Breakdown of Я чувствую гордость, когда учительница говорит, что мой блог полезен для других студентов.
Questions & Answers about Я чувствую гордость, когда учительница говорит, что мой блог полезен для других студентов.
Russian often expresses emotions with чувствовать + [emotion as a noun in the accusative]:
- чувствовать радость – to feel joy
- чувствовать грусть – to feel sadness
- чувствовать гордость – to feel pride
So я чувствую гордость is literally “I feel pride,” very natural and fairly neutral.
Я гордый (“I am proud”) is grammatically correct but sounds more like describing a stable characteristic (“I am a proud person by nature”) or can sound a bit self-satisfied if used in the wrong context. For a reaction to something specific (what the teacher says), я чувствую гордость or я горжусь is more idiomatic.
Both are about pride, but they work a bit differently:
Я чувствую гордость = “I feel pride.”
- Focuses on the emotion itself.
- Does not specify what you’re proud of (unless you add it: я чувствую гордость за свой блог).
Я горжусь
- instrumental = “I am proud (of something).”
- You almost always say what you are proud of:
- Я горжусь своим блогом. – I am proud of my blog.
- Я горжусь тем, что мой блог полезен. – I am proud that my blog is useful.
In your sentence, the focus is on the feeling that arises when the teacher says that the blog is useful. Я чувствую гордость, когда… sounds very natural here. You could also rephrase as:
Я горжусь своим блогом, когда учительница говорит, что он полезен для других студентов.
That would shift the emphasis slightly to “I’m proud of my blog (in that situation).”
Гордость is in the accusative case here, because it is the direct object of the verb чувствую:
- я чувствую что? → гордость
For feminine nouns ending in -ь like гордость, the nominative and accusative forms are the same:
- Nominative: гордость
- Accusative: гордость
So you don’t see any change in spelling, but grammatically it’s accusative.
Both words mean “teacher,” but:
- учитель – grammatically masculine; can mean “teacher” in general or a male teacher.
- учительница – specifically a female teacher. The suffix -ница usually marks a feminine form of a profession:
- актёр → актриса, учитель → учительница, etc.
In this sentence, учительница tells us explicitly that the teacher is a woman. If the gender is unknown, unimportant, or you’re being more formal (e.g. “a teacher at school”), учитель is more common.
You can say:
- Я чувствую гордость, когда моя учительница говорит, что…
That’s completely correct. Russian often omits possessive pronouns like мой/моя/наш when the possessor is obvious from context, especially with close relationships (family members, teachers, etc.):
- мама сказала instead of моя мама сказала
- учительница объяснила instead of моя учительница объяснила
In your sentence, я is the speaker, and it’s natural to understand учительница as “my teacher” even without моя. Adding моя just makes it a bit more explicit, slightly more personal.
Russian uses commas around subordinate clauses introduced by conjunctions like когда (“when”) and что (“that”).
Your sentence has two subordinate clauses:
когда учительница говорит, что мой блог полезен для других студентов
– a “when”-clause explaining when you feel pride.что мой блог полезен для других студентов
– a “that”-clause reporting what the teacher says.
So punctuation goes like this:
- Main clause: Я чувствую гордость,
- Subordinate (when): когда учительница говорит,
- Subordinate (that): что мой блог полезен для других студентов.
Russian almost always uses a comma before когда and что when they introduce such clauses. You cannot drop these commas the way you might in English.
Говорит (imperfective, present) here expresses a repeated or typical action:
- когда учительница говорит… – “when the teacher says (whenever she says / in general when she says)…”
If you used:
- когда учительница сказала… – “when the teacher said…” (one specific past moment)
- когда учительница скажет… – “when the teacher says (in the future, once)”
The meaning would change to a single event in the past or future instead of a general situation. The original Russian feels like “I (generally) feel pride whenever my teacher says that my blog is useful.”
Yes, что here is a subordinating conjunction meaning “that”:
- учительница говорит, что мой блог полезен...
= “the teacher says that my blog is useful…”
In English, you can often omit “that” (“the teacher says my blog is useful”). In Russian, you cannot omit что in this structure. You must say:
- говорит, что… – not говорит мой блог полезен…
So что is required to introduce the reported clause.
Russian often omits subject pronouns when the subject is clear from context or from a nearby noun:
- Учительница говорит, что… – the verb говорит clearly refers to учительница (the only feminine singular 3rd person noun available).
You don’t say:
- Учительница она говорит… – this would be redundant or sound clumsy in standard Russian.
So the pattern is:
- explicit noun subject: учительница
- verb: говорит
- no need to add она, because учительница говорит already fully identifies the subject.
Полезен is a short-form adjective that functions like “is useful”:
- мой блог полезен = “my blog is useful.”
Key points:
Agreement:
- блог is masculine singular.
- Short-form masculine singular of полезный is полезен.
- So: блог полезен, книга полезна, правила полезны, etc.
Short-form vs full-form:
- Short-form (predicative): блог полезен – neutral statement of a quality.
- Full-form (attributive): полезный блог – “a useful blog” (used before a noun).
As a predicate, you normally prefer short-form:
- Этот блог полезен. (sounds natural)
- Этот блог полезный. (possible, but sounds more colloquial / not as standard in careful speech)
So мой блог полезен is the standard, natural way to say “my blog is useful.”
In Russian, the verb быть (“to be”) in the present tense is usually omitted in simple “X is Y” sentences:
- Мой блог полезен. – literally “My blog useful,” meaning “My blog is useful.”
- Она учительница. – “She (is) a teacher.”
You only see present forms like есть in special contexts (emphasis, contrast, or existential sentences), not in ordinary “X is Y” statements. So:
- Saying мой блог есть полезен is wrong in standard Russian.
- Мой блог полезен is the correct form.
Для always requires the genitive case:
- для кого? → для других студентов
Here:
- других – genitive plural of другой (“other”)
- студентов – genitive plural of студент
So grammatically we have:
- полезен для других студентов – “useful for other students,” literally “useful for of-other students.”
You could also use the dative case without для:
- полезен другим студентам – also “useful for other students.”
Difference:
- для + genitive is a bit more abstract, often “for the benefit of / intended for.”
- Dative (другим студентам) is more direct, often, “useful to them” as recipients.
In practice, with полезен, both are very common and often interchangeable. Your original для других студентов is perfectly natural.
Yes:
- …что мой блог полезен другим студентам.
is also correct and idiomatic.
Subtle nuance:
- полезен для других студентов – slightly emphasizes the idea “intended for their benefit / serving their needs.”
- полезен другим студентам – emphasizes the idea that those students receive the benefit.
In everyday speech, this difference is very small; both sound natural.
Russian word order is flexible, but not all variants sound equally natural.
когда учительница говорит vs когда говорит учительница:
- когда учительница говорит – neutral, standard.
- когда говорит учительница – possible, but puts more emphasis on учительница (e.g. contrast with others: “when the teacher says it (as opposed to someone else)…”)
что мой блог полезен для других студентов vs что полезен мой блог для других студентов:
- что мой блог полезен для других студентов – normal, neutral.
- что полезен мой блог для других студентов – grammatically possible, but sounds more marked/poetic or with a special emphasis on полезен.
For everyday speech and writing, the original order is the most natural.
No, свой would not be correct here; it would change or confuse the meaning.
Rule of thumb: свой (“one’s own”) usually refers to the subject of the same clause.
In your sentence, consider the subordinate clause:
- что мой блог полезен для других студентов.
The subject of полезен is блог (not “I” and not the teacher).
If you wrote:
- что свой блог полезен…
the свой would grammatically refer to the subject of that clause (the blog itself), which doesn’t make sense: “its own blog is useful.”
We want to say “my blog” (belonging to я in the main clause), so we must use мой:
- что мой блог полезен…
So: мой блог is correct; свой блог would be ungrammatical or nonsensical in this exact structure.