One of the uses of the word чтобы is to indicate the purpose for which an object or action is designated. It is often translated into English as “to” or “so that”:

Notice that in those sentences чтобы was followed by an infinitive phrase. That's not always the case:

So what's the difference? The difference is who the “doer” is in the чтобы portion of the sentence. If the doer implied by the чтобы portion is the same as the doer in the main clause, then it is followed by an infinitive. If the doer is different, then you use чтобы to introduce a clause with a past tense verb. Note, however, that even though the form of the verb is past tense, the meaning is not necessarily past tense. It's just indicating the purpose of the action. Here are a couple more examples.

The word но means but. In grammatical terms it is a conjunction which usually introduces a clause that is contrary to previously established expectiations. For instance:

The word но rarely produces confusion for English speakers. Bummer. That means I have to think of some clever example sentences.

Crud. I guess my sentences weren't so clever after all.

Previously we discussed the particle ли in its function of making yes-no questions. It has another function as the equivalent of the English word ‘whether.’ In English ‘whether’ always occurs as the first word in its subordinate clause; ли must always be the second item in its clause:

If the subordinate clause contains words like должен, надо or нужно, they usually come before ли. The next most likely word to come before ли is a conjugated verb:

Any other word/phrase can occur before ли if it bears the focus of the question:

Clever students will have noticed that this use of ли is a part of what we call “indirect speech.” Indirect speech in Russian and English behave somewhat differently. In English, when changing from direct speech to indirect speech, the tense of the subordinate clause undergoes fairly complex changes. For instance, considering the following sentences.

Note the tense of the verbs in the subordinate clause in the corresponding indirect speech sentences:

This change is called “sequence of tenses” by linguists. Russian does not have a sequence of tenses rule like that. Whatever the tense of a verb is in the original direct speech is the same tense that occurs in the indirect speech. In other words, in direct speech we will have:

Rule of thumb: when switching from direct speech to indirect speech in Russian, keep the tense of the original verb.

Every Russian 101 student knows that the word как can mean ‘how.’ There are other contexts, though, where как is best left untranslated. This is particularly true after the verbs видеть ‘to see’, заметить ‘to notice’, наблюдать ‘to observe’, следить ‘to observe’, слушать ‘to listen’, слышать ‘to hear’ and смотреть ‘to watch’.

In this kind of sentence the word как has no ‘how’ meaning at all; it simply marks the beginning of a new clause. In other words, this sentence does NOT mean “We listened to how the birds were singing.” The sentence means we listened to the event itself, not that we were trying to discern the manner in which they sang. Here are some other simple examples:

You will notice that all three of the previous sample sentences had an imperfective past tense verb in the subordinate clause. If the action of the subordinate clause takes place at the same time as the action of the main clause, then you can have a present tense verb in the subordinate clause without changing the meaning, e.g.:

Here are some more complex sentences that use the construction:

Back in the seventies American television had a little spasm in which it thought that blurbs between TV shows on Saturday mornings should be educational. There was “Bicentennial Rock” as 1976 approached, and there was “Multiplication Rock” and even “Grammar Rock.” Grammar Rock rocked! And of all the songs none was better than “Conjunction Junction”:

♪ Conjunction Junction, what's your function? ♫
♫ “Hookin' up words and phrases and clauses.” ♪

Of course, that was before “hooking up” acquired a different meaning... If you haven't ever watched the video, do it immediately or end up a grammatical imbecile.

In Russian there are three conjunctions that give us Americans fits, and they are но, а and и. The reason they give us fits is that in American English we mostly use two conjunctions in their stead, ‘and’ and ‘but,’ but they don't line up quite the way we Americans might expect. Today we will talk about «а». The conjuction «а» can be translated as ‘but,’ ‘and’ or ‘whereas.’ Probably the first rule of thumb for us AmE-speаkers is that if you are contrasting subjects in a sentence, you want to use «а» not «и»:

I don't mean to say that the only time you use «а» is when subjects are contrasted, but this is a good idea to start with.