Still working on those participles

[david-us.livejournal.com]

I just ran across these two sentences in my text (still working on those participles):

Я увидел его отдыхающим на пляже.

Я увидел Олега, отдыхающего на пляже.

The use of the instrumental in the first sentence is a mystery to me. The second sentence makes perfect sense. With regards to the first sentence, the text has the following note, "... after a direct object pronoun, the participle is placed in the instrumental case and is not separated from the pronoun by a comma in writing." Is this accurate?

I think I'm going to try and steer clear of these participles when able. It's useful to know/recognize them when reading, however. Just for my own edification - would the following sentence be grammatically correct?

Я увидел Олега, которого отдыхал на пляже.

(ref: Modern Russian II, p.875, but I have the 1965 edition.)

Comments

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

I memorized Spanish nouns (which also have male and female gender-specific and mostly regular endings) together with the definite article (which also is gender-specific: el (m) vs la (f)). I just prepended the article to the word in my flash cards.

It doesn't make learning any harder, yet you memorize the word with the proper article (and therefore gender) at once.

The gender is necessary because Spanish nouns also have gender-specific endings (most of them have).

In most cases the article is useless, however, there're some exceptions, where it is useful.
Regular cases:
la cas*a* blanc*a* (fem) = the white house
el artícul*o* cort*o* (masc) = the long article
Irregular:
la man*o*/radi*o* (fem) = the hand/radio
el problem*a*/clim*a* (masc) = the problem/climate

Memorizing la mano and el problema instead of just mano and problema solves the problem naturally.

[david-us.livejournal.com]

I have no experience with this since the only languages I know are English (where the article never changes) and Russian (where articles are mostly not used).

I'll have to convey your advise to my daughter (learning German) - that she should memorize the words along WITH the article, in one step, as you suggested. That seems logical.

Yet, she still thinks Russian is easier than German. :)

Maybe she's right.