The logic of the Russian language

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]My name is Fedor and today we are tackling a very foundational issue that a lot of learners have. At the end of this video, by the end of this video, you will understand the exact logic that Russians use to make sentences. And the problems like translating words in your head or sounding unnatural because you're using English logic in Russian will disappear. you will understand exactly what Russians are thinking about when constructing a sentence even though we do it fast and in our head. These are the principles that we use for our sentences and at the end I will also share a practical step by step of how you can make this your second nature. So we'll talk about two major systems of the Russian language. Parts of speech, parts of a sentence. Let's start with parts of speech and I'll mention the issues when we translate from English to Russian.

[00:01:07]Let's take this wonderful word running.

[00:01:11]In English, it's a great word. I can use it like this. I am running. So running is a verb because it describes an action.

[00:01:22]I love running. Now this is a noun because running now describes a thing, a sport, an activity. It's now a noun. I have running shoes. Now running is an adjective because it describes what kind of shoes we have. So the same exact word right here, running, running, running, verb, noun, adjective.

[00:01:47]spelled in the same exact way and we can use it in all of these three ways. The problem comes when you translate running into Russian because for the most part you translated as one word typically beot is running in Russian. However, begot is a verb.

[00:02:09]It cannot be used in place of running noun and running adjective. Cannot. It's a mistake and a listener listening to you a native they will not understand what you mean. So if you want to make a sentence I have running shoes you would say I have bigot I have running shoes. If we were to separate the sentence it will make sense but begot is a verb and instead of begot we needed an adjective.

[00:02:42]So a listener would not understand what you mean. Instead of beot, we use the same stem but a different ending. Beava.

[00:02:52]So as you can see, we change the ending because is a perfect fit for an adjective. It's no longer a verb. This is the mistake of structural approach to Russian that I see happening every single day whenever I have lessons with Russian language students whenever we have our fluent camps. It doesn't matter. I always see people make this mistake. So, how can we avoid it? It's fairly simple. In Russian, we have, I would say, eight major roles or parts of speech. We've mentioned noun, verb, adjective. Those are clear. Adverb describes how an action is done like quickly, slowly, things like that.

[00:03:38]Numero of course is one, two, three, etc. Prepositions is before, for before, after is when we put it before a word. A conjunction is when we connect multiple parts of a sentence and, but, etc. and pronouns like he, she, it for the latter four, we don't have to worry about it because individual words in Russian will only be used for these roles. If we have a preposition door, it will always be preposition. We cannot change its form. So you won't mistake do for some other row of a sentence. So the last four, we are we are good with them. If you learn a word for them, there will be just that one word, nothing else. For the first four, noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. We have to know how to put a word in that form so it can correspond to the rule. Take an example of running.

[00:04:43]Running verb, running noun, running adjective. Running verb is begot.

[00:04:49]Running noun is big. Running adjective is beav.

[00:04:54]Okay. So, whenever you are learning a new word for running, when you put it in the translator, if you're making flashcards, if you're studying words along with the translation, you must put the part of speech. So, if you looked up a word and it translated as running, make sure that your card says on one side, running noun. So you are no longer going to be confused which word to use because every time when you flip through your flash cards you will have big running noun bigot running verbavoy running adjective and instinctually you will know which one to go for when you make a sentence.

[00:05:43]Now you might think okay for each stem I'm supposed to learn multiple forms.

[00:05:50]There is a bit of a simplification. We have a pattern. Of course, most Russian verbs will end on.

[00:06:00]You see this t? That's an infinitive ending. So, it's a verb. Most likely, most adjectives will end on like depending on their gender, masculine, feminine, etc., Um, of course, I'm jumping through many different topics here, but this is a more basic video, more foundational video. If you're curious about adjectives specifically and why they have different forms, you can also look that up separately.

[00:06:32]Most adverbs will end on o or you see the o the end, it's an adverb.

[00:06:42]For nouns, it's a bit more complicated because we have a great variety of objects that we will be describing with nouns. But most nouns will end on a consonant like stol on a or yah for like ends on a ends on o and maybe stali ends on e.

[00:07:02]These are more common endings of of nouns. But the more you study the Russian language, the more you will understand which words are nouns, which words are verbs, and you have to now for you to stop thinking in English, you have to know each word and its role. So you won't be using a verb instead of a noun. You won't be using an adjective instead of a verb. Okay, that's the first system, part of speech. The second system is part of a sentence. We don't speak with words. We put words in sentences and we speak with sentences.

[00:07:42]If you need help with studying Russian and learning it more step by step, then I invite all of you guys to check out Be Fluent with the first link in the description. If you've made it this far to this video and you like what you've heard and it makes sense and you want to explore more of this topic and of Russian in general, be will be a great help. We put this native like approach to our lessons as well. And if you want more personal reference, this is not just some ad that I just push on our channel. We made this website. It's our own creation. We can be more serious and have a more guided approach to our teaching. And in fact, I'm married. You see my ring right here. My wife is an American learning Russian and she is learning with us. If I give our own platform to my wife to study, then that just goes to show how much I believe in our own platform. So check it out. We have an app. We have a website. All the information we put the first link in the description. We have a free trial for you to try it out and see if you like it or not. Now let's move on to parts of a sentence. Each word will have their own rule, part of a speech, overall speech. But the type of raw dough plain sentence will be completely different. So let's start with the most basic sentence structure that you can make which is subject plus predicate. I'll be using English sentences here because it's easier to explain it that way. John ran.

[00:09:22]John ran is a simple subject predicate structure. Subject is who did the action. In this case, John. Predicate is what did John do? It's the main action of a sentence. So, subject plus predicate. For subject, we typically have names or nouns like maybe table, microphone, camera, things like that.

[00:09:45]And of course, for predicate, typically 99% of the time is going to be a verb, an action. So, John ran is the sentence structure. Some basic ideas that you can express with just this simple sentence structure.

[00:10:01]I'm tired.

[00:10:03]I love I'm full. Well, I have eaten enough. So, it's a verb still. And many many more.

[00:10:11]We use subject who and predicate what was what was the action of this sentence. That's the first major two rows. Almost every single sentence in Russian has to have these. So if your sentence doesn't, it's either you're going specifically for a structure that is not required to have both or you're making a mistake. If you are a basic learner and you have spent less than 15 to 20 hours, let's say, studying Russian, if your sentence doesn't have one of these subject plus predicate, you're making a mistake. Go back and fix it. Because sometimes you can use a sentence like this for I am called but this sentence doesn't have subject plus predicate. So you are here instead of saying what you did you are describing you. You are called as a person. That may not be what you want to communicate. Okay. So if you're beginner, go for subject predicate, something similar of like I I got tired. Okay. The next step of adding more detail to our sentences, a native would think to add an object. An object is something that the action is done to. So John ran a race.

[00:11:35]John subject. Who did the action? John.

[00:11:37]What did he do? Ran. Ran what? a race. A race here is an object. Okay? So, for the most part, again, n maybe 80% of all natives, Russian native sentences, we have the structure.

[00:11:53]I did this. I did that. I ate this. I watched that. I will take this. I will buy that. Simple structure. And again, if you're a beginner, go for this. Don't go for anything more detailed for now.

[00:12:09]Okay. So, how can you make a sentence with this structure?

[00:12:15]I love you.

[00:12:18]I am watching a movie. Again, an object. So, subject predicate object.

[00:12:26]An object must be something that is a noun. You cannot say for let's say I watch a movie.

[00:12:37]I'm watching a good kroshi here is not a noun. You cannot say this. You might want to say I'm watching a good one and you translating but it would not make sense to a Russian native because you are using an English logic. So an object back to let's say here is a noun. In fact, it's a pronoun.

[00:13:02]Same same idea here. Now this is a complete sentence. It's a perfect one and it makes perfect sense.

[00:13:10]I am watching a movie. Every part of the sentence subject, predicate and object.

[00:13:16]They are represented by the right part of speech. I did not say instead of let's say which would be an adjective. I did not do that. I used a verb when the verb is required. And this sentence is making perfect sense.

[00:13:34]natives will go for more detail. Of course, we have two ways of let's go back to John ran a marathon. We have two more ways of complicating a sentence.

[00:13:45]It's either we describe a race as something big, long, short and we describe the action. How did he run?

[00:13:54]Quickly, slowly etc. So, first we will expand upon a race. John ran a long race. long here the role of a sentence part of a sentence will be an attribute.

[00:14:10]So it's the attribute that the race has.

[00:14:13]What kind of race is it? Long race.

[00:14:16]Okay. For the most part attributes will be represented by adjectives good, beautiful, smart, bad, etc. Okay, for the most part, again, if you're a learner, I would say 100% of sentences should be an adjective. Now, if you're going for more poetic um expressions and you like to story, you can go for other things, but once your fluency gets to that level, don't experiment with this stuff yet. Okay? you can communicate the same idea with the basic sentence structure instead of going for more eloquent and uh taking a glass of wine and okay I want to say like this most likely you'll fall flat you'll make a mistake because your fluency is not there yet to understand every single part of a sentence and feel it with your body and soul the second way of complicating this sentence is by describing how the action was done and that's an adverb verbal modifier adverbial. So, we're adding it to the verb.

[00:15:23]We can say John ran a long race quickly.

[00:15:28]Now, quickly is an adverbial modifier.

[00:15:32]Okay? Because it modifies how the action was done. We explain further how he ran it. How? So, the question of how is present here. So to summar to summarize everything five parts of a sentence subject predicate object attribute adverbal modifier each of those roles and I didn't mention of course adverbal modifier should be represented by an adverb should be if you are a learner doesn't matter beginner intermediate and advanced almost all All of your sentences should have this structure. Some sort of subject plus predicate plus object plus an attribute plus adverbal modifier.

[00:16:24]Unless you have learned structures that can avoid some of these parts of a sentence. That'll be a separate video for the next time. Not right now. Maybe we'll never make that video. I don't know. So, you need to know this stuff and feel it with your bones whenever you make Russian sentences. How do you do that? Now, we're getting into the practical application of this stuff.

[00:16:52]Below with the pinned comment, I have a simple text of just let me see a few lines I believe like two lines. Your job will be to in each there's one, two, three, four, five sentences that are short. In each of those sentences, do two things. First, you outline each word and you put what part of speech it is, pronoun, noun, verb, etc., and what kind of a role it played in that sentence, subject, predicate, etc. You have to do this with a sentence with sentences that are written by Russians where all the rules are correct. All the parts of speech are used correctly. So you can then passively acquire that structure and also come up with the same structure of your own when you're speaking or writing a sentence. There's no other ways around it. You have to absorb, right? Soak in the native sentences for you to model that and spit it back out. You cannot logically think this through through English. You have been or maybe your own other um native languages. You've been listening to a lot of English when you're growing up.

[00:18:12]Maybe Spanish, French. I I don't know all of you guys, but mostly we have English speakers because I speak English. You heard the English logic and the English logic is second nature to you. The Russian logic is not. And so you have to simply kind of do the same as you did when you were little.

[00:18:33]Consume, consume, soak in, soak in, soak in as much of Russian sentences as possible. But now you have a guide. Now you have a guide of these parts of speech and these parts of a sentence.

[00:18:46]Every single sentence will have them.

[00:18:50]Now your job is to identify them, feel them, and then use them yourself. For starters, if you're beginner, for parts of sentence, use subject, predicate, object as your foundation.

[00:19:05]If you want to add more detail, you know exactly where to put the attribute in the form of an adjective and you know exactly where to put an adverbal modifier in the form of an adverb. Once you get to that level, if you're a beginner, don't do it. If you need more help, like I said in the beginning, with getting to the stage of being able to use other modifiers, being able to use other structures that we have not covered in this video that are more complex, try to be fluent. I personally will guide you through the entire process. If you don't know the alphabet yet, we have a lesson for you. If you want to increase your vocabulary, we have a whole vocabulary page dedicated to that. So you guys can get to fluency and hopefully one day read the story and understand all parts of speech, all the predicates, subjects, objects, etc. I hope you will and I hope to see you all there. Wake up.