Russian Pronouns
Russian Grammar

There are many pronouns in the Russian language and it takes some time to learn them all. Pronouns are words which can be used in the place of nouns so that you don’t have to repeat the nouns. Consider “I”,”He”, “She” in English. Each of the Russian pronouns decline according to their case. Luckily, as often happens in the Russian language, pronouns often decline according to certain patterns. It is far to difficult to remember every pronoun and case, they normally decline in a logical pattern so you should learn them this way.

Russian Personal Pronouns

Singular personal pronouns.

Plural personal pronouns.

Russian Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns indicate who something belongs to. They may replace a person’s name in the sentence, “Ivan’s Book”. Words like “My, Your, Our, His, Her” in English.

Please note that the genders indicated in the following tables refer to the gender of the noun that these pronouns modify. (ie the noun owned). For example in the phrase "My book", you would use the 1st person (my) and feminie gender (book is feminine) (Моя). Don't confuse this with the pronouns "his" and "her" (Его and Её).

Singular possessive pronouns.

Plural possessive pronouns.

Russian Reflexive Pronouns

Personal Reflexive Pronoun “Себя” (-self)

The Russian pronoun “Себя” means self. It is used when the pronoun is the same person or thing as the subject. Example “He talked about himself (Он говорил о себе)”. Himself is a reflexive pronoun. You should read the section on reflexive verbs to have a better understanding of how the reflexive is formed in Russian.

Reflexive possessive pronoun “Свой”

The Russian pronoun “Свой” means “one’s own”. It replaces the normal possessive pronoun when it refers to the subject. Example “Ivan loves his (own) dog (Иван любит свою собаку)”. Unlike English, in Russian the reflexive is required in the 3rd person. If you were to use the normal possessive pronoun it would indicate the dog belongs to someone else. It is optional in the 1st and 2nd person but normally used if the subject is “Ты”.

Emphatic pronoun “Сам”

The Russian pronoun “Сам” is simply used to emphasise something. It translates to “myself, himself, herself” etc. It’s use is optional, it emphasises part of the sentence, rather than changing it’s meaning. Some examples could be: “I did it myself (Я сам сделал)”, “I will phone the president himself”.

Russian Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are commonly used when you are pointing to something, or indicating what you are talking about with your body. Like English, “This” is used to indicate something close by, and “That” is used to indicate something not so close.

This

That

Russian Determinative Pronouns

All

Russian Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. “What?” and “Who?” have cases based on there location in the sentence. For example you would use the prepositional to ask “About what?”. Example: “What are you talking about (О чём вы говорите?)” . See also: Question words.

What?

Who?

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