Grammar and Vocabulary (व्याकरण व शब्दसंग्रह / грамматика и лексика)
Grammar and vocabulary carries a large mark share in the SSC Russian paper: gender, case endings, verb conjugation, pronouns, plurals and basic word stock. Items are usually fill-in-the-blank or choose-the-correct-form, so precision with endings matters more than long answers.
Core rules
- Three genders: masculine (consonant/й), feminine (-а/-я), neuter (-о/-е).
- Six cases; the highest-yield at SSC level are nominative, prepositional (где? о ком?), accusative (что? куда?) and genitive after нет, из, у.
- Prepositional: стол → о столе; школа → в школе; Россия → о России.
- Accusative: inanimate = nominative form; feminine -а → -у (читаю книгу); animate masculine = genitive (вижу брата).
- Verbs: I conjugation (читаешь, читают), II conjugation (говоришь, говорят); past tense agrees in gender: он читал, она читала.
- Negation: нет + genitive (нет книги, нет брата).
Worked example
Choose the correct form: «Он говорит о ___ (Россия).» Answer: России. Reasoning: о governs the prepositional case. Nouns ending in -ия take -ии in the prepositional: Россия → о России. The decision is made by the preposition о, not by the ending alone.
Traps
- Using о + accusative because the ending looks identical.
- Writing ы after к, г, х, ж, ш, ч, щ; write и (книги, not книгы).
- Confusing -ться (infinitive) with -тся (third person).
- Forgetting gender agreement in the past tense.
- Learning nouns without gender; record новый дом, новая книга, новое окно.