Урок второй

Новые слова  

Новая грамматика

Roots, suffixes and endings

 Do you remember that it is very important? For today we have some words which is very difficult to understand without it.  

Коротышка – корот + ыш + к + а

Цветочный – цвет + оч + н + ый

Сказочный – сказ + оч + н + ый  

Let’s begin from the first word: the root КОРОТ – the same root as in word КОРОТ-К-ИЙ (short), ЫШ – is the suffix to make a word with a meaning person from adjectives, K – is one of a big group of suffixes with a diminutive meaning, A – is an ending. And what is the result – КОРОТЫШКА is a diminutive word for a short person. What translation can you offer?

 The next word: ЦВЕТОЧНЫЙ, as you see, it is an adjective (because it has an ending –ЫЙ), the root of this word is ЦВЕТ, but it was made not from this word, but from a word ЦВЕТОК (flower) with the help of a suffix Н, which we often use to make an adjective from a noun. But why not ЦВЕТОКНЫЙ? We always change KН in suffixes into ЧН, because it is simpler to say.

 The last word was made exactly as a word ЦВЕТОЧНЫЙ, from a word СКАЗКА (tale).  

As you see Russian never use one word as a noun and as an adjective.

 Declinations and Cases  

Nouns and adjectives in Russian decline according to gender and case. Russian has 3 declinations: 1 – nouns that ends –a(-я); 2 – all the other masculine nouns and all neuter nouns, 3 – feminine nouns, that ends –ь, -мя, and some others. You can meet another numeration of declination, but it is not very important. Of course, there are some exceptions, but we will speak about them later. Every of these groups have similar case’s endings for all the words of the group.

Russian has six cases for nouns and adjectives, and three genders. Cases are as follows:

1. Именительный(Nominative)
2. Родительный (Genitive)
3. Дательный(Dative)
4. Предложный (Prepositional)
5. Творительный(Instrumental)
6. Винительный(Accusative)

Today we will speak about 2 cases: nominative and genitive.

The nominative case is the initial form of Russian nouns. All nouns appear in dictionaries and vocabularies in the nominative.

The main usage of nominative case is to speak about the person or thing performing an action or being in a state.

Genitive case has a lot of meanings: two of them is the Answer to the questions whose? what?. And the answer for a question: How much?

If you put the number 1,2,3,4  - you can use genitive singular, if more – genitive plural.  

OK. We have learned 8 nouns: урок, слово, грамматика, Незнайка, друг, цветок, сказка. город. Lets make 3 groups by declinations

 And put them into plural form.

 As you see there is regularity, but not always. This is because in old Russian there were 6 declinations, then become only 3, so some of the words became exceptions. It is no need to learn everything now, we will learn it later, when we will know more nouns. As a true there are much more regularity then you see here, but may be all our words are exceptions? Some of them yes.  

But here it is the rule:

Faminine and masculine have the ending –Ы, but it can changes into –и, after the letters г, к, х, ш, щ, ч. Neutral nouns have the ending –a, if they end on –o, and –я if they end on –e.  

It is much better, as you see only 2 words have different endings, and they will be exceptions: друг – друзья, город – города.

Let’s make genitive singular

 Now let’s make genitive plural forms for all these nouns.  

 Ok, as you see the only one exception.  

Later we will continue to add words to these tables. It is no need to learn something, just read and understand. It is much more important now then to learn.  

Pronouns  

I know that you are tied, but we need to know one more thing today. There are the possessive pronouns in Russian as in a lot of other languages.

 Он (he) – его (his)  

Она (she) – ее (her)

Оно (it) – его (its)

Они (they) – их (their)

 Of course there are pronouns I, you and others but we will not see them in our book soon, so we have no need to remember them now.

 I think it is a lot of grammar for today, so we need to practice a little.

 Exercises.

1. Put the pronoun он, она, оно after all these nouns.  

1. аллея – она
2. бульвар
3. василёк
4. город
5. грамматика
6. дом
7. друг
8. колокольчик
9. коротышка
10. маргаритка
11. Незнайка
12. огурец
13. одуванчик
14. приключение
15. ромашка
16. рост
17. слово
18. улица
19. урок
20. цветок

2. Make the possessive pronouns for these words and use the adjective «новый».  

1. берег – его новый берег
2. город
3. грамматика
4. гриб
5. друг
6. кора
7. коротышка
8. куст
9. лес
10. лодочка
11. Незнайка
12. огурец
13. орех
14. приключение
15. река
16. речей
17. слово
18. урок
19. цветок
20. ягода

3. Make the plural forms for the following nouns (there are no exceptions only those I gave in the text). 

1. аллея – аллеи
2. бульвар
3. город
4. грамматика
5. дом
6. друг
7. колокольчик
8. коротышка
9. маргаритка
10. Незнайка
11. одуванчик
12. ромашка
13. слово
14. улица
15. урок
16. цветок
17. берег
18. гриб
19. куст
20. лес

4. Make the genitive singular form for those nouns.  

1. берег
2. бульвар
3. город
4. грамматика
5. гриб
6. дом
7. друг
8. колокольчик
9. коротышка
10. куст
11. лес
12. лодочка
13. маргаритка
14. Незнайка
15. одуванчик
16. ромашка
17. слово
18. улица
19. урок
20. цветок

5.  Make the genitive plural form for those nouns.  

1. берег
2. бульвар
3. город
4. грамматика
5. гриб
6. дом
7. друг
8. колокольчик
9. куст
10. лес
11. Незнайка
12. одуванчик
13. орех
14. пила
15. пояс
16. слово
17. улица
18. урок
19. цветок
20. ягода

 6. Translate or put a word.  

1. Flower town _________________
2. The second flower________________
3. _____коротышка – новый _______________
4. The first adventure -_____________________
5. Сказочная __________ - ___________ grammar
6. Маленькое _________ – small word
7. Незнайка и его друзья - __________________
8. Красивая ____________ - a beautiful tale
9. Крошечный урок – tiny ______________
10. The first friend -- ____________________

 Ok! This is the end of the second lesson. At the next lesson you will read the name of the book we will read and you will read and understand it yourself! Without any help!