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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Lesson: Asking more about someone's profession.



You are hanging out at Сара's house and looking through her stack of magazines while she is getting ready.

You can make out people's names in the magazines and newspapers but you are not sure why exactly they are famous. One name you have seen a few times is Юрий Гагарин (Yuri Gagarin), you ask "Кто такой Юрий Гогорин?" (kto takoi Yuri Gagarin?) (Who is Yuri Gagarin, as in, tell me more about him).



She answers: "Юрий Гагарин - это известный русский космонавт". (Yuri Gagarin - eto izvestnee rooski kosmonavt) (Yuri Gagarin, this famous Russian cosmonaut). Notice that all the adjectives in this sentence match the noun. Because the noun "cosmonaut" is masculine, the endings are ый, and ий.

Russian's call astronauts cosmonauts by the way.

The question "Кто такой?", or "Who is?", has a feminine form of "Кто такая?". If we were asking about Анна Павлова the famous Russian ballerina, we would ask "Кто такая Анна Павлова?".

You would only use "Кто такой/Кто такая" when the person's name is included in the question. For any other question where you are asking "who?", you would use "Кто?".

Exercise 1: You now know the words for quite a few professions. Make a list and quiz your friend Sara about them.

Exercise 2: After Sara is bored of the game you pull out a magazine from America and she asks you about the people in it. Try to add in people with Russian, English, American, and Canadian nationalities.

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