With pleasure!”. This is how John reacted to Victor’s offer to go to Saint Petersburg with him. And the next phrase will come in handy to you and making offers, the “how about” phrase. |
| Oxana: [Как насчёт ]. [Эдди как насцёр обеда сегодня]? |
| Eddie:“How about lunch?” [С удовольствием]. Yes, so this is how it works. |
| Oxana: And the word of agreement is [отлично]. |
| Eddie: Literally, it means “great” or “awesome”. And the last word for this lesson is? |
| Oxana:[Звонить] |
| Eddie: “To call”. And the phrase for “I’ll call you!” will sound like? |
| Oxana: [Я тебе позвоню.] |
| Eddie: [Отлично]. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Eddie: In today’s grammar, we want to talk about Russian pronouns. Some of them are very familiar to you as we meet them in every dialogue, but some might be new and a little strange for you. |
| Oxana: We’ll try to clear up all the difficulties you might have with them. We’ll start from the things we’ve learned just as a quick reminder to you. |
| Oxana: So the Russian language has two main kinds of pronouns, personal pronouns, [я, ты, он] and so on, and possessive pronouns which indicate ownership, [мой/ моя] and so on. |
| Eddie: Unlike the English pronoun “my”, the Russian pronoun [мой] changes its form depending on the gender or the number of the modified noun. Listen to some examples. |
| Oxana: [Это мой паспорт.] |
| Eddie: It’s my passport. |
| Oxana: [Это моя лампа.] |
| Eddie: It’s my lamp. |
| Oxana: [Это мои билеты.] |
| Eddie: “These are my tickets.” So basically you figure out the gender and the number of the noun first. Like “passport” is masculine for example, and then decide what form of “my” to use. |
| Oxana: That’s right, but there is another pronoun I want to introduce you to. The pronoun [свой]. |
| Eddie: It’s called a reflexive possessive pronoun which means one zone. English has no equivalent of the possessive reflexive pronoun. In English, the regular possessive pronoun is used regardless of whether the reference is identical to the subject. |
| Oxana: It can replace all possessive pronouns including all those “yours” and “his”, both singular and plural. If the subject of the sentence is the owner of the object. |
| Eddie: If the possessor and the subject are in the same phrase. For example… |
| Oxana: [Я ищу свой отель.] |
| Eddie: “I’m looking for my hotel.” “I” would be the owner here and “hotel” is the object. Of course, you can say [мой отель] instead, just like Ileana said “I’ll write you my number” using [мой] in one of the first lessons. |
| Oxana: But that’s just because for the first and second person it’s optional. For the third person, you are required to use [свой]. For example, [Он потерял свой паспорт.] means “He lost his passport”. |
| Eddie: So [свой] is used like [мой], “my”, and has the same forms meaning that it changes according to a person and number, just like [мой]. |
| Oxana: Right. So we have [свой] when it’s masculine, [своя] when it’s feminine, [своя] for neutral and [свои] for the plural. |
| Eddie: Listen to some examples. |
| Oxana: [Он лпбит свою собаку.] |
| Eddie: He loves his dog. |
| Oxana: We had to put [своя] into the genitive case here. [Они продали свой дом.] |
| Eddie: They sold their house. |
| Oxana: [Она открыла своё дело.] |
| Eddie: She started her own business. |
| Oxana: [Папа выбросил свои старые ботинки.] |
| Eddie: “Dad threw away his old shoes.” So, as you see, in Russian you have to sort of emphasize that the thing is your own by using this pronoun. |
| Oxana: Yeah, well, it doesn’t sound like emphasizing. It just sounds natural to change [мой] into [свой] in some cases. And those cases are mostly the third person and with the informal “you”, [ты]. Эдди, ты любишь свою собаку? |
| Eddie: I do love my dog. |
Outro |
| Eddie: That just about does it for today! Roxana, I’d like to share a study tip a listener shared with us. |
| Oxana: You’re talking about the student who uses just the conversation tracks to review the lessons! |
| Eddie: Oxana, you read my mind! Yes, a listener of ours listens to each lesson several times. |
| Oxana:Then afterwards gets the conversation only track from our site. |
| Eddie:She then listens to them on shuffle, again and again, she created her own immersion program using Russianpod101.com. |
| Oxana: This is a great idea! Please give it a try and let us know what you think. |
| Eddie: Ok, [До свидания]. |
| Oxana: [До новых встреч. Пока!] |
| Eddie: [Пока!] |
| DIALOGUE |
| Лена: [Джон, я не могу поверить. Что вы здесь делаете?] |
| Lena: John, ya ne magu paverit’. Chto vy sdes’ delaete? |
| Джон: [Простите?] |
| John: Prastite? |
| Лена: [Это я, Лена.] |
| Lena: Eto ya, Lena. |
| Джон: [Лена, вот это да! Я немного заблудился, ищу свой отель. А вы что здесь делаете?] |
| John: Lena, vot eto da! Ya nemnogo zabludilsya, ishchyu atel’. A vy shto zdes’ delaete? |
| Лена: [Я работаю недалеко отсюда. Ну, как вам Москва?] |
| Lena: Ya rabotayu nedaleko otsyuda. Nu, kak vam Maskva? |
| Джон: [Очень нравится, мне будет жаль улетать.] |
| John: Ochen’ nravitsa, mne budet zhal’ uletat’. |
| Лена: [Давайте как-нибидь встретимся, пообщаемся.] |
| Lena: Davaite kak-nibud’ vstretimsya, paabshchaemsya. |
| Джон: [С удовольствием. Как насчёт завтра?] |
| John: S udavol’stviem. Kak naschyot zavtra? |
| Лена: [Отлично.] |
| Lena: Atlichno |
| Джон: [Хорошо, я вам позвоню.] |
| John: Harasho, ya vam pazvanyu. |
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