Learn how to use the genitive case to express possession
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Oxana: Здравсрвуйте! |
| Eddie: Eddie here. Gengo Russian Season 1, Lesson 5. Welcome to Russia. Avoid immersion shock with this lesson. |
| Oxana:Hello, everyone. I'm Oxanna. |
| Eddie: With us, you’ll learn to speak Russian with fun and effective lessons. |
| Oxana: We also provide you with cultural insights. |
| Eddie: And tips you won’t find in a text book. |
| Oxana: Last lesson we learned that Moscow and Michigan have similar climates, but more importantly we learned how to talk about the weather in Russian. |
| Eddie: Yes, and the weather is good today. |
| Oxana: [Хорошая погода.] |
| Eddie: We also learned to talk about locations in Russian. |
| Oxana: Using prepositional case. |
| Eddie: And we learned to talk about languages and professions. |
| Oxana:Yes, like [Я юрист] and [Я говорю по-русски]. |
| Eddie: Of course you can speak Russian, no fair. But pretty soon we will all be saying [Я говорю по-русски]. |
| Oxana: Ok, so [добро пожаловать] everyone to today’s lesson. |
| Eddie:Yes, welcome. And we’re here to welcome you to Russia today. |
| Oxana: Yes, the plane has landed. |
| Eddie: Apparently our friends Ileana and John fell fast asleep, so the conversation died a little. |
| Oxana:But they’re in Russia now, which is great. |
| Eddie: So today we hear a little familiar language, just the Russian version. |
| Oxana: Yes, listen to the pilot as he welcomes us all to Russia. |
| Eddie: Oxanna, would you mind being the pilot for a few minutes? |
| Oxana: Sure. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Пилот: [Уважаемые пассажиры! Добро пожаловать в аэропорт “Шерeметьево” города Москвы. Сегодня пятница, местное время 11:40 утра. Температура воздуха 12 градусов. Желаем Вам приятно провести время в столице. ] |
| Pilot: Uvazhaemye passazhiry! Dobro pozhalovat’ v aeroport “Sheremet’evo” goroda Moskvy. Segodnya pyatnitsa, mestnoe vremya odinnadtsat’ sorok utra. Temperatura vozduha dvenadtsar’ gradusov. Zhelaem Vam priyatno provesti vremya v stolitse. |
| Джон: [12 градусов. Прохладно.] |
| John: dvenadtsat’ gradusov, ptohladno. |
| Елена: [Да, у вас есть тёплые вещи?] |
| Elena: Da, u vas est’ tyoplye veshchi? |
| Джон: [Да, но боюсь, всё равно будет холодно. ] |
| John: Da, no boyus’, vsyo ravno budet holodno. |
| -- |
| Eddie: One more time, slowly. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз, медленнее. |
| Пилот: [Уважаемые пассажиры! Добро пожаловать в аэропорт “Шерeметьево” города Москвы. Сегодня пятница, местное время 11:40 утра. Температура воздуха 12 градусов. Желаем Вам приятно провести время в столице. ] |
| Pilot: Uvazhaemye passazhiry! Dobro pozhalovat’ v aeroport “Sheremet’evo” goroda Moskvy. Segodnya pyatnitsa, mestnoe vremya odinnadtsat’ sorok utra. Temperatura vozduha dvenadtsat’ gradusov. Zhelaem Vam priyatno provesti vremya v stolitse. |
| Джон: [12 градусов. Прохладно.] |
| John: dvenadtsat’ gradusov, ptohladno. |
| Елена: [Да, у вас есть тёплые вещи?] |
| Elena: Da, u vas est’ tyoplye veshchi? |
| Джон: [Да, но боюсь, всё равно будет холодно. ] |
| John: Da, no boyus’, vsyo ravno budet holodno. |
| Eddie: One more time, natural speed with the translation. |
| Oxana: Ещё раз, с переводом. |
| Oxana: [Уважаемые пассажиры!] |
| Eddie:Dear passengers. |
| Oxana: [Добро пожаловать в аэропорт “Шерeметьево” города Москвы.] |
| Eddie: Welcome to Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. |
| Oxana: [Сегодня пятница.] |
| Eddie: Today is Friday. |
| Oxana: [Местное время 11:40 (одиннадцать сорок) утра.] |
| Eddie: The local time is 11:40 in the morning. |
| Oxana: [Температура воздуха 12 (двенадцать) градусов.] |
| Eddie: The temperature is 12 degrees. |
| Oxana: [Желаем Вам приятно провести время в столице.] |
| Eddie:We wish you a nice stay in the capital. |
| Oxana: [12 градусов. Прохладно. |
| Eddie: 12 degrees. Chili. |
| Oxana: [Да, у вас есть тёплые вещи?] |
| Eddie: Yeah. Do you have warm clothes? |
| Oxana: [Да, но боюсь, всё равно будет холодно. ] |
| Eddie: I do, but I'm afraid I’ll be cold anyway. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Oxana: Yeah, Russia can get cold. If you go to Moscow or St. Petersburg, you should be prepared for any weather, even in summer. |
| Eddie: Yes, for St. Petersburg you’ll definitely need an umbrella and for Moscow at least a light jacket in summer. |
| Oxana: I can’t recall a single week in Moscow when it wouldn’t be cloudy or rainy. The capital has always given me this impression of a pretty gloomy city. But foggy and rainy weather in St. Petersburg is a totally different story. It’s a part of the city’s atmosphere. Fog and gloomy-nous make the scenery of the city even more lofty. It emphasizes St. Petersburg’s status of a cultural and intellectual capital of Russia. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| M1: Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first one is… |
| Oxana: [уважаемый] |
| M1: Honorable, dear. |
| Oxana:[уважаемый]] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[пассажир] |
| Eddie: Passenger. |
| Oxana: [пассажир] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [добро пожаловать] |
| Eddie: Welcome. |
| Oxana: [добро пожаловать] |
| Eddie:Next. |
| Oxana: [в] |
| Eddie: “In, to” or “at”. |
| Oxana: [в] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [аэропорт] |
| Eddie: Airport. |
| Oxana: [аеропорт] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [город] |
| Eddie: City. |
| Oxana: [город] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [сегодня] |
| Eddie:Today. |
| Oxana: [сегодня] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [пятница] |
| Eddie: Friday. |
| Oxana: [пятница] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [местный] |
| Eddie: Local. |
| Oxana:[местный] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[время] |
| Eddie:Time. |
| Oxana: [время] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [утро] |
| Eddie: Morning. |
| Oxana: [утро] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [температура] |
| Eddie:Temperature. |
| Oxana: [температура] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[воздух] |
| Eddie: Air. |
| Oxana: [воздух] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [градус] |
| Eddie: Degree. |
| Oxana: [градус] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [желать] |
| Eddie: To wish. |
| Oxana: [желать] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [вам] |
| Eddie: “To you” - plural. |
| Oxana: [вам] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[приятно] |
| Eddie:Pleasurably, nicely. |
| Oxana: [приятно] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [провести] |
| Eddie: To spend. |
| Oxana: [провести] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [столица] |
| Eddie: Capital city. |
| Oxana: [столица] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [прохладно] |
| Eddie: “Cool” or “chilli”. |
| Oxana:[прохладно] |
| Eddie:Next. |
| Oxana: [у вас есть] |
| Eddie:“You have” or “do you have”. |
| Oxana: [у вас есть] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [тёплый] |
| Eddie: Warm. |
| Oxana: [тёплый] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [вещь] |
| Eddie:Thing, item. |
| Oxana: [вещь] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [но] |
| Eddie: But. |
| Oxana:[но] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [боюсь] |
| Eddie: I'm afraid. |
| Oxana:[боюсь] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [всё равно] |
| Eddie: Anyway. |
| Oxana: [всё равно] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana:[будет] |
| Eddie:Will be. |
| Oxana: [будет] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oxana: [холодно] |
| Eddie: Cold. |
| Oxana: [холодно] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Eddie: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. The first word or phrase we’ll look at is… |
| Oxana:The pilot’s greeting. This is a little formal. He says [Уважаемые пассажиры]. |
| Eddie: [Уважаемый] literally means “respectable” or “honorable” and is commonly used in formal speeches, letters and so on. Kind of like “dear” in English, but a bit more formal. Here [уважаемые] is used in plural form because the next word we have is also plural. |
| Oxana: [пассажиры] |
| Eddie: You can hear this word has a lot in common with the English “passengers”, except for the endings which in both case indicate plural forms. But in English it’s an S and in Russian it’s… |
| Oxana: [ы - пассажиры] |
| Eddie: And altogether we have “honorable or dear passengers”. Sort of a form of address to the group. The next phrase we have is. |
| Oxana: [Добро пожаловать!] |
| Eddie: Welcome. We better not break this phrase and just remember it as it is. It almost never changes. Hasn’t changed for centuries. |
| Oxana: I'm sure you’ll see tons of big posters at the airport and at railway stations or some tour pamphlets with [Добро пожаловать!] on them. |
| Eddie: And if we want to welcome someone to a particular place, if we say “welcome to”, how would you say that in Russian? |
| Oxana: [Добро пожаловать в...] |
| Eddie:And then the name of a place. In our case, it’s the capital city airport. Another piece of cake for you, the word “airport”. |
| Oxana: [аэропорт] |
| Eddie:So basically take the word “airport” that you know, put on a heavy Russian accent and you’re getting a Russian word. Ok, how would you say “welcome to Moscow”. |
| Oxana: [Добро пожаловать в Мосву.] |
| Eddie: And “welcome to RussianPod101”? |
| Oxana: [Добро пожаловать на russianpod101] but we have to change [в] to [на] here. [Добро пожаловать на russianpod] |
| Eddie: Next we have the name of the airport. Is it the main airport in Moscow? |
| Oxana: It’s one of the three major airports serving Moscow and it’s called Sheremetyevo international airport. It’s about 30 kilometers or 18.5 miles from the city. You should be careful when going back though. Sheremetyevo has three terminals and I guess you’ll need the second one which caters to international flights. If you need domestic flights, your terminal will be number one. |
| Eddie: Be careful there. If you go to the wrong terminal, there’s a big chance that you might miss your flight. The terminals are really far from each other and considering Moscow traffic, it might take you a couple of hours to get from one to another. Ok, what do we have next? |
| Oxana: [города Москвы] |
| Eddie: As we’ve explained before, endings in Russian are almost like prepositions in English. So literally in English that would be “Of the Moscow city”, but in Russian not having the preposition “of”, we change the endings. Moscow city will sound as… |
| Oxana: [город Москва] |
| Eddie: And “of the Moscow city”? |
| Oxana: [города Москвы] |
| Eddie: Ok, well, we all know what comes next for the disoriented travelers. They’ve got to get their time update. How does it sound in Russian, Axanna? |
| Oxana:Well, it starts with [сегоня пятница]. |
| Eddie: Ok, so [сегодня] means “today” and [пятница] means “Friday”. Obviously, we can’t just leave you with the knowledge of only one day of the week. |
| Oxana: Every day is Friday, sounds good to me. |
| Eddie:Not everyone is a crazy party girl like you, Oxanna, so let’s learn how to say all the days of the week. |
| Oxana: Here we go. [Понедельник] |
| Eddie: Monday. |
| Oxana:[Вторник] |
| Eddie: Tuesday. |
| Oxana: [Среда] |
| Eddie: Wednesday. |
| Oxana: [Черверг] |
| Eddie: Thursday. |
| Oxana:[Пятница] |
| Eddie:Friday. |
| Oxana:[Суббота] |
| Eddie: Saturday. |
| Oxana: [Воскресенье] |
| Eddie: “Sunday”. Check out our PDF materials. You’ll find all of this nicely written down there. So we go from the days of the week to another super helpful thing you’re going to love learning. |
| Oxana: Yes, how did we get through life without knowing the time in Russian, yeah? |
| Eddie: So the pilot says next… |
| Oxana:[местное время 11:40 утра] |
| Eddie: The first word he’s saying is… |
| Oxana: [местное] |
| Eddie: Which means “local”. We can also use this word in other situations like asking a person in Moscow “Are you a local?” |
| Oxana: You will probably get a negative answer because finding a Moscow-born person in Moscow is almost as difficult as finding and American in New York. Wait, no, you will get a positive answer because anyone who spends more than two days in Moscow calls themselves [мосвичи]. |
| Eddie:But it could be worth asking at least for practicing your Russian. So how would you say it in Russian? |
| Oxana: [Вы местный?] |
| Eddie: “Are you local?” And then just way for [да] or [нет] which you’ve learned already. But we talk about time here, so how would you say the word “time” itself, Oxanna? |
| Oxana: [время] |
| Eddie: And what is the local time in Moscow when John arrives? |
| Oxana: [11:40 одиннадцать-сорок] |
| Eddie: So we know the words 11 and 40 from the Boot Camp Lesson 4, and next we say if it’s AM or PM, morning or evening. |
| Oxana: [утра] |
| Eddie: Which literally means “of the morning” where instead of the English “of” we modify the ending. Originally, the word “morning” sounds like… |
| Oxana: [утро] |
| Eddie: And putting it into genitive case or English “of” case, we get… |
| Oxana: [утра] |
| Eddie: How do we say 11 PM in Russian? |
| Oxana: [одиннадтцать (11) вечера] |
| Eddie: Which literally means “11 of the evening”. Now, something else that great to know - the temperature. |
| Oxana: Besides, it’s one of those words that you don’t have to learn. Just put on some Russian accent. [температура] |
| Eddie: But the pilot doesn’t stop on temperature. He says “temperature of the air” which is… |
| Oxana: [температура воздуха] |
| Eddie: And so what does he say the temperature is? |
| Oxana: [двенадцать (12) градусов] |
| Eddie: The most alarming thing in that sentence is the actual temperature. Those of us who studied our numbers hard know that [двенадцать] means “12” and we heard him say… |
| Oxana:[двенадцать (12) градусов] |
| Eddie: So [градусов] means “degrees” I'm assuming. |
| Oxana: Yes. “Of the degrees”, again. It’s quite useful to know this word as you’ll probably have some alcohol fun in Russia, and Russians really pay attention to alcohol percentage which is often measured in degrees there. |
| Eddie: So if you want to buy something relatively strong, you should look for booze of… |
| Oxana:[сорок градусов] |
| Eddie: 40 percent alcohol. But back to the temperature which will increase with the amount of alcohol you drink , but for now it’s just 12 degrees, Russia is metric so we can assume this is degrees centigrade or Celsius, which is 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Ok, so he heard altogether now. |
| Oxana:[Температута воздуха двенадцать (12) градусов.] |
| Eddie: Ok, so now we’re all up to date. What’s left but some nice welcoming words from the hospitable Russian? |
| Oxana:Yes. The pilot says [Желаем Вам приятно провести время в столице.] |
| Eddie: Ok, it may sound long but actually it’s not too complicated. |
| Oxana: [желаем] |
| Eddie: Which means “we wish”. Plural form of the verb… |
| Oxana: [желаю] |
| Eddie: “I wish”. The pilot is talking on behalf of the whole crew. Next comes… |
| Oxana:[вам] |
| Eddie: Which literally means “to you”, the address form in plural. Again, we don’t have any prepositions like the English “to”. We just modify the pronoun itself. “You” in plural or polite form sounds like… |
| Oxana: [вы] |
| Eddie: And to you… |
| Oxana: [вам] |
| Eddie: So we wish you… what? |
| Oxana: [приятно] |
| Eddie: Pleasantly, nicely. |
| Oxana:[провести] |
| Eddie: Spend. |
| Oxana: [время] |
| Eddie: “Time”, the word we learned not long ago. So he says “We wish you to spend a nice time”, where? |
| Oxana: [в] |
| Eddie: Which here means “in”. |
| Oxana: [столице] |
| Eddie: “The capital”. The word “capital” or “capital city” originally sounds as… |
| Oxana: [столице] |
| Eddie: But in our sentence it’s put into the prepositional case. Remember, we have the preposition in here, which means we have to modify the noun according to the prepositional case. So “in the capital” would sound like… |
| Oxana:[В столице] |
| Eddie: Ok. Next we have a dialogue between John and Ileana. God, he’s just looking for an excuse to talk. |
| Oxana:That’s our student and he says [прохладно]. |
| Eddie: Yeah, starting a conversation with complaints. Let’s see what Ileana says, and she can’t think of anything more suitable than asking him if he brought warm clothes with him. Now we’ll learn a very useful phrase, “do you have?” |
| Oxana: [у вас есть] |
| Eddie: Where [вас] is a polite way of saying “you” here. If you’re addressing the same question to your friends, you would ask… |
| Oxana:[у тебя есть...] |
| Eddie: And then you add whatever you need to ask. Ileana asks about warm clothes here. |
| Oxana: Yeah, it’s very common in Russia to call clothes [вещи]. And one piece of clothing is [вещь], but of course this word still has its primary meaning which is “thing, item” or just “stuff”. |
| Eddie: You can say [это мои вещи] and it’ll mean everything you’re pointing at, luggage, bags, pens and pencils. |
| Oxana: Right. And no matter how forced the conversation between John Ileana might seem, such small talk is inevitable sometimes, so he keeps trying. [Да, но боюсь всё равно будет холодно.] |
| Eddie: First we have “Yes, but…” |
| Oxana: [Да, но...] |
| Eddie: Then there’s a note of skepticism in John’s voice. |
| Oxana:[боюсь] |
| Eddie: “I'm afraid.” Just like in English, it also has its literal meaning, “afraid”, but we know what John means here. And another very colloquial word… |
| Oxana: [всё равно] |
| Eddie: “Anyway”. Give us another example of how to use this word, Axanna. |
| Oxana: [Я всё равно приду] |
| Eddie: Axanna, sounds annoyingly persistent here. “I will come anyway”. |
| Oxana:Yeah, this is what I'm like. |
| Eddie: I'm ok with that. What’s the next word? |
| Oxana: [будет] |
| Eddie: Which literally means “it will be”. So what will it be? |
| Oxana: [холодно] |
| Eddie: “It will be cold”. And how would you say “It would be hot”? |
| Oxana:[будет жарко] |
| Eddie: And having learned the word today, we can build a whole sentence. |
| Oxana: [Сегодня будет холодно] |
| Eddie: “It’ll be cold today” or ask a question. |
| Oxana:[Сегодня будет жарко?] |
| Eddie: “Will it be hot today?” Great, we’re done with the vocabulary. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Eddie: Time to get to the grammar points. Today we’ll keep introducing you to the grammatical cases and the focus of this lesson will be going a little deeper into the genitive case. Genitive case can also be called the “of” case because it represents possessions such as “a city of Russia - Russian city”, “a dog of my friend - my friend’s dog”. So in English we either use the preposition “of” or an apostrophe to indicate possession, but in Russian it’s the genitive case, which means changing the endings of the noun that possess something. In the above examples, the nouns “Russia” and “friend’s” will have to change because “Russia” possesses a city in our sentence and “my friend” possesses a dog. |
| Oxana: In our case, we have the “Moscow city airport” or ‘the airport of Moscow city”. So the airport is the possession of Moscow, therefore “city” and “Moscow” must change their endings here. [город] becomes [города] and [Москва] becomes [Москвы]. |
| Eddie: Another expression that’s used in the genitive case is… |
| Oxana: [температура воздуха] |
| Eddie: Literally, “temperature of the air”. So temperature belongs to the air. Air is the possessor which means we have to change air’s ending. |
| Oxana:[воздух] becomes [воздуха]. |
| Eddie: In our PDF files you’ll find a very easy to understand chart of how and according to what rules these endings actually change. And not only in this lesson, but also in lesson number three. We’ve learned genitive case before, so don’t pretend it’s too difficult for you. |
| Oxana: Mainly, if a noun has a masculine gender you add [а] or [я] in the end of it. If it’s feminine, you change the ending to [и] or [ы]. |
| Eddie: Right. But still, take a look at the PDFs. They’ll be a great deal of help to you in this. |
| Oxana: There are a couple of other confusing moments we should talk about. |
| Eddie: The preposition [в]. When does it mean “in”, when “at”, and when is it “to”, Oxanna? |
| Oxana: Good question. Well, we can only understand the meaning of this preposition by looking at the following noun and its ending. In a word, we have to check the grammatical case of the noun. |
| Eddie: The good thing is “in” and “at” in Russian are the same thing, so we’ll only have to talk about the difference with “to”. |
| Oxana: So “in” indicated location and “to” direction. When we talk about locations, we use our well-known locative or prepositional case. We explained it in detail in the previous lesson number 4. And with directions, moving towards something, we use the accusative case. |
| Eddie: We’ll give you some examples here and in our PDF files you find the charts and written details of how to form the accusative case. So, Oxanna, give us some examples. |
| Oxana: [В Москву] |
| Eddie: To Moscow. |
| Oxana: [В Петербург] |
| Eddie: To Petersburg. |
| Oxana: [В Риссию] |
| Eddie: To Russia. |
| Oxana: [В Мичеган] |
| Eddie: To Michigan. |
| Oxana:[В столицу] |
| Eddie: To the capital. |
| Oxana: [В аэропорт] |
Outro |
| Eddie: “To the airport.” Can you hear the patent there? If it’s a masculine now, you leave it as it is. If it’s feminine, you add [у] or [ю] to the end. That just about does it for today. [Пока!] |
| Oxana: [До свидания!] |
| -- |
| Пилот: [Уважаемые пассажиры! Добро пожаловать в аэропорт “Шерeметьево” города Москвы. Сегодня пятница, местное время 11:40 утра. Температура воздуха 12 градусов. Желаем Вам приятно провести время в столице. ] |
| Pilot: Uvazhaemye passazhiry! Dobro pozhalovat’ v aeroport “Sheremet’evo” goroda Moskvy. Segodnya pyatnitsa, mestnoe vremya odinnadtsat’ sorok utra. Temperatura vozduha dvenadtsar’ gradusov. Zhelaem Vam priyatno provesti vremya v stolitse. |
| Джон: [12 градусов. Прохладно.] |
| John: dvenadtsat’ gradusov, ptohladno. |
| Елена: [Да, у вас есть тёплые вещи?] |
| Elena: Da, u vas est’ tyoplye veshchi? |
| Джон: [Да, но боюсь, всё равно будет холодно. ] |
| John: Da, no boyus’, vsyo ravno budet holodno. |
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