(no subject)

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

What would be the male equivalent of девушка? Молодой человек sounds too wordy, and мужчина sounds too old. I was once told that it would be мальчишек, but then come to think of it, wouldn't that be the diminuitive of the already diminuitive мальчик?

And, because my map of Russia only shows Russia, and from other maps I can only be sure of 6 or 7 countries... which are the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union?

pronouns

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

When — if ever — is it alright to drop pronouns in Russian? I sort of remember hearing that if you’re using short statements like, ‘I don’t know’, you can just say ‘не знаю’, but how short must a sentence be to merit dropping the pronoun if that's the case?

I ask this because, in Spanish, people who originally spoke English tend to overuse the pronoun ‘I’, making themselves sound incredibly egotistical. I want to avoid a similar problem in Russian. :)

Hopefully this makes sense

[hopeinagpa.livejournal.com]

I just had a conversation with a bright молодой человек (haha...or is it in this case better to use "парень"--he's 21, or should I just specify and say "студент" to avoid the mess?) who is visiting the US for the summer to work on his English. When the topic of lunch came up, he said, "я не голоден." Now here're two (more) questions:

1. To say "I'm not hungry either", can I use "я тоже", or since there's a gender change, must I instead repeat the phrase and change "голоден" to "голодна"?

2. (if I understood him correctly) my friend said that girls, instead of saying "я не голодна", should say "я не проголодалась". Is that really true? Are girls supposed to express hunger differently than guys or something?