Russian grammar and vocabulary guides

Russian: common questions

1. 1How many grammatical cases does Russian have?Russian has six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional. Each case changes the ending of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns to show the word's role in the sentence. Word order is therefore far more flexible than in English, because the endings carry the grammatical relationships.
2. 2What is the difference between perfective and imperfective verbs?Russian verbs come in aspect pairs. The imperfective describes an ongoing, repeated, or unfinished action; the perfective describes a single completed action with a result. Most verbs have both forms, and choosing between them is closer to choosing a tense in English than choosing a synonym.
3. 3Do I need to learn Cyrillic to study Russian?Yes, and it is the fastest part of the process. The Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters, many of which look or sound familiar to readers of the Latin alphabet. Most learners read Cyrillic within a week or two, well before they can hold a conversation.