GRAMMATICAL GENDER AND THE NOMINATIVE CASE

AND SOME VOCAB! YAY! :)

RECALL: WHAT ARE NOUNS AND PRONOUNS?

• A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea/concept.

• Ex: Max, church, tree, song, love

• Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns in sentences

• Remember our subject and object pronouns from English?

• Subject: I, you, he, she, it, we, they

• Object: me, you, him, her, it, us, them

• There are many others, but we’ll get there. :)

NOUNS IN RUSSIAN

• Just like in English, nouns in Russian are either people, places, things, or ideas.

Like in Russian, pronouns can be used to replace nouns in sentences.

• Like in English, Russian nouns also have number (i.e., singular or plural); however,

unlike English, Russian nouns also have grammatical gender (masculine, feminine,

and neuter, to be precise) and have endings that help determine their function in

a phrase or sentence; these are called cases.

• (Cases are the bread and butter of the Russian noun system—and why I spent

that time last lesson to get you all to “unlearn” what you knew about grammar

and word order).

WHAT IS A GRAMMATICAL CASE?

From Wikipedia:•

“Case is a grammatical category whose value reflects the grammatical

function performed by a noun or pronoun in a phrase, clause, or

sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, and

their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case

they are in. English has largely lost its case system, although case

distinctions can still be seen with the personal pronouns: forms such

as I, he and we are used in the role of subject ("I kicked the ball"),

whereas forms such as me, him and us are used in the role

of object ("John kicked me").”

IN OTHER WORDS…

• Cases tell you what the word is doing in the sentence.

• In Russian, we look at the endings of words to determine the

case the words are in (and, in turn, to identify how the words

function in the sentence).

SO, HOW DO WE KNOW THE GENDER?

• Answer: We memorize it along with the vocab. For example,

our first vocab word is вера. It is feminine and belongs to a

group of similar words; groups of similar words are called

declensions (more on that later).

• So, when I give you vocabulary, write it thusly:

• Вера (f.) = faith

SO, I HAVE TO MEMORIZE THE GENDER EVERY TIME????

• For now, yes. Over time (and with practice and studying), you will be able to

identify the gender of nouns based solely on which declension they’re in and

based on the adjective endings (which also utilize the case system).

• Until then, the best method and the one that will get you to the above point is

to memorize a list of nouns with along with their genders. :)

OUR FIRST CASE: THE NOMINATIVE CASE

The • nominative case governs the subject of a sentence.

(nominative derives from Latin nomen, meaning “name.”)

So, whenever you learned the Russian term for something, you •

likely learned it in the nominative case.

Let• ’s look at some examples!

EXAMPLES

• “Прозри! вера твоя спасла тебя.” (Luke 18:42)

• “See (receive your sight); your faith has healed (saved) you.”

• ”Когда же приидет Сын Человеческий во славе Своей…” (Mat. 25:31)

• “When the Son of Man comes in his glory…”

• “Старайтесь не о пище тленной, но о пище, пребывающей в жизнь вечную, которую

даст вам Сын Человеческий, ибо на Нем положил печать [Свою] Отец, Бог.”

(John 6:27)

• “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of

Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

EXAMPLES (CONT.)

• Did you see how the subjects in each of the verses were

scattered throughout the sentences?

• Because the subject is in the nominative case, it doesn’t matter

where it is found in a sentence; just like subject pronouns in

English, nouns/pronouns in the nominative will almost always be

the subject of the sentence.

NOW, SOME VOCAB! (Recall: these are all nominative!)

“–А/Я” NOUNS

• ве́ра (feminine) = faith

вр• е́мя (neuter) = time

рук• а́ (feminine) = hand

OTHER NOUNS

Бог• = God

Сын• = Son

Госп• о́дь = Lord

От• е́ц = Father

Иис• ýс Христóс = Jesus Christ

NOMINATIVE (SUBJECT) PRONOUNS

RUSSIAN

• Я

• Ты

• Он/она/оно

• Мы

• Вы

• Они

ENGLISH

• I

• You (singular, informal)

• He/she/it

• We

• You (plural, singular formal)

• They

NOW, SOME PRACTICE!THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE! :)