(no subject)

[blue-sky-day.livejournal.com]

What dictionary/dictionaries do you use?
What do you like about them?

I'm afflicted with RGADD

[david-us.livejournal.com]

... that's Russian Grammar Attention Deficit Disorder. :)

I'm currently working through some lessons in participles. From what I have experienced (as limited as it is), these are much more common in written Russian than spoken Russian.

In any case, I ran across the following example sentence:

Не получив ответа на мое письмо, я написал ему опять.
Receiving no reply to my letter, I wrote to him again.

I try to understand all elements of these sentences.

I understand the adverbial participle (получив), but, there it is again, that blasted genitive case for a direct object (ответа)! Some of you may recall, we have discussed this in the past.

This usage seems so random to me and, although many of you tried your best to explain it to me, I still don't see the pattern or understand under what conditions the direct object is placed in the genitive and when it is not. Again, this only seems to be an issue in negative sentences.

For instance, wouldn't the following sentence be grammatically correct?

Получив ответ на мое письмо, не было нужно ему позвонить.

Online Russian grammar book

[david-us.livejournal.com]

For all you struggling, English-speakers, like myself, who are trying to untangle the mysteries of this great language of Russian, you may be interested in knowing there is a complete, online text available at this location:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3815175/Russian-Grammar

It's not super detailed - but it covers, if only in a cursory manner, all the major elements of grammar. It even has a nice index at the beginning to help lead you to where you want to go.

The internet is an invaluable tool for assistance in learning foreign languages. I sure wish it had been invented and available when I was much younger, just starting out on this journey. I listen to Russian radio stations and watch online Russian TV.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN