Customer Reviews

Russian Grammar (Barron's Grammar)

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I bought this book several years back. The grammar that was in it was very basic and was not always helpful in understanding how to use Russian grammar properly. But if you are just starting out and you only have room to fit it in your pocket, then I'd say go ahead. But I would recommend a more comprehensive grammar book for those who want to speak a little more clearly.

This Russian grammar book is not the most comprehensive grammar, but it's very good for beginners or anyone who needs a quick reference guide.

The book's explanation on aspect in Russian verbs is very clear as well. It explains that the imperfective past is used for processes, whereas the perfective past is used for results. After closer inspection, I realized that these two past tenses are identical to the imperfect and preterit tenses in Spanish. So if you're studying Russian past tenses, you may be able to use the acronyms that I explain in my book on Spanish grammar.

Imperfective Past HIDE

Habitual Actions (used to + VERB)

Incoplete Actions (was/were + ING form)

Descriptions in the past

Emotions/Feelings (most of the time)

Perfectice Past STARS

Sudden Ocurrence

Time Limit/Complete Actions

Action Disrupts action of Imperfective Verb

Result/Reaction

Series of Distinct Events or Instances

Brandon Simpson

One shouldn't mistake this book for what it's not. This is a compact-sized reference guide to all of the basics of Russian grammar (plus some other subjects such as pronunciation, idioms, the use of ty vs. vy when addressing someone, and numbers). It's not meant to be the be-all and end-all guide of Russian language instruction; unless you're supplementing this with lessons or with another more thorough book on the language, you're not going to become fluent in Russian by a long shot. It plays the type of role a foreign language dictionary does; sure it contains a lot of information and basics, but you can't do anything with it if it's your only instructional volume.

Grammatical topics covered include when to use which case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional), the declensions themselves (which really aren't that hard to master once you've learnt the basic forms), word order, the different types of adjectives (e.g., superlative, interrogative, demonstrative, descriptive), the different types of pronouns (e.g., intensive, negative, indefinite, reflexive), forming imperative and conditional verbs, adverbs, basic verb conjugation, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, telling time, and talking about the weather. Overall, it's a great compact resource, and in addition to being used in conjunction with a Russian class, can also be used in preparation for starting a Russian class or to brush up on one's Russian after not having used it for awhile.

This book is an excellent quick reference on Russian grammar. The information is very well organized and concise (including very useful tables of all the case endings in the back), so it's easy to find what you need very quickly. In conjunction with an English-Russian, Russian-English dictionary I can have conversations over ICQ in Russian for practice. I wish Barron's would publish these books for more languages. They are excellent for learning the language or if you're just curious about how the grammar works.

I bought this book back in 1992, literally the day it came out, based on my experience with Barron's similar guide for the French language. Concise, well organized, and very comprehensive for it's size, this inexpensive book is a perfect companion to a lesson book or textbook.