Russian doubts

[pc2]

salutations,
could someone here help us with some doubts about the Russian language?

here they are:

- this word - russkogo, what's this "ogo" ending?
- this phrase - govorite po-russky, what case is 'russky' in? prepositional?
- how do we differ perfective from imperfective?

best regards,

[didine]

- this word - russkogo, what's this "ogo" ending?

Genitive (singular).

- this phrase - govorite po-russky, what case is 'russky' in? prepositional?

No, it's dative (singular).

- how do we differ perfective from imperfective?

The perfective sometimes has a preverb... but of course not always, otherwise it would be too easy. I think you just have to learn both forms for each verb. Note that an imperfective can have different perfectives. Preverbs modify the meaning of the verb.

[ANTHOS]

Hello - re the third point.

I am also learning Russian and basically there are no two ways about it - you HAVE to learn the imperfective and the perfective infinitives for every verb if you are serious about learning Russian.

The perfective is formed from the imperfective in several ways, for example
- by adding a prefix (I think this is what you mean by preverb Didine?:hello: ). There are many common prefixes such as PO-
- by insertion of characters
- by change of conjugation pattern - Russian verbs fall into two groups. Sometimes the imperfective and perfective versions differ in their conjugation pattern.

I think that the first and third methods allow beginners to distinguish more easily between the imperfective and the perfective variants.

One could say that perfective/imperfective correspond to completed and non-completed actions, respectively. But this is a GROSS oversimplification.

Hope this helps

Andreas

[svernoux]

- this phrase - govorite po-russky, what case is 'russky' in? prepositional?

No, it's dative (singular).

Are you sure about dative, Didine? I'll check this, but as far as I remember, "по-русски" is of no case, because it is just a fixed expression, which results from a language evolution and is impossible to explain using gramatical rules.

If "по-русски" was dative singular, it would be "по русскому" (without dash)

[fantasia]

this is not dative, this is an adverbial expression
говорить КАК по-русски - parler comment
говорить КАК по-французки and so on

[svernoux]

this is not dative, this is an adverbial expression

Thanks fantasia, that's exactly what I meant

[didine]

I'd been studying Russian for 7 years when I went to university. For 7 years, I thought "по-русски" was a set expression, but university teachers repeatedly drummed it into us that it was an specific old form of the dative case. It seems they brainwashed me so well that it didn't even occur to me it would confuse beginners like pc2.

Yes Anthos, by "preverb", I means prefixes like "po-", "za-", etc.

[pc2]

we got it.
but what is this word "po"(po-russkyi)?
does it mean "in"? because the forming of the phrase in
english, we think it could also be "I speak in Russian", right?
by knowing what is "po", we could have an idea about if "-yi" is an old dative form(?).
NOTE: what's the nominative form of "russkyi"? is there a "russko" form?

regards,

[svernoux]

Ok, pc2, let's have it all from the start.

1) русский is an adjective.
русский is the masculine, singular, nominative form.
the feminine form is русская, the neutral one is русское, the plural one is русские, and so on... There are many possible endings, depending on the gender, the number and the case. For example, masculine singular dative would be русскому.

What I have just told you is for long adjectives (or adjectives in the long form), which are the most common and thus, the first ones you learn. But all long adjectives also have a short form.
For example, the short form of красивый is красив, the short form of красивая is красива, the short form of красивое is красиво and the short form of красивые is красивы.
So as you see, adjective can have an ending in -o when they are
short
neutral
singular
nominative
This form in -o is also used as an adverb in Russian (but maybe this is a bit complicated to you now).

BUT: русский has NO short form, so you can't normally find a form such as русско, neither such as русски.

2) по is a preposition that can a lots of different meanings and that is mostly followed by dative.
Examples of its meaning:
по моему мнению = in my opinion
по лесу = across the forrest
по Дону = along the Don-river

etc.


***

So, what you must remember :
по is mostly followed by dative, but in this very case, the adjective following "по-" in the expression "по-русски" is not in dative form, at least not in any known dative form of Modern Russian. As didine said, it might come from an old-russian version of dative, but I personnaly have no clue about it and I think you'd better not worry about that for the moment (except if you're a philolog) and you just have to learn it by heart.
The other clue that shows that "по-русски" is a special expression is, as I already said, that it has a dash between both nouns, which would not be the case in a prepositional construction starting with по.

Is that clear enough ?

Please note that this construction with "по-....и" can be used for all languages (по-английски, по-китайски...) but also in other contexts, for example in receipes :
котлеты по-киевски = meat balls in the way of Kiev
макарони по-флотски = pasta in the way of the navy

***

And now to answer your last question: there are 2 ways of saying "I speak Russian" or "I speak in Russian"

1- я говорю по-русски
OR
2- я говорю на русском (языке)

The second version is mostly used without adding языке (this word is only suggested), but I put it here into brackets for you to understand the construction from a grammatical point of view.

Is everything clear now ?

[bambino]

it is: по-французский both with Z & S

[didine]

it is: по-французский both with Z & S

It is "по-французски" and not "по-французский".