Learn Russian adjectives and their cases
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Oksana: [Здравствуйте! С вами Оксана] |
| Eddie: Eddie here. Lower Intermediate Series Season 1, Lesson 18. We’re about to let go of a very [безответственный, рассеянный, медлительный ] worker, who’s always late for work, shows up drunk and messes up his monthly reports. |
| Oksana: Not just yet. He’s not the only person we’ll be talking about in this mini set of lessons, although you’re right, it’s time to kick him out of the company already. I used to be on his side but now he’s just annoying to me. |
| Eddie: Finally, we’re being realistic. “Let’s give him a chance, let’s give him a chance.” Even if you give him ten chances, he’ll fail all ten of them. That’s just this type of person. |
| Oksana: Yeah, I guess you’re right. But today we’re not talking about him. There are some other pretty important things happening in the company. |
| Eddie: Oh really? What are they? |
| Oksana: Let’s listen to the conversation and find out. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Oksana: Уважаемые коллеги! Разрешите представить вам нового менеджера отдела продаж – Михаила Титова! |
| Eddie: Ничего себе... За что ему дали такое повышение?... |
| Oksana: Это деятельный, решительный, ответственный человек с творческим подходом и миллионом новых идей! |
| Eddie: Да, конечно... Хитрый лис… Все эти "новые идеи" – это наши старые, которые он не принял в прошлом году... Жулик… Once again, more slowly. |
| Oksana: Еще раз, медленнее.Уважаемые коллеги! Разрешите представить вам нового менеджера отдела продаж – Михаила Титова! |
| Eddie: Ничего себе... За что ему дали такое повышение?... |
| Oksana: Это деятельный, решительный, ответственный человек с творческим подходом и миллионом новых идей! |
| Eddie: Да, конечно... Хитрый лис… Все эти "новые идеи" – это наши старые, которые он не принял в прошлом году... Жулик… Once again, with a translation. |
| Oksana: Еще раз, с переводом. Уважаемые коллеги! Разрешите представить вам нового менеджера отдела продаж – Михаила Титова! |
| Eddie: Dear colleagues! Let me introduce you the new manager of the sales department, Michael Titov! |
| Oksana: Ничего себе... За что ему дали такое повышение?... |
| Eddie: What the...what was he given such a promotion for? |
| Oksana: Это деятельный, решительный, ответственный человек с творческим подходом и миллионом новых идей! |
| Eddie: He is an active, decisive, responsible person with a creative approach and a million new ideas! |
| Oksana: Да, конечно... Хитрый лис… Все эти "новые идеи" – это наши старые, которые он не принял в прошлом году... Жулик… |
| Eddie: Yeah, right...sly fox... All these "new ideas" are just our old ideas that he didn't accept last year… Swindler… |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Eddie: So we got another line in the office story. We have a guy who’s just gotten a promotion together with a bunch of new haters. |
| Oksana: I hope it’s not Ivan who disagrees with the boss’s decisions so much. He’s just not in the position to do that. |
| Eddie: Well, maybe it’s not him. The dialogue just says [подчиненный]. The question is whether those accusations have any grounds, but we’ll leave it for now. Let’s take a look at the vocabulary that’s used in this intense situation. The first word is… |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Oksana: [Уважаемый] |
| Eddie: Honorable, respectable. |
| Oksana: [Уважаемый] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Коллега] |
| Eddie: Colleague, coworker. |
| Oksana: [Коллега] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Отдел продаж] |
| Eddie: Sales department. |
| Oksana: [Отдел продаж] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Ничего себе!] |
| Eddie: Well, I never… Wow. Unbelievable. What the… |
| Oksana: [Ничего себе!] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [За что?] |
| Eddie: For what, why. |
| Oksana: [За что?] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Повышение] |
| Eddie: Promotion. |
| Oksana: [Повышение] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Деятельный] |
| Eddie: Active, hard-working. |
| Oksana: [Деятельный] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Ответственный] |
| Eddie: Responsible. |
| Oksana: [Ответственный] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Решительный] |
| Eddie: Decisive, resolute. |
| Oksana: [Решительный] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Творческий] |
| Eddie: Creative. |
| Oksana: [Творческий] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Подход] |
| Eddie: Approach. |
| Oksana: [Подход] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Хитрый] |
| Eddie: Sly, tricky, cunning. |
| Oksana: [Хитрый] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Лиса] |
| Eddie: Fox. |
| Oksana: [Лиса] |
| Eddie: Next. |
| Oksana: [Который] |
| Eddie: Which. |
| Oksana: [Который] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Eddie: So, quite a lot of vocab to take a look at today. What’s the first word, Oksana? |
| Oksana: [Уважаемый] This is the word you’ll hear in all official addresses, speeches and see in official letters. |
| Eddie: Literally it means honorable, but it sounds less pompous in Russian than it is in English. More like “dear”. |
| Oksana: Right. It’s used in the phrases like [Уважаемые дамы и господа], which can be translated as “dear ladies and gentlemen”. In our case it was [Уважаемые коллеги], “dear colleagues”. |
| Eddie: By the way, the word [колллега] sounds like it has feminine gender, but actually it’s unisex if I can put it this way. You can say both [мой коллега] and [моя коллега]. |
| Oksana: True, like [Эдди- мой коллега]. |
| Eddie: And Oksana [моя коллега]. Next we have a phrase for “sales department”. |
| Oksana: [Отдел продаж]. [Отдел] itself means “department”, “section” and [продажа] is obviously “sales”. So the guy takes over this [отдел], right? |
| Eddie: He becomes the manager of the department, which basically means he’s in charge there. Oh, and what’s the name of the lucky guy? |
| Oksana: [Михаил Титов] |
| Eddie: Now we can imagine the picture - some people are clapping and smiling, some don’t even try to hide their jealousy, and some even express their protest out loud. |
| Oksana: Not out loud, obviously, but just to the person next to them. It’s just a helpless and useless venting which sounds as [Ничего себе!]. |
| Eddie: It’s an exclamation which indicates surprise, usually at something shocking in both good and bad ways or scandalous like in the sentence “Oh my god, it’s 2 AM already!” How would you say that? |
| Oksana: [Ничего себе! Уже два часа ночи!] |
| Eddie: Yeah, and the guy doesn’t stop with that. What else is he saying. |
| Oksana: Just keeps grumbling to the nearest person to him. [За что ему дали такое повышение?] |
| Eddie: “What was he given such promotion for?” The key phrase here is “what for”. |
| Oksana: [За что?] |
| Eddie: This short expression is mostly used as an exclamation of disagreement when someone unfairly gets something he doesn’t deserve, whether it’s a good thing or bad. |
| Oksana: Yeah, for example [За что ты ему дал свою машину?]. |
| Eddie: “What did he do to earn your car?” Literally “What did you give your car to him for?” |
| Oksana: [За что ты его наказала?] |
| Eddie: What did you punish him for? |
| Oksana: Or you can just scream [За что?], “Why? What for?” showing protest again, unfairness. For example if someone was unfairly punished or rewarded. |
| Eddie: Then we have [ему дали], which literally means “they gave him” but it’s just the Russian way to express the passive voice. So basically it can be translated as “he was given”. |
| Oksana: Yes, and he was given a [повышение], which literally means “a raise” but implies status rather than money in Russian. |
| Eddie: Well, it refers to money if you say [повышение зарплаты], for example. |
| Oksana: Yeah, that would mean a salary raise. But if you say just [повышение] separately it would mean “promotion”. |
| Eddie: So the guy got a promotion, not a salary raise, right? |
| Oksana: As I just said, if the word salary is not mentioned anywhere then it’s just a promotion. |
| Eddie: It’s not just a promotion, it’s something that made a lot of people angry. |
| Oksana: But not the boss. Listen to how he describes this [Михаил Титов-это деятельный, решительный, ответственный человек.]. |
| Eddie: Literally “This is an active, decisive, responsible person.” It’s easy to just memorize the words, don’t you think? |
| Oksana: Well, we can make it harder by adding some antonyms to them. |
| Eddie: I think that will be a good idea. We should expand our vocabulary. So [деятельный] is “active”, “energetic”. What are the antonyms to this word? |
| Oksana: I can think of just one, the most accurate adjective. It can [бездеятельный] “inactive”, “not doing anything”, “idle”, [ленивый] “lazy”, [пассивный] “passive”. |
| Eddie: Ok. All of the are useful, but I guess [ленивый] is the most common one, right? |
| Oksana: Yeah, if we talk about the usage frequency, [ленивый] is probably the one. |
| Eddie: Then we have [решительный] “decisive”, “resolute”. |
| Oksana: Oh, this one is easy. Just add [не] to the beginning and you’ll get [нерешительный], which is “indecisive”. |
| Eddie: Ok, then what about [творческий]? In the dialogue it came in a phrase [творческий подход], “creative approach”, but can you also use it to describe a person? |
| Oksana: Of course, you can say [творческий человек], “creative person”. I guess the opposite of it would be just [не творческий], “not creative”. |
| Eddie: Yeah, sounds just right. Wait, it seems to sound totally wrong to the grumbling guy. He says something like “yeah, right”. What was it? |
| Oksana: [Да, конечно...] It means “Yeah, sure”, but I guess your translation was quite accurate. |
| Eddie: Oh, then he calls him “a sly fox”. I didn’t know there was the same expression in Russian. |
| Oksana: [Лиса], “fox”, seems to be associated with someone sly, tricky and dishonest in many languages. In the dialogue we heard [хитрый лис], but that’s when we’re calling a man that. For a woman it would sound as [хитрая лиса]. |
| Eddie: The guy keeps going about how unfair the whole situation is. He says that “all these new ideas are just our old ideas which he didn’t accept last year”. |
| Oksana: Let’s stop on the word “which”, [который]. |
| Eddie: Yeah, I just wanted to suggest that. This word changes according to genders. For example, “the computer which” and “the book which” will have different “which”. |
| Oksana: Right, [компьютер, который] and [книга, которая]. Not much of a change, just the usual masculine and feminine endings for the adjectives. |
| Eddie: Yeah, but it was worth mentioning. We have two words left. |
| Oksana: The word [принять] means “to accept”. We can [Принять предложение], “accept an offer”, or we can even [Принять гостей], which will mean “to receive guests”. |
| Eddie: Yeah, that’s a useful word. By the way, how would you say “to reject”? just so we remember these two words in a pair. |
| Oksana: [Отказать] We’ve learned it, remember? |
| Eddie: Oh yes. Anyway, it was a good reminder. I want to finish with the vocab finally. We have the last word which means “swindler”. Can you repeat it for us, please? |
| Oksana: Yeah, it’s [Жулик]. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Eddie: Now let’s take a look at the grammar for today’s lesson. I don’t think there’s going to be anything revolutionary to you. We’ll talk about adjectives today. |
| Oksana: Besides, we’ve already learned how to modify Russian adjectives according to gender and number in lesson eight. |
| Eddie: Right, and I hope you remember that the gender and number of the adjectives depend on the nouns they describe. But besides that, Russian adjectives must agree with a noun in the case as well. |
| Oksana: Yes. Adjectives may change their endings in each case of the six cases depending on which case the noun is using. |
| Eddie: So, to have the proper form of an adjective you should know what case, gender or number is used by the noun, and then form the adjective accordingly, which means that of the noun is in the accusative, feminine, singular, you’ll have to do the same with the adjective. |
| Oksana: I know it sounds scary. There are so many words you have to change all the time while speaking Russian, but if you check our PDF materials you’ll find a table which gives you the endings to each adjective in each case. |
| Eddie: Of course we’re not going to read the whole table to you now. It’s for you to have some reference if you decide to play with words and sentences. Here, we’ll try to understand and remember some patterns through the examples. |
| Oksana: I’d even say why don’t’ we just take a sentence and try to analyze it. How it was build, why it was built this way, how every part speech was formed or modified. What do you think? |
| Eddie: Sounds like a great idea. What sentence should we pick? |
| Oksana: Let’s pick one which has both nouns and adjectives in it. For example, [Это человек с творческим подходом и миллионом новых идей]. |
| Eddie: “This is an active, decisive, responsible person with a creative approach and a million new ideas.” Ok, where should we start from? |
| Oksana: Well, as we know, nouns are the pillars of any sentence in the Russian language, so we should definitely start with the nouns. |
| Eddie: To build a grammatically correct sentence, we should first figure out the function of the noun in a sentence and define its case. |
| Oksana: That’s right. And after you figure out the role of the noun in a sentence, you can start working on adjectives which must agree with the noun in gender, number and case. |
| Eddie: We should probably break the sentence down into phrases. It will be easier for us to work with shorter parts. |
| Oksana: Yeah, definitely. So the first part will be [Это человек], which means “this is a person”. [Человек] is in the nominative case or dictionary primary form here. |
| Eddie: That was probably the easiest part of the sentence. |
| Oksana: It’s not going to get much more difficult. The next phrase is [С творческим подходом], “with creative approach”. |
| Eddie: First we take a look at the noun. The noun in this phrase is [подход], “approach”. Next we connect it with the preposition [с], “with”. |
| Oksana: Right. And what does this preposition [с] tell us? |
| Eddie: As we know, the preposition [с] always requires the instrumental case, therefore we put [подход] into the instrumental case and get [подходом]. |
| Oksana: You got it. Next we take a look at the rest of the words. In this phrase it was the adjective [творческий], “creative”, which has to agree with [подход] in gender, number and case. How do we accomplish that, Eddie? |
| Eddie: [Подход] is masculine, right? It’s also singular and used in the instrumental case. And knowing all that we can choose the proper form, or better say ending, for the adjective. [Творческим]. |
| Oksana: Great, and the proper endings for the adjectives are all listed in the PDF file. Next we have a phrase [С миллионом новых идей]. “with a million of new ideas”. |
| Eddie: Again, we start from the nouns, our key words. Here they are - [миллион] and [идея]. Because they also relate to the preposition [с], we should put them into the instrumental case. [миллионом идей] |
| Oksana: And the last word in this sentence is an adjective [новых], which is related to the noun [идей]. What number and what case should we put our adjective in, Eddie? |
| Eddie: Well, [идей] is plural and in the genitive case. I guess we should apply the same parameters to [новый]. We should put it into the plural number and the genitive case, the “of” case, and we get [новых]. |
Outro |
| Oksana: Great, we nailed it. I suggest you listen to this analysis again for better understanding. |
| Eddie: That definitely wouldn’t hurt. Practice makes perfect. Ok, thank for being with us. We hope you found this lesson creative with a million new ideas. See you next time. |
| Oksana: [Всем спасибо и до новых встреч!] |
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