Get A Grip On Basic Russian Grammar With These 7 Essential Rules

When you learn Russian, the grammar might seem a bit intimidating initially. But it’s a lot more straightforward than it looks at first sight.

So in this article you'll discover 7 different basic Russian grammar rules that are essential if you want to start speaking Russian.

I’ll explain each one, how it’s different from English, and how you can learn it. Let's get into it!

#1 Russian Doesn’t Have Articles

When we speak English, nouns almost always have to come after an article. These are words like a, an and the. So we have sentences that have different meanings depending on the articles that are used.

• The cat chased a mouse 
• A cat chased the mouse

You can see the difference between the two sentences based on whether we use “a” or “the”.

However, in Russian, you don’t have any articles to learn at all. Now, you might be wondering how Russian makes the distinction between “a book” and “the book”.

One of the main ways is simply by context. Russian is said to be more contextual than English, so you can often understand these things depending on the situation. 

One of the other main ways that Russian places focus on a word comes up in the next section.

#2 Russian Has Flexible Word Order

In English, word order is really rigid. The subject has to go before the verb and the object has to come after it.

My friend took the book

SUBJECT verb OBJECT

In Russian, word order is much more flexible and there’s much more freedom in where a word goes. So both sentences below mean “my friend took the book” but have totally different word order.

• Мой друг взял книгу
• Книгу взял мой друг

Keep in mind that flexible word order doesn’t mean completely free. There is a sort of ‘neutral’ word order in Russian that’s mostly the same as in English.

Мой друг взял книгу

My friend took (the) book

SUBJECT verb OBJECT

The fun part comes in how changing that can give shades of nuance to something. Generally speaking, new information is put at the end of a Russian sentence.

So although these two sentences have all the same words, they have slightly different focuses.

• В центре города открылся новый ресторан (in the city centre (they) opened a new restaurant)
  • the “new restaurant” is the new information

• Новый ресторан открылся в центре города (The new restaurant opened in the city centre)
  • The location (in the city centre) is the focus/new information

#3 Russian Nouns Have Case

Russian is able to have such flexible word order because of something called case (падеж).  One of the trickiest aspects of Russian grammar for English speakers to learn is the way that nouns change depending on their role in a sentence.

Let’s go over what that means.

In English, a noun's role is determined by where it goes in a sentence. We know that that “dog” is the subject of the first sentence below and the object of the second sentence because of its place in the sentence:

• The dog sees the child
• The child sees the dog

In Russian however, we indicate roles by changing the end of the word. As such, these two sentences have almost the same meaning.

• Ребенок видит собаку
  • Child-SUB sees dog-OBJ
• собаку видит ребенок
  • dog-OBJ sees child-SUB 

Most speakers say that Russian has six cases. There are a few others that are used in some special situations, but let’s just focus on the main six.

• Nominative tells you the subject of a sentence. In other words, it tells you who or what is doing the action.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee to Adam.

• Genitive lets you know about the ownership or origin of something. Where English would use “of” or “from” Russian often uses the genitive case.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee to Adam.

• Dative case indicates an indirect object, i.e. who is receiving something. It’s also used to express some feelings.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee to Adam.

• Accusative case describes the direct object of action.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee to Adam.

• Instrumental case is used to describe instruments. You’ll see this when talking about tools or how you do something. It’s also used to describe a company or who or what you do something with.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee with milk to Adam in the cafe.

• Prepositional case probably has the most transparent name. This case is only used after prepositions and is most often used to talk about location.
  • My brother’s friend gave a coffee to Adam in the cafe.

#4 Russian Nouns Have Gender

Like most European languages, Russian nouns all have gender. In Russian, there are three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter.

• муж (husband (masc))
• жена (wife (fem))
• дело (thing (neut))

It’s important to remember that this is grammatical gender so there are a lot of words whose gender don’t make any semantic sense. For example, a lot of abstract ideas in Russian end in -ость and are feminine.

• Лихность (bravery, daring)
• Гласность (openness, transparency)
• Страрость (old age)

As you can see, there’s nothing specifically feminine about “openness” or “bravery”, but because the words end in -ость they are grammatically feminine.

The good news is that the ending of a noun will usually make it clear what the word’s grammatical gender is.

There are a small number of exceptions, but these usually refer to semantic gender, so even though дедушка (grandfather) ends with -a, it’s still a masculine noun because of its meaning.

Since all nouns have grammatical gender, the same applies to the Russian adjectives that describe them. That means that knowing the gender of nouns is very important in Russian.

# 5 Russian Verbs Have Gender Too!

While you might be familiar with grammatical gender for nouns, a lot of English speakers find it strange that Russian verbs also have gender.

This probably sounds strange, but it’s actually pretty easy to understand. And since there are only four forms, it’s also very easy to learn.

Russian verbs only express gender in the past tense. When this happens, you conjugate the verb according to the gender of the subject (the one doing the action).

On top of that, past tense verbs have very regular forms, so once you know the rule, you can apply it in almost every situation.

Let's take a look at some examples in the table below:

The one thing to know is that all plural subjects take the same form. So you only have to know four forms – masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural. And with that, you can put almost anything in the past tense.

#6 Russian Verbs Have Aspect

In English, we talk about time with tenses like the past, present, and future. While Russian expresses these same ideas, it also has something called verbal aspect (вид). 

A verb’s aspect refers to the duration or completeness of an action. In Russian, there are two verbal aspects – the perfective and the imperfective.

Don’t worry though. These actually exist in English. Consider how “I was sitting” and “I sat” are both the past tense, but have very different ideas of completeness. 

The imperfective aspect expresses actions that go on for a while and don’t necessarily finish or come to an end. The imperfective can happen with the past, present, and future.

As you can see, the imperfective doesn’t give a sense of completeness to an action. So it’s used for things that are ongoing or take a while.

On the other hand, the perfective is used for actions that have completeness in mind.

The perfective aspect only exists in the past and future tense. In the past, it means that the action is totally finished, done, and completed. In the future it means, the action will be completed to the end.

This might seem complicated, but it actually means that you can translate the numerous past tenses in English with just two forms.

#7 Russian Puts Politeness In Its Grammar

One of the interesting things about Russian is the way it expresses social relationships.

Like Spanish, French, and German, Russian has something called T-V distinction. This means that you use different versions of the pronoun “you” depending on your relationship with the person you’re speaking to.

The words for you are ты and вы and you have to know when to use each one. 

Generally speaking, you should use ты when speaking to one person (you) and вы when speaking to more than one person (you all/y’all). However, there are some other rules where you use вы to show politeness, social distance, or respect. 

• Ты is used with family members, children close friends, and romantic partners
• Вы is used with strangers, people you don’t know or don’t know well, and people you have a professional relationship with

If in doubt, go with вы. If the other person finds it too formal they’ll probably ask давай на ты (let’s use ты).

You just have to remember Russian verb conjugation will vary according to which “you” you use.

• Ты говоришь слишком быстро (you’re speaking too fast (informal))
• Вы говорите слишком быстро (you’re speaking too fast (formal))

Getting Into Basic Russian Grammar Rules

Congrats! You made it to the end of this post on basic Russian grammar rules!

That may have seemed like a lot, but don’t get hung up on that. Learning a language takes time and as you go, a lot of the grammar will become second nature.

Of course one of the best ways to help as you go on your Russian learning journey is to enjoy stories tailored for Russian learners. This is where StoryLearning comes in.

As you read books in Russian, these basic Russian grammar rules will quickly become second nature. And you'll be using them with confidence in no time.

So there you have it. 7 must-know basic Russian grammar rules to help you on your path to better Russian. And as always удача из удач (best of luck)!

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.