Russian personal pronouns

Russian grammar: Russian personal pronouns

In this lesson, we will learn Russian personal pronouns.

Listen to the audio and repeat after it:

Keep in mind, that I in Russian is written with the lowercase.

Formal and informal ways of addressing people

There are two ways of addressing people in Russian depending on who you talk to.

If you are talking to your friend, relative, someone younger than you, or somebody you are close with, you can use the informal tone and call him or her ты when addressing directly.

But if you talk to your boss, teacher, a stranger, or somebody older than you, you should use the formal tone and call the person вы (plural form of ты).

These are the basic and the most important rules of politeness in Russia: using ты wrongly can push people away from you and give a bad impression about you.

Sometimes you might see that the polite Вы is written with the uppercase, while the informal plural вы is written with the lowercase. It is a common practice but not a rule. When you address people politely in a written form, you can write вы with the lowercase, it will not be a mistake.

That’s it for today. We hope you enjoy learning Russian with us. Listen to the audio track and practice the pronunciation of Russian personal pronouns.

The offline version of this lesson is available here

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