Learn how to ask about someone's nationality
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| Привет Всем. С Вами Светлана. Hi everybody! I’m Svetlana. |
| Welcome to RussianPod101.com’s Русский язык за три минуты. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Russian. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we will learn how to ask about the country of origin and we will also discuss how to talk about your nationality. |
| When you meet a new person in Russia, they might ask you Вы откуда? which is the equivalent of "Where are you from?" |
| You’re already familiar with a word Вы, the formal pronoun for "you." откуда can be translated as “where”. To be more precise, the word “откуда” literally means “where from”. And a last quick remark, when you ask this question in Russian you don’t need any verbs or particles like in English sentence. So, you just say “Where you from”...All together it’s |
| Вы откуда? |
| [slowly] Вы откуда? |
| Very easy! To ask the same question in an informal way, you just need to substitute the pronoun Вы with pronoun Ты which means you in the singular form. |
| So it will be: Ты откуда? |
| short and sweet. |
| Answering this question is very easy! There are two ways to reply. You can say, for example, “I am American” or “I am from America”. As in the question sentence, you don’t need any verbs or particals. You just say Я американка or Я из Америки. In first sentence you are specifying your nationality while in the second one you are telling your country of origin. |
| Let’s repeat both of them one more time slowly: |
| [slowly] Я-американка. |
| [slowly] Я из Америки. |
| Just replace “американка” with your nationality. |
| "I am German" is Я - немка. |
| "I am Italian" is Я итальянка. |
| "I am Spanish" is Я - испанка. |
| Be careful, because this is how you refer to your nationality if you are female. For the masculine form, you have to change the ending ~ka with ~ ец at the end of the word. |
| For example, if you are an American man, you will say: Я - американец. |
| German man say: |
| Я немец. |
| For Italian man it is: |
| Я - итальянец, |
| and so on. |
| To return the question you can simply say А вы? in formal way and А ты? in informal, which is "And you?" in English. |
| Now it’s time for Svetlana’s tips. |
| Be careful because we have a lot of exceptions in Russian where the nationality is said differently depending on if the subject is male or female. For more details on this subject check out RussianPod101.com, Absolute Beginner Season 1. |
| So In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities. |
| Next time we’ll talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Russia? if not, I'll be waiting for you in our next Русский язык за три минуты lesson. |
| Пока пока !! |
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