Читать книгу Russian For Dummies - Serafima Gettys - Страница 12

In addition to the alphabet, grammar is responsible for earning Russian its reputation for being a difficult language. Don’t worry, though! Chapter 3 makes your transition from English grammar to Russian grammar as smooth as possible. We give you the scoop on Russian nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and sentence construction.

One benefit of Russian: Compared with English, which enforces the strictest order of words on its speakers, Russian allows a completely free, almost anarchic order of words. In the sentence “The dog chased the boy,” for example, the Russian words for boy and dog can switch places, but the sentence will still mean “The dog chased the boy.”

But to fully enjoy this freedom of word order, Russians had to pay a dear price in the form of six grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental, and prepositional), which anybody who speaks Russian has to juggle constantly to create sentences that make sense. Don’t let this fact intimidate you, however. With the guidelines we provide in Chapter 3, you’ll have a handle on cases in no time.