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I have a mental list of "Things I Will Never Get Right in Russian." It's a fairly long list, and most of it is pretty hopeless. Let's face it: I will never acquire that magical Russian sixth sense about aspect. But I did harbor the faint hope that I could master declension of surnames. I figured that I could just memorize some rules and then chat in Russian about anybody from anywhere and not humiliate myself. Ha! Those rules turn out to be 15 pages of qualifications, exceptions and national distinctions.
In case you go to a time-warp international conference and need to talk about the participants in Russian without putting your foot in your mouth, here's a primer, starting with men.
The easiest Russian male surnames are the ones that look like adjectives. They get declined like adjectives, so you'd say Я видел Достоевского (I saw Dostoevsky). Surnames that end in -ов, -ев or -ин are not too difficult. Pretend that they are masculine nouns until you get to the instrumental case, when you add -ым instead of the expected -ом. For practice, write on the blackboard 100 times: Я встречался с Путиным и Медведевым (I met with Putin and Medvedev).
As you wander around the conference floor, you'll be happy to meet with most men whose surnames end in a consonant, a soft sign or the letter й. You just pretend their last names are masculine nouns and decline accordingly: Я написал о Робинсоне (I wrote about Robinson); Я встречался с Гайдаем (I met with Gaidai); or Я видел Ширака (I saw Chirac).
You'll be delighted to meet any foreigners whose transcribed names end in any vowel but -а. You don't have to bother declining those names -- not Саакашвили (Saakashvili), Саркози (Sarkozy), Шоу (Shaw), Камю (Camus), Гёте (Goethe), Гюго (Hugo), or Ющенко (Yushchenko). Ditto for someone with a surname like Черных (Chernykh) or Долгих (Dolgikh).
The men who will make you sad are non-Russians whose transcribed names end in -ов or -ин. They don't follow the pattern of Медведев and Путин. Their names are treated like masculine nouns and have -ом or -ем in the instrumental. So if you had a magical meeting with both Putin and Darwin, you'd say: Я встречался с Путиным и Дарвином.
But you will weep if you meet a man whose transcribed surname ends in -а or -я. Here the rule-makers went nuts.
If the surname ends in an unstressed -а after a consonant, the name gets declined as if it were a feminine noun. So if you chat up Obama, you say Я говорил с Бараком Обамой. Russians aren't the least bit fazed by what seems to be major gender confusion. They do the same thing with Спиноза (Spinoza), Кафка (Kafka) and Окуджава (Okudzhava). But for some reason, Finnish surnames ending in an unstressed -а don't get declined.
If the surname name ends in -а but is preceded by a vowel -- like the Italian painter Моравиа (Moravia) or the French painter Делакруа (Delacroix) -- don't decline it. If it is a French surname ending in an -а or a stressed -я, don't decline it either. So Дюма (Dumas), Петипа (Petipa) and Золя (Zola) never change.
But non-French, non-Finnish surnames ending in -а or -я -- like Митта (Mitta), Сковорода (Skovoroda), Гойя (Goya), and Берия (Beria) -- get declined as if they were feminine nouns.
So why are the Finns and French so special? Don't ask me. But before you open your mouth to say you saw someone, make sure you know where the stress falls and what's on their passport. There will be a pop quiz after the Group of 20 meeting.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
