Fundamentals
of Modern Belarusian
By Chris Marchant
<
www.vitba.org>
Introduction
Chapter 1,
Spelling Rules
Chapter 2,
Noun Declension
Chapter 3,
Additional Points on
Noun Declension
Chapter 4,
Irregular Plurals
Chapter 5,
Adjective Declension
Chapter 6,
Comparative and
Superlative Adjective
Chapter 7,
Personal Pronouns
Chapter 8,
Possessive and
Demonstrative Pronouns
Chapter 9,
Interrogative and
Relative Pronouns
Chapter 10,
Numerals
Chapter 11,
1st Conjugation
Verbs
Chapter 12,
2nd Conjugation
Verbs
Chapter 13,
Miscellaneous Verbs
Chapter 14,
Reflexive Verbs
Chapter 15,
Past Tenses
Chapter 16,
Present and Future
Tenses
Chapter 17,
The Imperative
Chapter 18,
Verbs of Motion
Chapter 19,
Verbal Prefixes
Chapter 20,
Gerunds and
Participles
Chapter 21,
The Nominative Case
Chapter 22,
The Accusative Case
Chapter 23,
The Genitive Case
Chapter 24,
The Dative Case
Chapter 25,
The Instrumental
Case
Chapter 26,
The Prepositional
Case
Chapter 27,
Prepositional
Oddities
Chapter 28,
Conditional
Sentences
Chapter 29,
Adverbs
Chapter 30,
Conjunctions and
Particles
GNU Free
Documentation License
While living in several former republics of the
USSR, I learned to speak Russian, the lingua
franca of CIS countries. Russian is spoken by the majority
of adults in the CIS, and has served me well wherever I have traveled
in the former Soviet Union. Russian is the dominant language in
Belarus. Nevertheless, Belarusian still holds a prominent
position in Belarusian society as a symbol of Belarusian identity and
nationalism. Many government documents are printed only in
Belarusian and most street signs are in Belarusian. Every
schoolchild is required to learn the language, and almost all
Belarusians can speak it at least to some extent. A knowledge of
Belarusian is valuable to anyone who spends any amount of time in
Belarus.
This book was written with the assumption that the
reader is already moderately familiar with either Russian or
Ukrainian. Little explanation is given of noun gender and cases,
or verb aspect and tenses. The reader should consult either a
Russian or Ukrainian grammar for more details on these
principles. I have attempted, in this book, to thoroughly
describe those parts of Belarusian grammar that differ from Russian or
Ukrainian.
There is great variation in the Belarusian language
from region to region, and any attempt to make an authoritative
description of the Belarusian language will be plagued by this
fact. I have strived to make this work as consistent as possible
with the standard Belarusian used in most literature. To this
end, I have set forth the most common declensions, conjugations, and
vocabulary.
To my comrades of the Vitebskaya Banda
Copyright (c) 2004 Christian Cardell Marchant.
Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the
Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of
the license is included in
the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".