Elementary Russian: Thursday in the time of coronavirus... Вирусы! Пандемия! Кaрантин!

Some useful words... See, Russian isn't so hard... I bet you can guess the meanings of these words...

I'd teach you what the word отъебись means, but... I'll let this video explain...

Very useful word now, it seems...

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This unit has a lot going on. Three main concepts to take away:

1) The instrumental case, our last, and really easy... Nine times out of ten, it's preceded by the word "with" с: Мы с сестрой. Пицца с грибами. Паста с соусом. More endings... Spaghetti! You learned this yesterday in lab.
2) The FUTURE tense, which is really easy... Until it's hard. But, suffice to say: Russian doesn't really have a separate verb form for future. And, as you'll see today, the IMPERFECTIVE FUTURE is dead easy: We're going to eat pizza! We're going to hide in our room! We're going to bake cookies!
3) Aspect... Вид. It's essentially the grammatical practice of "subjective relationship to activity." In English, we have aspect, too: I read that book. I ate that cookie. I hid the pizza under the covers. I'll say more later!

Let's start with the future tense of быть, to be... Russian is weird here... recall that there is no PRESENT TENSE verb that means "to be":

• Я профессор. Я дома. Я в постели. I'm a professor. I'm home. I'm in bed. 

But, as we know there IS a past tense form of the verb, which is perfectly predictable (in its form) and used all the time:

• Был человек. Было время. Были однажды студенты на кампусе. Здесь у нас был один фонтан, а теперь у нас есть два фонтана! There was a man. There was a time.  Once there were students on campus. We once had one fountain on campus, but now there are two! 

See? Past tense, marked by gender/number. 

Now, learn the PERFECTLY REGULAR future... it's a first-conjugation verb, no mutations:

Listen as I read the conjugation:

View on Vocaroo >>

OK. Now, do this exercise:

Right? Easy. It's just a verb, and a regular one at that. 

Now, to form the IMPERFECTIVE FUTURE, which is super simple: Just the verb быть properly conjugated in the future (буду, будешь...) plus the infinitive. You are saying "I will to eat." Я буду есть. 

Listen to me read a few examples with eating and drinking. 

• to eat есть 
• to drink пить

View on Vocaroo >>

• Я буду есть макароны. I'm going to have some pasta.

Видите? The FUTURE is just a form of быть and the infinitive. Я буду пить кофе! 

А теперь... сделаем это упражнение!

Unit 8 portfolio for Dr. Denner's section and for Dr. Zheltoukhova's section

Dr. D's section: Ребята! I sent this out in an email, but here it is, too... Your assignment for Portfolio 8... due on Sunday April 19 at midnight.

Fill it out using Word and your Russian keyboard, or print it up and and fill it in with a pencil... Or heck, whatever works. Ну, ни фига себе!

The Word document will go all wiggy if you mess with the fonts. It's fine if you do, we'll work it out... We're all smart and not distracted by kerning...

Dr. Z's section: Ребята! I uploaded this on BB, but here it is just in case. Note that tutoring is now available on Friday as well! Great news! 

Сегодня на уроке... . Elementary Russian work

Привет! 

That's ugly. I don't like it either. 

This unit further expands your understanding of the Dative Case, which is used primarily:
1) To express age (Мне 18 лет!)
2) To express the indirect object, which is another way of saying "the person who's the object of a ditransitive verb"... I realize maybe that's not any easier! You use the dative for sentences like Ирина подарила своей сестре свитер на день рождения/ Irina gave her sister a sweater for her birthday. Своей сестре is the dative form of своя сестра (her sister). It's dative because it's the indirect object, in other words, sister is the person in an expression with two objects (sister=indirect object=dative; свитер=direct object=accusative (SAN!)). 
3) It's used with impersonal expressions like Мне надо! I gotta go!) Тебе нужно больше заниматься! You should study more! Ивану нужно купить книгу. 
4) And for the verb нравиться, a super important verb: Мне не нравится онлайн урок! 

Here are the deets....

One way to think about this is: The Dative has a vowel, -е, that pops up all the time in formation (мне, тебе, школе...), PLUS the consonant м which likewise pervades the dative (журналам, вам, ему). Between those two letters, you got MOST of the forms... 

Elementary Russian: Additional Work for Tuesday Apr 7 REMOTE

Привет, ребята!

Here is our Tuesday class work, April 7.

1) Let's start with a dictation as usual:

2) Было не было. Work with this ppt. Download it to your laptop so you can self-check your answers. The final slide has a translation exercise: You're asked to translate a series of possession sentences. Those sentences are partially translated below: You need to fill in the missing "have" words... For positive sentences ("He had a dog") you'll use the correct form of был (был, была, было, были), the form corresponds to the "thing" in the nominative. For negative sentences ("He didn't have a dog") you'll always use не было, and the "thing" you're netting goes into the genitive (of course!). 

Complete the translations on the last slide sentences below:


3) Went - ходил vs. пошёл. Download this handout and do all three assignments there. You can type in the document or you can print it out and write on it. Add it to your Portfolio 8.


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Adding: In class, students had a lot of problems with expressing existence/non-existence in the past, so I did a FlipGrid and a Power Putin Performance... find it all here. You'll need to do it for your portfolio, so go ahead and do it now!  

Thursday April 2, 2020... Говорит Стетсон! Сегодня 2ое апреля!

I love teaching online! (Another in a series of "things no one has ever said in the history of mankind." If someone DOES actually say this... run away as fast as you can. They're about to molt and become a lizard-man.) 

Next, go play Memrise! The following items will be on your quiz... 

1. Say you want to give your friend a present.
2. Ask a friend to help you choose a gift for someone.
3. Tell a friend it's hard to advise him/her.
4. Suggest that your friend go with you to the market.
5. Get a salesperson's attention.
6. Ask a salesperson to show you a scarf (book, hat).
7. Ask how much the scarf (book, hat) costs.
8. Ask if the store accepts credit cards.
9. Ask a friend where you can buy shoes (gloves, hats, pants).
10. State that you need to buy socks (shoes, gloves).
11. Say that something is expensive (inexpensive, cheap).
12. Say that a new department (store, library, market) just opened.
13. Wish someone a happy birthday.
14. Ask how someone knew you love Pelevin (Chekhov, Bunin, Akhmatova).
15. Thank someone enthusiastically.



Now, contemplate this.

So, no surprises here. The subject is the thing, and the verb form reflects the gender/number of the thing that you're asserting the existence of: он был, она была, оно было, они были. (Again, notice that there is no gender in the plural in Russian! It used to have it, before the 15th century, but languages change... By the way, most other Slavic languages have a "plural feminine" and a "plural masculine.) 

Practice this below... It's pretty straightforward. Identify the nominative (it's the THING in each sentence), determine its gender/number, and then fill in the appropriate form of быть.

And then there's nonexistence... 

I didn't have time. I didn't have money. I didn't have happiness. 

If you're expressing "didn't have" (negated possession) in the past, you'll 1) need to use the GENITIVE (no surprise, genitive is quantity, and you're saying "there's nothing"); 2) the verb form не было ALWAYS, because now you don't have a subject (nothing is in the nominative). 

Look at these examples:

This is confusing, but: the THING you are "netting" is in the genitive and the VERB FORM is always не было. 

Listen as I read the examples from above. Не было is pronounced [ñébylǝ], one word, accent on the не:

View on Vocaroo >>

ОК, now you do a few...