Duo Russian Grammar

41) Countries and Places

Sweden, a Swede, Swedish

In Russian, the name of the country, the name of a person from there and their language are all different words. They are related, however, and few patterns exist:

country male female adjective
А́нглия англича́нин англича́нка англи́йский
Кита́й (China) кита́ец китая́нка кита́йский
Ита́лия италья́нец италья́нка италья́нский
Кана́да кана́дец кана́дка кана́дский
Аме́рика америка́нец америка́нка америка́нский
Казахста́н каза́х каза́шка каза́хский
Фра́нция францу́з францу́женка францу́зский

It's worth pointing out here (in case you hadn't spotted it already) that while English capitalizes country/language adjectives, Russian does not.

Simple Future

Describing a "simple" future action (not a process) is rather straightforward—take a perfective verb and make its "present" form same as you did with imperfective. The difference is, perfective verbs have no Present:

  • Ду́маю, тебе́ понра́вится Том = I think you'll like Tom. (from нра́виться/по́нравиться)
  • Я приду́ в шко́лу = I'll come to school. (прийти is a prefixed perfective variant of «идти»)

English, of course, has a number of ways of expressing the future, so use "will" or "is going to" (or indeed the present continuous/progressive) as you deem appropriate.

Программи́ст-кана́дец

Since in Russian, ethnicity is described with a noun, they can produce hyphenated compounds (just like other nouns). We have very few of them in this course.

  • писа́тель-италья́нец = an Italian writer
  • студе́нт-худо́жник = a student who is an artist
  • студе́нт-каза́х = a Kazakh student
  • подру́га-англича́нка = an English friend (fem.)

Speak English!

You can use both «говорить по-английски» (adverb) and «говорить на английском» (на + Instr.)

«На английском» is specifically about content in the language or about linguistic ability. «По-английски» is about the way an action is done/ an object is made (does not mean language for objects).

So a book can only be written «на английском». And, of course, if you mean "English-style pizza", it can only be «пицца по-английски»!

Levels

  1. 1) Alphabet 1
  2. 2) Basics 1
  3. 3) Phrases 1
  4. 4) Единственное число
  5. 5) Name and polite "You"
  6. 6) Plurals
  7. 7) Where is it?
  8. 8) Animals 1
  9. 9) Genitive Case - 1
  10. 10) Possessive Modifiers 1
  11. 11) Partitive
  12. 12) Accusative Case: the direct object
  13. 13) Verbs Present 1
  14. 14) Infinitive, Likes and Dislikes
  15. 15) Food
  16. 16) Adjectives Introduction
  17. 17) Conjunctions
  18. 18) There is
  19. 19) Questions
  20. 20) People 1
  21. 21) Around you
  22. 22) Prepositions and Places
  23. 23) Verbs Present 2
  24. 24) Time and Numbers
  25. 25) Family
  26. 26) People 1
  27. 27) Weather and Nature
  28. 28) Sport
  29. 29) Adjectives 1
  30. 30) Past & Infinitive
  31. 31) VLAD
  32. 32) Dative and Plurals
  33. 33) Reported speech
  34. 34) Perfective Verbs
  35. 35) I
  36. 36) Body and Health
  37. 37) Genitive Plural
  38. 38) Adjectives 2
  39. 39) Short and Long
  40. 40) Perfective verbs
  41. 41) Countries and Places
  42. 42) House
  43. 43) Reflexive
  44. 44) Time expressions 2
  45. 45) Imperative and Adverbs
  46. 46) Образовние
  47. 47) City and People
  48. 48) Imperative2
  49. 49) That Which
  50. 50) Technics
  51. 51) Future Simple
  52. 52) Being Instrumental
  53. 53) Placing Objects
  54. 54) Kitchen and Food
  55. 55) Speaking
  56. 56) Subjunctive
  57. 57) Compound Future
  58. 58) Prefixed Verbs of Motion
  59. 59) Arts & Entertainment
  60. 60) Together
  61. 61) Numbers 2
  62. 62) Adjectives 3
  63. 63) Plans
  64. 64) Prepositions 2
  65. 65) The Same
  66. 66) Fleeting Vowels
  67. 67) Measure
  68. 68) Business
  69. 69) Morphology
  70. 70) History & Fantasy
  71. 71) Participles
  72. 72) Computers & Internet
  73. 73) Adverbial Participles
  74. 74) Science
  75. 75) Politics
  76. 76) Spiritual
  77. 77) Some Spoken Patterns
  78. 78) Nothing Left
  79. 79) Crime and Justice