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Russian Grammar

For native English speakers, learning Russian grammar is similar in many ways to learning the grammar of any other language. There are some aspects of it that are actually easier than their corresponding aspects of English grammar, and there are some of aspects of it that are more difficult. Since your goal (presumably) is to learn this new language as quickly as possible, we would actually suggest (as with any other language) that you focus on the aspects you find the most difficult first. To aid you in this quest, we are going to try to explain concepts in as succinct a manner as possible so that you don’t get bogged down in lengthy explanations.

One of the concepts of Russian grammar which we’re going to explain to you first is the concept of verb tenses. The tense of a verb indicates the timing of its action. For example:

• In a past tense verb, the action represented took place in the past.

• In a present tense verb, the action represented is taking place currently.

• In a future tense verb, the action represented will take place in the future.

The English language actually has multiple variations on these tenses, but Russian only has one variation on each of them. That’s one of the areas in which the grammar of this language is actually a little bit less complicated than that of English.

Articles are another part of speech in Russian grammar that require a little bit of explanation. They don’t exist! We know that may sound a little surprising, but the grammatical construction of Russian doesn’t need articles. Also, the verb “to be” should never be used in the present tense in the Russian language. Gender is another issue we should talk about. Though not an issue in English, gender is a factor in many other languages, and Russian is no exception to that. However, it is much easier to determine the gender of a noun in Russian than it is in other languages because masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns end in different ways.

If all of this sounds easy, you may be wondering what the most difficult part of Russian grammar is. The answer is cases. However, as long as you don’t try to learn them all at once, they can be memorized easily enough. Also, you start with singular nouns. There are lots of resources available to you to aid you in the memorization of Russian cases.