Who Am I? - Family and Personal Characteristics

Reading Russian

Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet: read left to right, and like English it has capital and small letters. Each letter stands for a sound, not a word. The difficulty is not learning new shapes. It is the false friends: letters that look like English ones and sound completely different. - С sounds like s, not k. - Р sounds like r, not p. - Н sounds like n, not h. - В sounds like v, not b. - У sounds like u, not y. That is why сестра reads "sestra" and not "cectpa". Read Cyrillic with English habits and you will get plausible-looking nonsense.

The words

Seven words to start with. The first two introduce you, and the rest are the people around you:

Match each word to its meaning

Read the script

отец (otets) means _____, and мать (mat) means _____. семья (semya) is the whole _____, while друг (drug) is a _____, who is not part of it.

The trap

A student meets the word друг and reads it aloud as "dpyg", treating Р as an English P and У as an English Y. How is the word actually pronounced, and why?

• "drug": Р is the sound r, and У is the sound u
• "dryg": Р is r, but У really does sound like an English y
• "dpug": У is u, but Р really is the English p sound
• "dpyg" is right: Cyrillic letters that look Latin are read as Latin

The word that is not there

This is the difference English speakers keep undoing, and it is easier to see side by side than to be told:

Two sentences to keep

Two patterns are worth memorising whole, because both of them work in a way English does not: - Это моя сестра (eto moya sestra) = "this is my sister". Это is "this", моя is "my", and nothing at all stands for "is". - У меня есть брат (u menya yest brat) = "I have a brother". Russian has no verb "to have" either, so it says something closer to "at me there is a brother". Notice that есть in the second pattern is not the missing "is" from the first. It belongs to the "have" construction, and putting it into the first sentence is a mistake.

Inside the sentence

Here is Это моя сестра, split into its three words. Tap the word meaning "this" AND the word meaning "my".

• Это
• моя
• сестра

Pick the sentence

Which of these says "this is my sister"?

• Это моя сестра (eto moya sestra)
• Это есть моя сестра (eto yest moya sestra)
• Это мой сестра (eto moy sestra)
• У меня есть брат (u menya yest brat)

Build the sentence

Put these four parts in the right order to say "I have a brother".

• У (u) - at
• меня (menya) - me
• есть (yest) - there is
• брат (brat) - a brother

Say it properly

You are introducing yourself and your family in Russian. Work through three decisions.

• You want to say "this is my sister". How many words do you need, and why?
• Before брат, which form of "my" would you need?
• Now you want to say you HAVE a brother. Which sentence is it?

Having and existing

У меня есть брат says "I have a brother", but not one word of it means "have". У (u) means "at", меня (menya) means "me", and _____ means "there is". So the sentence literally says "at me there is a brother". Russian has no verb for "to _____" at all. And note that this word is NOT the missing "is" from Это моя сестра: putting it into that sentence is _____. Before a masculine noun like брат, the word for "my" would be _____.

The missing word

A friend starting Russian keeps writing есть into sentences like Это моя сестра, because English always needs "is". Explain, in English, why that is wrong.

• Say what Russian does with the present tense of "to be"
• Quote Это моя сестра and say how many words it has, and what each one does
• Say what есть is actually for, and give the sentence it belongs in
• Say why an English speaker makes this mistake so consistently

Russian summary

Russian uses the _____ alphabet, left to right, with capital and small letters. Beware the letters that look Latin: Р is the sound _____, not p. The word for family is _____. And in the present tense Russian uses no word for _____, so Это моя сестра is three words with no verb in it.