Friday, March 2, 2018

Pronouns - Personal

As with other topics, this post will be updated as we encounter more pronouns

Russian has an array of pronouns comparable to English's: personal, relative, demonstrative, interrogative, reflexive...

Personal pronouns are those which stand in for noun phrases referring to people. Russian has six persons, as does English: First person (the speaker), Second person (the spoken-to), Third person (the spoken-about), and two numbers: Singular (one) and Plural (more than one). There are three third-person singulars, distinguishing gender.

Singular            Plural
First personя (I)мы (we)
Second personты (you, informal)вы (more than one OR one formal)
Third personон (he, it)
она (she, it)
оно (it)
они (they)
Getting the person and number right is crucial for conjugating verbs, which have six different forms, one for each person/number combination.

The above table is for Nominative Case. It's the subject form, the dictionary form. But all Russian pronouns decline for all six Russian cases (this is unlike English, where most pronouns change for objective [accusative/dative/instrumental/prepositional] and you and it don't decline at all).

So here is the chart for personal pronoun declensions. Empty cells mark forms we haven't encountered yet and will be filled in as we go. (And yes, он, она, and оно have different forms throughout their declensions ... though он and оно are mostly the same.)


NominativeGenitiveAccusativeDativeInstrumentalPrepositional
Singular
яменяобо мне
тытебяо тебе
онегоо нëм
онаеëо ней
оноегоо нëм
Plural
мынасо нас
вывасо вас
ониихо них

note: prepositional case is traditional listed with the preposition O


Resources:

From Master Russian, a table of all Russian pronouns with links to declension forms and usage. Very handy.

On Personal Prounouns specifically:

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