Aiming to provide an all-round and accessible description of the language, this book gives a presentation of grammar as an intellectual exercise and lots of drills and exercises which are intended to be stimulating and interesting. The best of the language, namely extracts from works of many of its inimitable writers, is used among much else: Pushkin, Gogol', Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Mandel'shtam, not to forgoet Kharms. The overriding aim is to set everything in an entertaining, real, and enlightening historical, cultural and social context - to give learners what they actually want to know about Russian (but are usually afriad to admit to). It also sets out to describe everything in such a way that the dread moment in so many books when everything becomes incomprehensible simply doesn't happen here. "Learn Russian" will not teach you how to buy an ice-cream or ask direction to the Kremlin but it will give anyone the opportunity to read some of Russia's greatest literature in the original along with learning something of the historical, cultural and social context.
Foreword vii Peter Jones Introduction ix The Alphabet 1(9) Cyrillic, Russian Pushkin Spelling 10(12) The Russians and their language; Russian grammar The bare bones of a chat Scandinavians, Slavs, and… 22(13) Gender; `to be; conjugations; past; negation Blok Names From Kiev to Muscovy 35(9) Questions; this and that; accusative, prepositional, instrumental; prepositions Revision: A Welcome Breather 44(6) Consonant alternations The Tale of the Years of Time The Tale of Igors Campaign The Arrival of the West 50(10) Aspects and future; more verb patterns Pushkin Almost a Dead Poets Society 60(13) Verbs of motion; genitive, dative; more prepositions; motion and prepositions; adjectives Lermontov, Gogol First Orders, not to mention Last 73(15) Imperative; plural (noun, adjective); mobile vowels; personal, possessive, demonstrative pronouns; conjunctions; cardinal numerals Yet more verb patterns 88(9) Impersonal constructions; `to have Revision 97(9) History in the 17th-19th centuries Goncharov, Tiutchev Putting and saying The century marches on 106(12) Short adjectives; collective numerals Turgenev Remembering Dostoevsky 118(12) Conditional (subjunctive); `if; locative, partitive; reflexive; adverbs; more pronouns (all, self, every) Tolstoy 130(8) Ordinal numerals; active participles; relative clauses Kharms Chekhov 138(12) Time expressions (days, etc.); clock time Taking Revision: A TeΠepb Me&de;⪙&ehho, HO Bepho 150(7) Ilf and Petrov, Marchenko Poetry of the Silver Age 157(10) Adverbial clauses; gerunds Women in Russian Society Mandelshtam, Baranskaia And its not all poetry 167(9) Indefinites (somebody,....); word order; passive participles; deverbal nouns Olesha Bulgakov 176(8) Indirect speech; comparison Venedikt Erofeev 184(7) Negation Revision: Pocc&i;&ya; &i; pyccka&ya; &de;y&sha;a 191(6) Kharms, Pushkin Reference Section 197(12)
1. Nouns, adjectives, and family names
2. Abbreviations and a note on the translations-glosses
3. A few terms, with reference to Russian Index 209(2) End-Piece Bibliography and references What next? 211
