I know that in most cases, Russian does not use present tense forms of “to be”. For instance “I am an American” is " Ya amerikanets " (lit. “I American”).
But just out of curiosity, are there other verb forms? I know the infinitive is " bit’ ", the past tense is " bidal “, and in a few phrases (like possessive statements”, a third person " est " is used.
I tried searching, and found nothing.
Assuming there are other verb forms, are they used at all, for emphasis or something?
…oops I meant “bil” is past tense…in case anyone was grading my work!
Read more here: http://masterrussian.com/aa120199a.shtml
The stem bud- can be used for future tense: Ya budu chitat’ knigu (I will read the book).
Past tense is formed like an adjective - the verb takes on forms for gender and singular/plural, and becomes an adjective meaning “the state of having done” the action of the verb.
Future tense is like English, a word like “will” followed by the infinitive. It’s been so long I don’t remember the word - sorry!
[hijack]
Napier … I’m taking a shot in the dark here, but:
Did you happen to grow up near New Orleans, and go to college in Memphis?
[/hijack]
But are there any present tense forms, like “I (am)”…or are they completely absent?
Yes, there are other verb forms. I have mislaid my Russian grammar book, but in addition to conjugations the language also has declensions–like Latin–so the noun would work along with the verb to indicate meaning, with a different ending if it was the nominative or another case (objective, genitive…).
Also in Russian–no articles. So if your person had defected, he would say, “I was American” and not “I was AN American.”
I can’t think of any construct in russian that would be similar to using “am” for emphasis as in :
“Who here is the American?”
–“I am”
It would probably translate as:
“Kto zdes’ Amerikanets?”
–“Ya Amerikanets” , if not just “Ya”, or maybe “Ya on”
In some cases you could probably use “Ya tak” (I am that way) to provide the emphasis, but having not spoken Russian in 5+ years I don’t know how this would sound to a native speaker.
“Est’” can be used to provide emphasis of the presence of an object (as in the contruct “u vas ect’ chto-to”) but its usage seems to be governed by native speaker intuition and I’m not sure it can be easitly explained when to and when not to use it.
(I’m not a student of Russian, but I’m a native speaker)
I recall that the word sut’ is used to translate literally the present of “to be” from English/German/French etc. A quick search on the internet haven’t revealed any confirmation (sut’, as in essence, is a fairly common word), but I assume that this is an archaic form of est’. This form isn’t used ordinarily in this sense.
est’, is used for the same purpose in archaic texts (e.g., the Bible), just like is is used in English.
In formal writing, people use something along the lines of Ya yavlyayus’ americantsem to convey that they are American (literally, it means I appear…, of course, but that doesn’t matter. It means that you really are). I guess that’s the best answer to your question.
True, but only if it is followed by a verb. Ya tak vyroschen would mean I was raised this way.
Ya on is roughly equivalent to the English “I am he” and looks awkward. If I were inclined to answer the question with something other than a simple Ya (which is completely legitimate), I would say Ya americanets, with an emphasis on Ya
I meant that tak can be used in roughly the context in question. It is not used for emphasis, however.
Okay, found the grammar book. Of course a native speaker is much better. I didn’t recall seeing the “to be” much but learning things from books can give misleading impressions.
Anyway, according to the book Essentials of Russian by A.V. Gronicka and H. Bates-Yakobson,
(Transliteration mine, since I don’t have Cyrillic, more room for errors)
The phrase "is he working today? would be (roughly) “Works he today?”
The future tense of the verb “to be”:
budu = I shall be
budyesh = you will be (sing.)
budyet = he/she/it will be
budyem = we shall be
budyeta = you (plural) will be
budyut = they will be
It also says, re: the present tense, that "When a noun is linked to another noun, the form of ‘to be’ is replaced by a dash: Moskva - gorod Moscow [is a] city
Ivan - student
Except in this book I have never seen this in the (admittedly, extremely limited) things I’ve read.