59 Comments
A table in a restaurant is usually «столик», unless you mean it in the most literal "piece of furniture" sense.
It changes depending on the subject : мой -> masculine моя -> feminine моё -> neuter мои -> plural (all genders)
thanks. i sorta figured that out, but it still confuses me sometimes. The only thing holding me back with language is genders
Russian genders are easy. If the word finishes with A or YA, it's clearly feminine. If it ends with O or YO, it's Neuter. If it ends with other consonants, it's Masculine.
This is much more easier than genders in difficult languages, like German or French.
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This is still quite simplified though. Vanya etc are masculine, soft sign usually means feminine etc
Is there a way to help remember or is it just hard flash cards and staring until your eyes bleed?
In general, stereotypical feminine nouns you find in Russian end in -А(Я), typical masculine nouns end in a consonant (including Й), neuter nouns end in О/Е (Ё) and at least some classes of nouns have plurals that end in -Ы(И).
моя-мой-моё-мои seems to follow that scheme pretty closely, too.
Because the list here is for the nominative case, and мою is only used in other cases, such as the accusative.
Sometimes "Мои" read as 'moy' and then 'may' ... Any rules or grammatical laws about this? 'coz in English we all know that "the", in every noun which is pronounce with vowel words in the first place, will be read as "the" = 'di'. Else, started with consonant, just usual "the" = 'dè'.
Мой = moy because the curve means it is a diphthong (one syllable). Мои = ma-ee because no curve means it is 2 syllables, with accent only on the second syllable, so the unstressed о sounds like а
thanks for the info=-)
P.S:you are the main source of my answers shady arc
I wonder if I'll ever learn when to pronounce Л as L or V. This is a V-case, right?
I my experience, John, Л is never pronounced as a V. In some fonts, it is written as an upside down V, but is not pronounced as anything other than an L.
To me the female voice pronounces it like a V. I then asked a friend who is quite good in Russian and he is on your line, it should be an L and nothing else. The letter "г" (g) seems to be another story though.
You are totally right. Sometimes, the Russian г is pronounced as a v . Сегодня, нового, хорошого....in fact, whenever you see: "ого" In some accents--the Moscow accent for instance--ого sounds like "ово"
Is the "moii" sound garbled only on my computer? I played it several times and the recording felt very unclear, particularly about the pronunciation of this word. I can usually tell when a human speaks it, lol :) But then, there's also context.
Could Столы apply to tables in the more figurative sense of "charts and tables" or does it only apply to pieces of furniture?
It can only mean furniture. English "table" originated as an extension of "tablet", "flat board". In fact, it already had the meaning of "list" in Latin. The Slavic word, on the other hand, meant some kind of furniture all along.
A chart is табли́ца.
I thought "Ы" was one of the "silent" Russian letters (I could be wrong about that), and yet here it clearly makes a sound. Can you explain this please? Also, "Ы" sounds more like the English letter "i" in "this" or "it," or even better, ther French verb "est" ("to be" verb in the 3rd person singular), not "ee." Thoughts?
The simplest way to learn to produce a reasonably good ы sound is as follows:
Step 1: move your jaw forward as far as you can without having to call for a doctor to bring it back.
Step 2: while holding your jaw in that position, try to say "ee" like in "tee."
Step 3: remember that sound and try to reproduce it with your mimics remaining socially acceptable.
My first Russian teacher, Orin Frink, at Iowa State, said that I should imagine I had just spilled a bottle of ketchup on the front of my shirt. The sound I make would be similar to the ы sound.
Hmm... that Orin Frink guy must have had strange accent. I imagined the picture, but the sequence of sounds I produced had too many consonants to count for an 'ы'... must be my poor imagination.
Я не уверен, но я думаю, что Фринк из Филадельфии. Не смотря откуда, он хороший учитель.
No, ы is not silent letter (you might be confusing it with ъ or ь). And it sounds much deeper and thicker than English i in it. There is no identical sound in languages like English, French, German, Spanish and all learners should take time time practicing it. You will have to use it quite frequently: in some Russian personal pronouns (мы ты вы), while forming plural (with some nouns) and in some singular adjectives in masculine gender (красивый). If you do not say this sound properly not only you will have a rather bad accent but also you can be misunderstood. I was born in Russia and lived there for some 25 years....:), so I know what I am talking about. Good luck!
She has terrible problems to spell the character "л". I wish you could use another voice
Yeah. This voice overall makes it difficuilt to understand some words. It's easier to understand russian let's players than this.
You have to look it up on declension table, which lists the endings for nouns in all cases, genders and numbers (singular/plural).
Briefly: Neuter words never use either ы or и for plurals.
For feminine words ending in а the plural is ы. if they ending in я or ь, the plural is и.
For masculine words ending in - (none - e.g., стол) you add ы to the end to make it plural столы. Masculine ending й or ь the ending is и.
You have to be careful, because Neuter and Feminine share the я ending. Although Masculine and Feminine share the ь ending, both use и as the plural ending.
But it's best to get a declension table (there a lots on-line) and just painstakingly look them up one a ta time. There are so many other endings and such much common usage of the same characters to serve different purposes, it's best to focus simply on the problem at hand, and worry about learning it all later.
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"Mine tables" does not make sense in English. The word "mine" can never be followed by a noun, while "my" is always followed by a noun. This is because "mine" is a possessive pronoun, while "my" is a possessive determiner.
You could say "the tables are mine", which would translate to "столы — мои", I believe.
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Is it right that the pronunciation of стол is like 'stol', and of столы like 'stali'? Or am I wrong
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Yes, correct. The stress shifts to the second syllable.
If you're ever unsure about the pronunciations on Duolingo (admittedly, the voice on here DOES make mistakes fairly frequently), I find Wiktionary to be very useful for checking pronunciation guides to see where the stress falls. (E.G. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/столы )
