The Russian Pronouns Indefinite

Sometimes someone may feel like saying something about something but can't think of anything definite so say. Any time that happens to you, a rich array indefinite pronouns are available in Russian. The problem with indefinite pronouns is that they provide you with very little information; rather, they simply tell the listener that you have in mind some noun, verb, or adjective but don't know (or can't remember) exactly what it is.

Like English, Russian has two sets of indefinite pronouns although one set has two sets of forms, so you might want to say that Russian has three formal paradigms to cover the same two sets of meanings we find in English and other Indo-European languages. This actually makes Russian simpler than English because you have a wider range of choices as to how you express indefiniteness in Russian than in English.

As you can see from the first paragraph of this page, the indefinite pronouns express the concepts of the English pronouns beginning with some- (someone (somebody), somewhere, somehow) and any- (anyone, anywhere, anyhow). In Russian these expressions are created by the environmentally safe process of recycling the highly reusable interrogative pronouns (yet again). To form the specific indefinite pronouns in Russian you add the suffix -то to the appropriate interrogative pronoun; to form the non-specific indefinite pronouns you add either the suffix -нибудь or -либо to the interrogative pronoun. In either case, with these suffixes you leave the hyphen in.

In English, of course, we don't say somewhy or anywhy and we don't have an interrogative pronoun of measure corresponding to Russian сколько "how much". We have to go around our elbow to get to our thumb and use long phrases like for what reason and a certain amount to say the same thing. As usual, Russian is simpler—so what's new? Also, remember that all pronouns built on кто, что, чей and какой must be declined according to case the same way they are declined without the suffixes.

There is one characteristic of these pronouns in Russian which you must keep in mind: the Russians draw the line between what is specific and non-specfic at a different place than we do. For example, we always say Someone called if someone did and would never say Anyone called since, if one of us took the call, we know the person who called specifically (by name or at least by voice). Russians may announce a telephone call either by saying кто-то позвонил or by saying кто-нибудь позвонил. The difference is whether the Russian knows the caller personally or by name.

It follows that the Russian definition of 'specificity' is much more restricted than ours. As a result, the number of cases where we would use the 'some-form' is much larger than those where we would use the 'any-forms' while in Russian the нибудь forms are more numerous than the to forms. What to do? A good rule of thumb is the following:

For example, in English we would tend to say Someone or other called but he didn't tell me his name but Someone by the name of 'Boris'. In Russian you would have to say Кто-нибудь позвонил а не сказал, как его зовут but Кто-то по имени Бориса позвонил.

Here are some sentences containing indefinite pronouns to give you a better idea of how they are used in actual speech.