When Russians tell time, they look ahead. In the first half-hour, they are already on their way to the next, and in the second, they tell you how far it is to the next hour. To understand this and be able to do it yourself, there are a few things you need to know. Here are the most important ones.

Forming the past tense (прошедшее время) in Russian is very simple. Perhaps the easiest aspect of the entire Russian grammar. The number of variations is limited, and conjugations are not complicated.

Cases are often seen as the ‘Ghost’ of the Russian language. Like the white rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: ‘Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide, it’s a killer!’ In this case, it’s a six-headed monster.

From Russian with Max, here are the 34 самые популярные конструкции русского языка (the 34 most popular sentence structures of the Russian language). Useful words and conjunctions, each with two examples, read aloud (by Max) at two different speeds. With English translation; summary (with Dutch translation) below the video.