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Russian: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self-Teaching Guides) PDF

313 Pages·2005·2.27 MB·English
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Russian A Self-Teaching Guide Kathryn Szczepanska John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 2005 by Kathryn Szczepanska. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. ISBN-13 978-0-471-26989-2 (paper) ISBN-10 0-471-26989-1 (paper) Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of Bruce Everett Fritch (1936–1985) Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 The Russian Alphabet 1 2 The Noun 14 3 The Accusative Case 38 4 The Adjective 57 5 The Verb 88 6 The Prepositional Case 98 7 Present Tense Verbs 115 8 The Dative Case 138 9 Aspect of Verbs 156 10 Future Tense and Imperative Mode 167 11 The Dative Case (continued) 178 12 The Genitive Case 188 13 The Genitive Plural 214 14 The Instrumental Case 236 15 Verbs of Motion 251 16 The Prepositional, Dative, and Instrumental Plural 271 17 Participles 280 Russian-English Vocabulary 299 v Acknowledgments I hereby acknowledge publicly to my former professors at Stanford University— Joseph A. Van Campen and Dina B. Crockett—that they were right about every- thing. I am grateful to the editors at John Wiley & Sons for their unstinting generosity of time and labor, especially to John Simko for his attention to detail, Jeff Golick for his patience, and copy editor Dobrochna Dyrcz-Freeman for her sharp eye and mind.To Stan and Nancy, the sine qua non of my existence, a big fat punch in the nose. And to my Muse and herself a future author, Pamela Rose Machado, thanks for keeping me up at all hours of the day and night, and for sim- ply being you. vi 1 The Russian Alphabet Русский алфавит The Russian alphabet, also called Cyrillic, consists of thirty-three letters repre- senting thirty-one sounds and two signs that have no phonetic value of their own. It is attributed to the Greek monks Cyrill and Methodius, who came as mission- aries to Christianize the Slavic countries and left their mark on the language as well. Modified forms of this alphabet are still in use today in countries other than Russia, including Bulgaria and some of the new nations of the former Yugoslavia. Approximately one-third of the Cyrillic alphabet consists of letters that are identical to the Roman alphabet, with a phonetic value that is either almost equal or similar. Another third of the letters are recognizable to Westerners because of their Greek origin: п is the Greek pi, р is the Greek rho, and so forth. The final third consists of letters that were created to represent sounds in the Slavic lan- guages that had no counterpart in the original Greek of the missionary monks. Some of these letters have a Hebrew origin, such as the letter ш [sh].1 Although there are visual and phonetic similarities, almost no Russian letter is pronounced in quite the same way as its English counterpart. Russian vowels are purer and more clear than English vowels, and, except for combinations with the consonant-glide й, do not form diphthongs. Many Russian consonants form “hard” and “soft” pairs, which are not easy to represent in English. Consonants that are plosive in English (p, b, t, d) are not plosive in Russian, which makes their 1Brackets will be used throughout the text to indicate pronunciation. 1 2 RUSSIAN: A Self-Teaching Guide pronunciation for English speakers difficult. And last, the famous Russian frica- tives ш [sh], ж [zh], ч [ch], щ [sh’], ц [ts] pose challenges all their own. You will find a complete list of the Russian alphabet on page 13. Sounds and Spelling Vowels There are ten Russian letters for five vowel sounds: Hard Soft Letter Pronunciation Letter Pronunciation а a as in father я ya as in yard э e as in fed е ye as in yet ы i as in sit и ee as in feet о o as in home ё yo as in yore у oo as in food ю yu as in Yukon The vowels in the first column are called hard and are written at the beginning of a word and after hard consonants. The vowels in the second column are the soft vowels. They are written after soft consonants and when the word begins with an iotated vowel (the sound [y]). Compare the following: áлто (alto)—Ûлта (Yalta); Эмñлия (Emilia)—Елéна (Yelena); Óльга (Olga)—ёжик (hedgehog); Урáл (Urals)—Îрий (Yuri). The letters representing the sound [i] do not quite fit this paradigm, since their pure sounds are not quite the same. Nonetheless, they obey the rule above: the ы is written after hard consonants and the и after soft consonants. Consonants Hard or Soft 2 Russian consonants may be either hard or soft. Most English consonants are pro- nounced with a hard articulation, but most Russian consonants can be pro- nounced either way. By far the best example for English speakers of the difference between a hard and a soft consonant is the Spanish consonant ñ and the English letter n. The sound also occurs occasionally in English words, such as 2 They are also called palatalized and nonpalatalized. The Russian Alphabet 3 onion and poignant. As a device to assist in the pronunciation of Russian soft con- sonants, some textbooks suggest the insertion of the glide [y] between the conso- nant and the following vowel so that a hard n plus a would be transcribed as [na] and a soft n plus a as [nya]. This device is not quite correct, but it can be useful to help the student achieve a correct pronunciation. The following list of consonants shows the hard and soft pairs possible in modern Russian. For ease in pronunciation, they are shown with the vowel letters э and е. Hard Soft Hard Soft бэ бе нэ не вэ ве пэ пе гэ ге рэ ре дэ де сэ се зэ зе тэ те кэ ке фэ фе лэ ле хэ хе мэ ме There are six consonants in Russian that are either hard or soft, but not both. The three always-hard consonants are ж [zh], ц [ts], and ш [sh]. No matter which vowel follows them, they will always be pronounced hard. The three consonants that are always pronounced soft are ч [ch], щ [sh’], and й ([y] as in boy). These facts have various consequences for the writing system. None of these consonants may be followed by the vowel ы (the vowel и is written instead). In addition, the vowels я and ю appear as а and у. The result is the all-important seven-letter spelling rule: After the fricatives ж, ч, ш, щ, and the velars к, г, х, do not write ы, я, or ю; instead, write и, а, or у. The letter ц is not part of this spelling rule. The full explanation for this spelling rule can be appreciated only with an understanding of the historical morphology of Russian. The pronunciations of the consonants ж, ч, ш, and щ differ from their transliterated values [zh], [ch], [sh], and [sh’]. In fact, their articulation in terms of hardness and softness is opposite to their sounds in English. In Russian, the con- sonants ж and ш are always hard, whereas they are soft in English. The reverse is true for the consonants ч and щ. This will explain the English transliteration of the name of the composer Чайкóвский as Tchaikovsky, which attempts to move

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