Russian Classes: Exploring the careers of famous Russians

Привет!
In one of the previous articles we learned how to introduce ourselves with the help of famous Russian geniuses. Let’s learn about more professions today - and add some new faces to our list of famous Russians!
Alina Zagitova is a figure skater, and the Olympic (in 2018) and World (2019) champion.

Pavel Durov is the creator of the VK social networking giant, as well as the CEO of Telegram.

Leonid Kuravlev was a famous and respected Soviet actor who starred in a number of iconic roles. One of them had him portraying a thief in "Иван Васильевич Mеняет Профессию" ("Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future").

Maya Plisetskaya was a prima ballerina, choreographer and actress.

Take a look at this list of professions. In Russian some words for professions have masculine and feminine forms. In order to form a feminine version, we use a number of suffixes (plus the ending -а):

suffix -к- like in фигурист -> фигуристка or студент -> студентка (student)
suffix -ниц- like in предприниматель -> предпринимательница, учитель -> учительница (teacher)
suffix -ис- like in актёр - > актриса (this suffix is used very rarely)
In case of "ballet dancer", the feminine version is "балерина", but for masculine we use "артист балета" or "танцор".

Check out more lessons in our Telegram channel, using the tag #russianclasses!

Dear readers,

Our website and social media accounts are under threat of being restricted or banned, due to the current circumstances. So, to keep up with our latest content, simply do the following:

• Subscribe to our Telegram channel
• Subscribe to our weekly email newsletter
• Enable push notifications on our website
• Install a VPN service on your computer and/or phone to have access to our website, even if it is blocked in your country