Welcome to lesson two! Let’s get started already!
| I. The pronoun это |
We’re continuing our Russian studies, and we’ll now look at another key element of the Russian language – the pronoun это. This pronoun, depending on context, can mean this, it, or even that.
As usual, context will help us determine its proper translation. We’ll look at this pronoun in greater depth in later lessons, but for now we’ll just focus on its very basic usage.
Let’s combine что and кто with это and create some crucial constructions you’ll constantly use throughout your Russian studies.
| – | кто? что? |
|---|---|
| Кто это? Who is this? | Это я. This is me. |
| Что это? What is this? | Это дом. This is a home. |
So now you can easily ask what something is, or who someone is in the event that you’re unsure.
| кто это? [who is it? who is this? who is that?] |
Imagine you are with someone, and you then you see them wave to someone you’ve never seen before. You can say кто это?
| что это? [what is it? what is this? what is that?] |
The same can be applied if you see something you know in your native tongue, but not in Russian, or perhaps some weird object you’ve never seen in your life. You need to know what it is. Then you can say что это?
| For a little more emphasis, you can say это что? or это кто? This word order, however, is slightly blunter. Word order in Russian is relatively free. That being said, there is a standard word order that formal Russian uses. I wouldn’t recommend playing around with word order until you have a much deeper knowledge of Russian. Changes in word order can add extra emotion and even alter the meaning of a sentence. |
And this sets up an excellent segway into the next part of lesson 2.
| II. The nominative case |
It’s time to finally move on to perhaps the key-est of elements in Russian: declensions – cases.
| One of Russian’s unique charms is its rich case system. There are 6 cases in the modern Russian language: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional. This is the correct case order. To help you remember the order, I’ve come up with a funny mnemonic. No one dates an icky person. |
Not only do nouns decline [change their endings] in Russian, but so do adjectives [good, bad, nice], pronouns [he, she, it] and even numbers [one, two, three].
To reach a high level and become completely proficient in this beautiful Slavic language you need to be able to use cases correctly.
We’ll learn more about what it means to decline a noun in future lessons.
Be prepared! In Russian words constantly change their endings.
| Cases weren’t created solely for the purpose of making this language difficult, but rather to clarify. You see, each case serves a specific function, thus Russian has suddenly gone from a seemingly arbitrary language to a completely logical one. We’ll start with the simplest of cases – nominative. This case’s function is to indicate the subject of a sentence. Before we go any further, let’s make sure you know how to identify the subject. |
…
| Identification of the Subject |
Before we go any further, let’s make sure you know how to identify the subject.
Note: If you can already identify the subject of a sentence, then skip this box completely, but I’d prefer you didn’t.
What is a subject?
| Subject: the person or thing performing the action. |
Not clear enough? Here’s an example for further clarity:
Mother makes cookies.
Who makes cookies? Mother! She is the one performing the action, which is making cookies.
Here’s one more example just so we’ve completely understood this:
The house attracts people.
What attracts people? The house! A house is not a person, but rather a thing that is performing the action of attracting people.
Granted that you understood all of this, the nominative case’s use will now be crystal clear.
…
If you observed carefully, did you notice something?
Who makes the cookies? Mother!
What attracts people? The house!
We answered the questions who? and what? Russian functions just like this! The nominative case answers the questions and что? and кто?
There is more to the nominative case, however, and you’ll need to understand the stuff I’ve yet to mention in order to understand the other cases. We won’t go into that until lesson 3. Instead, we’ll shift our focus to another topic before ending this lesson.
Let’s look at the nominative case in further depth.
| Gender |
Knowing the gender of a noun is crucial in Russian, because nouns decline differently based on their gender. In Russian, there are 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Don’t fret! Luckily determining the gender of a noun is extremely easy in Russian. Just follow a couple of simple rules and you’ll have no problem.
| Masculine nouns end in a consonant. |
| дом [house] стол [table] брат [brother] диван [couch] |
| Feminine nouns end in –а and –я. |
| сестра [sister] неделя [week] статья [article] |
| Neuter nouns end in –о and –е. |
| море [sea] поле [field] озеро [lake] |
There are some finer points involving gender; however, I’m really trying to make these lessons both helpful and manageable. We’ll tackle such points as we move into later lessons.
| If you’re very curious to explore this case further, click here. |
| The nominative is considered the base form of Russian nouns. Whenever you look up a word in a Russian dictionary, the word will be in its nominative form and often alongside it there’ll be any peculiar declensions [other cases] it may have. |
| III. Soft sign and gender |
I’d very much like to explore with you another grammar point, however, let’s instead look at a crucial exception involving gender in the nominative case.
Perhaps you’ve seen this letter before – ь. This is the soft sign. It has no pronunciation on its own. It comes after a consonant [never after a vowel!] and works to soften it. This letter can never start a word; it can only be in the middle or at the end of a word. If it ends a word, that’s when confusion happens.
Words ending in –ь can be either masculine or feminine. The only thing you can do is memorize which are masculine and which are feminine. The majority of them are feminine.
Have a look here at a small list.
| М [masculine nouns] | Ж [feminine nouns] |
|---|---|
| дождь [rain] | ночь [night] |
| день [day] | вещь [thing] |
| словарь [dictionary] | любовь [love] |
| корень [root] | боль [pain] |
| руль [steering wheel] | ложь [lie] |
| I’ve written a post with an extensive list of nouns ending in the soft sign. Click here to check it out. |
| In Russian, the ь is called мякгий знак. |
That concludes lesson two. See you in the next one.
| Last Edit: 12/06/2025. |
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