Learn Russian: Countries and Nationalities

Countries and Nationalities

Olga Lukashkova

СТРАНЫ И НАЦИОНАЛЬНОСТИ

Hello friends,

As pre-intermediate students, you already know some names of countries in Russian. Let's brush up these words. Many of them sound quite similar to the English names. Look at the words below and match the names of countries in English and Russian:

Германия, Россия, Италия, Япония, Украина, Америка, Австралия, Франция, Китай, Испания, Англия

Japan, England, Germany, Russia, America, China, Ukraine, Australia, France, Spain, Italy

Now learn some Russian words for nationalities.

In Russian language, all words denoting a person's nationality are nouns (except "русский" which is an adjective).
Он американец. - He is American.

To describe things and people in relation to a country we use adjectives formed from names of countries.
Это американская компания. - This is an American company.

Look at the chart below and learn more words related to countries and nationalities. (The characters in red show the stressed vowels). Note that names of countries are spelled with capital letters while other words derived from them are spelled with lower-case letters.

СТРАНА	НАЦИОНАЛЬНОСТЬ	КАКОЙ?
Россия	русский/ русская	русский (российский)*
Америка	американец/американка	американский
Англия	англичанин/англичанка	английский
Франция	француз/француженка	французский
Германия	немец/немка	немецкий
Испания	испанец/испанка	испанский
Япония	японец/ японка	японский
Украина	украинец/украинка	украинский
Италия	итальянец/итальянка	итальянский
Китай	китаец/китаянка	китайский
Австралия	австралиец/австралийка	австралийский

* Русский usually refers to the Russian ethnos. - русский язык
Российский usually refers to the state of Russia. - российская Конституция

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