I'm learning Russian, and have a quick question I hope you can help with... it concerns proper usage of the Russian case system.
Would I, as a male, use the feminine case when speaking to a female? For example, "Shto vi deelelah f chira ootrom?"? Or should I use the masculine version, 'deelel', even though I am speaking to a female? (Sorry for the horrible transliterations, I don't have Cyrillic on my keyboard).
Thank you very much for any insight you can give.
~Alex
Answer Hi,
Your question is not about the case system, the case system or declension is for nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals - they receive different endings depending on their position in a sentence.
Your question is about verb tenses, gender and conjugation.
The correct phrase would be:
Что вы делали вчера утром?
What did you do yesterday in the morning?
The more casual form is:
Что ты делала вчера утром? (to a female)
What did you do yesterday in the morning?
The gender ending applies to the person doing the action, so if you talk about yourself and you are a male, you should say: я делал, я спал, я ел, etc.
When you use "вы" (the polite form of "you"), the verbs used should be in plural, that's why it's "вы делали".
Try this Russian online transliterator, if you need to type in Russian.
