25 Russian conjunctions: because, and, but, if, that, or, while, etc.

Hey everyone! My name is Alina, and if you're new on this channel, I am teaching Russian. Today I want to teach you 25 very important words. They are short, they are called conjunctions, but they are really important when you speak Russian. I'm sure all of you try to say sometimes some complex sentences, not just my name is Alina or this is a table, no, something more complex, sentences that will consist of two parts. And when we need to connect these two parts of the phrase, we need to use these words, conjunctions. It's like in English. And, therefore, but, or, all this stuff we're gonna learn today. So watch this video till the end if you want to speak Russian fluently. And don't forget to subscribe to this channel and to like this video. You need to understand and to remember that each conjunction has its own meaning, and when you need to express something, you'll be thinking of the meaning and how to say it in Russian. So let's start with the cause. And here I'll give you two very important words. The first one is ПОТОМУ ЧТО. You probably know this one because it's very popular to use when you start learning Russian language. ПОТОМУ ЧТО. Pay attention to the pronunciation of this word because it has two words in it, but I pronounce it as one. ПОТОМУ ЧТО. And the example that we can use here. ОН НЕ ПРИШЁЛ НА РАБОТУ, ПОТОМУ ЧТО ЗАБОЛЕЛ. The second word that is very similar to this one, it has the same meaning ТАК КАК. So you can choose the one you like more. Obviously, ПОТОМУ ЧТО is more common to use, but if you want to make it more complicated and if you want to sound more natural, you also can try to use ТАК КАК. Like this, we can say the same sentence. ОН НЕ ПРИШЁЛ НА РАБОТУ, ТАК КАК ЗАБОЛЕЛ. The third one is kind of connected to the previous ones because it will show the result. ПОЭТОМУ. Therefore, that's also a very important word. So we can use the same example, but make it the opposite. ОН ЗАБОЛЕЛ, ПОЭТОМУ НЕ ПРИШЁЛ НА РАБОТУ. The next one is when we talk about condition. And as we all know, conditions can be different. They can be real and they can be unreal. When you talk about real conditions in Russian, you will use the conjunction ЕСЛИ. ЕСЛИ the first part and ТО the second part. Sometimes ТО can be omitted. Let's look. ЕСЛИ ЗАВТРА БУДЕТ ХОРОШАЯ ПОГОДА, ТО МЫ ПОЙДЁМ ГУЛЯТЬ. And as I said, ТО can be omitted, so you can say ЕСЛИ ЗАВТРА БУДЕТ ХОРОШАЯ ПОГОДА, МЫ ПОЙДЁМ ГУЛЯТЬ. You just make a little bigger pause there where we don't use ТО. And if you're talking about something unreal, about unreal conditions, we will use very similar conjunction ЕСЛИ БЫ the first part and second БЫ. ЕСЛИ БЫ У МЕНЯ БЫЛО МНОГО ДЕНЕГ, Я БЫ ПУТЕШЕСТВОВАЛА ВСЁ ВРЕМЯ. So here, as you can see, as you can notice, we use past tense. It's very similar actually to English. Also, when you talk about unreal conditions, you use your verb in the past tense. But you actually have more types of conditional sentences, so in English it's more complicated than in Russian. In Russian, only like this you can express unreal and real conditions. Okay, the next one is DESPITE THE FACT. And in Russian, the first one can be the word ALTHOUGH. For example, ХОТЯ У МЕНЯ БЫЛО ПЛОХОЕ НАСТРОЕНИЕ, Я ПОШЛА ГУЛЯТЬ. And very similar one НЕСМОТРЯ НА. НЕСМОТРЯ НА that's exactly DESPITE SOMETHING, DESPITE THE FACT. Same sentence we can say НЕСМОТРЯ НА ТО, ЧТО У МЕНЯ БЫЛО ПЛОХОЕ НЕСМОТРЯ НА ТО, ЧТО. It's more complex. You can also use НЕСМОТРЯ НА, but you won't use it with the verb. НЕСМОТРЯ DESPITE SOMETHING. So you should use something like a noun. НЕСМОТРЯ НА ПОГОДУ or НЕСМОТРЯ НА НАСТРОЕНИЕ, Я ПОШЛА ГУЛЯТЬ. Okay, the next part is big. When we talk about TIME. ALWAYS. When we talk about time, we have a lot of prepositions, a lot of conjunctions, a lot of different ways to express different times. So here let's be attentive and careful. The first one obviously that's the word КОГДА. It's not only the question WHEN, but it's also a conjunction when you need to say kind of WHILE or also WHEN. For example, here we can have three different ways of using it. First one. КОГДА Я ЧИТАЛ КНИГУ, Я СЛУШАЛ МУЗЫКУ. You do both actions at the same time. Then. КОГДА Я ПРОЧИТАЛ КНИГУ, Я ПОШЕЛ ГУЛЯТЬ. Here first you finished the first action and then you started doing something else. And the third option. КОГДА Я ЧИТАЛ КНИГУ, МНЕ ПОЗВОНИЛА МАМА. You were reading the book, but then something interrupted this action. It's all about aspects of the verbs. If you don't understand this part, you can study my course on Udemy about this. I have a separate lesson for this topic where we have several verbs in the sentence. It's very important to understand when to use imperfective, when to use perfective. So here I'm not going to talk about this because it's a lot of information, but if you are interested in this, you can study the whole course. Also instead of КОГДА you can use ПОКА. ПОКА Я ЧИТАЛА КНИГУ, МОЯ МАМА ГОТОВИЛА УЖИН. Same you can say with КОГДА. КОГДА Я ЧИТАЛА КНИГУ, МОЯ МАМА ГОТОВИЛА УЖИН. You use it when you're talking about the action that happens at the same time. Remember that. And another one that uses also the word ПОКА, but this time it's negation ПОКА НЕ. UNTIL Я ЧИТАЛА КНИГУ, ПОКА НЕ ПРИШЛИ МОИ ДРУЗЬЯ. Okay the next one is BEFORE. In English one word, in Russian we will use three different words or conjunctions. You can choose the one you like more and use it. But the sentences, the examples that I can give you they will be just the same using different words. For example, here just try not to forget all these little words that includes this conjunction. ПЕРЕД ТЕМ КАК, it's necessary to use КАК. Here you cannot omit it, but if you use ПРЕЖДЕ, it's just ПРЕЖДЕ ЧЕМ ПРИЕХАТЬ. You don't say ПРЕЖДЕ ЧЕМ КАК ПРИЕХАТЬ. Never mix them up. Always if you use ПРЕЖДЕ ЧЕМ and then right away you use infinitive or it's necessary to use КАК here. And if you want to say AFTER, then you say ПОСЛЕ ТОГО КАК. Again if you use a verb, if you want to say an action after something happened, you should say all these words ПОСЛЕ ТОГО КАК. You cannot use just ПОСЛЕ. ПОСЛЕ ТОГО КАК. Always you use all these words. And the last one when you're talking about time КАК ТОЛЬКО. КАК ТОЛЬКО also a very useful phrase, very useful word. КАК ТОЛЬКО СОЛНЦЕ СЕЛО, СТАЛО ХОЛОДНО. Or КАК ТОЛЬКО ОН УШЕЛ, Я ПОЗВОНИЛА МАМЕ. Anything you can say here. The next one number 14 and 15 very important when you're talking about purpose. Purpose of the action. That's the word ШТОБЫ. I already have a big video explaining the use of the word ШТОБЫ, so you can watch it here if you missed it. But usually ШТОБЫ means in order to if you use it with the infinitive. Я ПОШЛА В МАГАЗИН, ЧТОБЫ КУПИТЬ ПРОДУКТЫ. And the second way of using ШТОБЫ and after ШТОБЫ you will be using past tense is when you want someone to do something for you. Я ХОЧУ, ЧТОБЫ ТЫ КУПИЛ ПРОДУКТЫ. In my video in my previous video I'm talking more about this meaning of the word ШТОБЫ because it's not that complicated but usually people don't know how to say it and that's why I have the whole video about this topic. Я ХОЧУ, ЧТОБЫ ТЫ КУПИЛ. Number 15 gives you information about something and that's the word ШТО. ШТО is not only the question what as you can understand it's also this conjunction that gives you some information so it can be like that. Я ЗНАЮ, ЧТО ТЫ МНЕ ВРЁШЬ. So I know some information, I know that you are lying to me. In English you very often you omit this part, in Russian it's always better to use it. The next part when you want to ask a question using any question word. I have a video about question words, I've recently made it and you can watch it because it gives you all the question words you need to know. And here it's also very simple, very similar to English. For example, ТЫ ЗНАЕШЬ, КТО ЭТОТ ЧЕЛОВЕК? or ТЫ ЗНАЕШЬ, ГДЕ ОН ЖИВЁТ? or ТЫ ЗНАЕШЬ, КАК ЕГО ЗОВУТ? Any question word here you put in the middle of your sentence in the middle of your main question and like this you have this complex sentence. Number 17 that's the word КОТОРЫЙ. КОТОРЫЙ, КОТОРОЕ, КОТОРОЕ, КОТОРОЕ. That's also a very important word that many people don't know how to use correctly and here I'm not gonna explain how to use it correctly but I have a video, again very big video about the whole explanation of how to use these words. You can watch it here if you missed it. I feel like I have videos about every possible topic already. So here let's just look at the examples but if you don't know how to use this word for sure you need to watch the video. For example, ЭТО МОЙ ДРУГ, КОТОРЫЙ ЖИВЁТ В МОСКВЕ. or ЭТО ИНТЕРЕСНАЯ КНИГА, КОТОРУЮ Я ХОЧУ ПРОЧИТАТЬ. The next one is comparison. Very important meaning as well and the word ЧЕМ. For instance, ОЛЬГА КРАСИВЕЕ ЧЕМ МАРИНА. Here you just use ЧЕМ in the same way as you say it in English. Or if you want to say AS you can say ТАК ЖЕ КАК. СЕГОДНЯ ТАК ЖЕ ХОЛОДНО КАК И ВЧЕРА or КАК ВЧЕРА. Here И is not necessary to use. The next one the conjunction that I'm sure you all know that's just И and ОН ЧИТАЕТ И СМОТРИТ ТЕЛЕВИЗОР. That's when you talk about joint action. But if you want to show the conscious between two parts of the sentence you can use НО or А. РУССКИЙ ЯЗЫК ТРУДНЫЙ, НО ИНТЕРЕСНЫЙ. And А you will use like ЕМУ НРАВИТСЯ ТЕАТР, А МНЕ НЕТ. These three words И, А, НО they are also very tricky. Again you can watch my video where I explain what is the difference between И, А, НО. If И is pretty easy to understand, А and НО can be really tricky. So please watch my video and you'll be able to use them correctly. The next one PARTICLE ЛИ. That's particle unfortunately I don't have video about this word but very often people ask me about this particle and unfortunately it doesn't have any meaning. It can be actually very similar to OR. ИЛИ. So we can have two sentences. Я НЕ ЗНАЮ ПОЙДУ ЛИ Я В КИНО. Which is equal to the sentence Я НЕ ЗНАЮ ПОЙДУ Я В КИНО ИЛИ НЕТ. So here it's usually we use this particle for the sentences where you can have a clear answer. Yes or no. Я ПОЙДУ ИЛИ НЕТ. ПОЙДУ ЛИ Я В КИНО. And finally the last one НЕ ТОЛЬКО, НО И. ОН НЕ ТОЛЬКО РАБОТАЕТ, НО И УЧИТСЯ. МНЕ НРАВИТСЯ НЕ ТОЛЬКО МУЗЫКА, НО И КИНО. Here you can say really a lot of sentences using this conjunction and your sentences will be really beautiful. That's it. I hope it was really helpful and you learned something new today. I'm sure you did because obviously you knew such words as И, ИЛИ, ОНО, ЧТО, maybe ЧТОБЫ. But many of these words of these conjunctions you need to know how to use them correctly and in which situations. Thank you very much for watching. Subscribe to my channel and learn Russian with me.